Cruising in Parc Lafontaine
I went to school in Montreal, living next to the train station in a bachelor apartment that might have felt cramped if I had owned anything to fill it with. On those nights when sleep failed me I often took to the streets, heading north on St Denis to pace the trails in Park Lafontaine which was, at least back then, a popular cruising spot.
Only one encounter has stayed with me.
The man approached me on a park bench and we talked for a while. He told me about his job, his children. He shared with me whatever lie he had told his wife about where he was going when he left the house that night.
When he learned that I was studying mathematics he got excited. Apparently he had an interest in the number Pi. He had spent some time studying gematria — a kind of quasi-religious cipher that assigns numerical values to words. It’s the kind of thing that is popular amongst people who like to go looking for hidden codes in the Hebrew bible. He believed that there might be messages from the creator lurking in the digits of Pi. He asked me what I thought about this idea.
And I can’t remember what I told him.
But I’m sure that I didn’t tell him the truth.
I didn’t tell him that I knew some number theory and that I’d studied Pi. I didn’t tell him that the digits of Pi are random and meaningless and devoid of any kind of information whatsoever. I didn’t tell him that there are no messages from God hiding in Pi. Or elsewhere, for that matter. I didn’t tell him that the digits or Pi are just a screen onto which we project our hopes and fears and anxieties, like the arrangement of stars in the night sky, the wrinkles in our palms, the patterns of sediment at the bottom of a teacup.
I don’t remember what I told him that night. Some platitude, I imagine.
He asked me how old I was and I told him the truth, though he didn’t believe me.
“T’es si jeune…”
I left him alone on the bench and made my way home, walking along the edge of the forest. In the darkness beyond there were countless men, silhouetted figures moving furtively amidst the undergrowth. I imagine he joined these men, added his voice to the chorus of human murmurs in the woods.
And I walked on, past the fountain, out into the meaningless noise of the city.
A condensed version of this story comprises one part of my recent magazine project, Bruxism, which is set during the final days of a toxic relationship I found myself entangled in many years ago.
In several previous posts I talked about the personal story at the heart of Bruxism, shared an excerpt from the magazine, and showed off some product shots of the final product.