Panic for Sale

1

For a thousand easy bucks, I could lie all right. I had the gift all great liars had: the uncanny ability to figure out exactly what Herr Other wanted to hear, and if in this case he had a medical degree and a Ph.D. in Psychiatry and ran his own clinic, all the greater the satisfaction would be when I duped him right there on his home turf. I listened carefully to Dr. Berman and proceeded to spew forth fallacies with the reckless abandon of a seasoned mendax.

“No, I can honestly say I’ve never had any kind of what people call mental problems. It actually bugs my friends that I am so impervious to anxiety. They say stuff like I just don’t seem to have any nerves: I’m the rock.  When my friends have problems, they all call me, and invariably at some point they tell me they need to see me because I’m so stoically stable that I always make them feel grounded. They use me as a reference point for psychological balance. Some of them even think I’m so stable that my very stability probably amounts to some sort of mental aberration.

“But the truth is that my family life and upbringing were almost comically supportive. My parents loved me and always reinforced my positive self-image by praising all of my accomplishments. They came to all my athletic tournaments and always cheered me on. I guess you could say they spoiled me, but if they did, they seemed to spoil me to the perfect degree.

“The University of Michigan scouted me right out of high school in Richland, Washington, with an absurdly generous scholarship package. I did my B.A. in English there in three years and graduated Summa Cum Laude. For graduate studies, I chose the University of Toronto ahead of Berkeley and University of Virginia—which also accepted me—and then Toronto fast-tracked me into their doctoral program in English.

“And here I am!

“My classmates see me as a sort of academic machine. My typing speed—a hundred and eighteen words per minute—is exactly double the speed Northrop Frye achieved when he won his speed-typing prize, though in fairness I should say that it is easier to type quickly on a computer than it was on a typewriter. As far as my feelings about myself go, I would say I am generally suffused with an overwhelming sense of my own power and capabilities. Every assignment I turn in, I know in advance will pull an A+. And it always does. My marks for the first two years of doctoral work amounted to a straight A+ average. I guess that’s why—in a variety of social contexts—I’m just so comfortable with myself that I almost unnerve people. Anxious and paranoid people don’t like me because of my dispropensity to psychic vacillation. I went into and aced my Comprehensive Doctoral Exams in a state of total peaceful relaxation. The guy who sat next to me (who had brought fifteen back-up pens) said I absolutely had to be a Buddhist.

“But it’s not confidence or arrogance that enables me to achieve stuff so easily. It’s just some sort of genetic calm. I have to say that, among the doctoral candidates, there is a certain amount of resentment towards me because I seem to have an almost superhuman ability to perform well under stressful conditions. I don’t know what it is, exactly. It’s just something I’ve learned to accept about myself. I don’t do yoga. I don’t meditate. I’m not religious, and I don’t even adhere to any of the less systematic belief systems to which unstable people so often subscribe. I just have this healthy, accepting view of myself, and beyond that I’m not preoccupied at all with myself or even with the self as such. My stability is obviously just a constitutional thing. I must get it from my parents. I’ve never seen either of them express themselves in anger. I had no siblings to compete with, never had a financial worry, and I always had healthy, sound, stable relationships, first with girls, then with women. I’m set to polish off this doctorate in three years—that’ll be the fastest it’s ever been done. The most common criticism I’ve heard about myself is that I’m so stable, so focused, so achievement-oriented, so accomplished (I’m only twenty-one!) that my peers find me kind of dull, and I guess that’s probably true: from the outside I may well appear to be quite boring.”

Berman nodded his head and turned a page of the questionnaire.

“Well, Steve, you certainly seem like the right material for the experiment.”

“The right genetic material?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. I wouldn’t venture to make any assessment of that, although you’re obviously a very healthy young man. Your blood test came back and it’s fine.”

“That’s great. I wouldn’t have applied to become part of the study if I didn’t think it was right for me.  I knew when I read the preliminary description of the experiment that this kind of thing wasn’t right for everyone. I mean, some of my friends...”

“Yes, Steve, you’re right about that, which is why we are so scrupulous about the initial screening and why I prefer to meet with the candidates myself before giving the go ahead. As you may know, the clinic leads the nation in panic research, and we take great care to preserve our reputation. One way I have—we have—done that is by subjecting all our specim, er, our subjects, to very careful scrutiny before we proceed.”

“Well, I just want to let you know, Dr. Berman, that I feel very comfortable in this kind of a context. I’m certainly perfectly fine with deferring to your professional judgment on my fitness for the trials. I don’t even need the money, so my girlfriend thinks it’s sort of strange that I would even want to participate in an experiment like this, because— between my generous fellowship and my teaching assistantship and my savings from tutoring undergraduates—I’m well set up financially, all the way to the end of the doctorate. I must admit, though, that when I read the preliminary literature that was given to us after the first screening, my curiosity was piqued.”

“Hm. Yes. I see your doctoral research relates to the psychopathology of the first-person narrator in Twentieth-Century American fiction. I suppose your interest in this experiment would probably grow naturally out of your literary studies.”

“Exactly. I think this experience could help me to understand—at least a little—some of the extreme mental states I see represented in the fictional works I study.”

“Well, perhaps it will. It would be particularly gratifying to us if your experience here could redound to your benefit beyond the parameters of the experiment. Aside from the honorarium, of course, which is quite generous...”

“Well, I do want to make clear that I am not here for the money, Dr. Berman. I mean, I won’t be handing the check back to the clinic after the experiment is over, but really the money would just be extra on top of everything else. I’m thinking of taking my girlfriend to Montreal for her birthday. It’ll be a little holiday thing—on top of all the other holidays we already take, that is.”

“Well, I think you are going to be fine, Steve. In a way, you are exactly what we’re looking for. Especially when we’re drawing off a pool comprised predominantly of student applicants—as I’m sure you already know—we’re often dealing with young people who are already under a considerable degree of academic stress. We need to be careful. We wouldn’t ever want to push anyone over the ledge, the, er, edge, so to speak. Steve, I’m going to leave you alone with some literature to read. These are first-person accounts of past participants in the study that relate to their experiences here in the panic lab. You may find some of the testimonials a bit raw, but we like to prepare people for what they are getting into. I just want to emphasize that, while the conditions for the experiment are extremely carefully controlled, what the testimonials describe are purely the subjective internal experiences of the subjects. If you give your consent after perusing the testimonials, I’m going to give my go ahead as head of the clinic, and we can set you up for a session next Tuesday. I’ll just leave you with this, and I’ll be back in thirty minutes. Some people do back out after reading the testimonials, so this is necessarily a standard procedure for us here at the clinic.”

Dr. Berman handed me the folder of photocopied testimonials and left the room. I sank back into the comfortable chair and read the accounts.

2

3

“I can tell by reading these,” I said to Dr. Berman when he came back into the room and asked me what I thought, “that I have—perhaps to a greater degree than some of the past participants—what it takes to go through this experiment and keep everything in perspective.”

“Well, that’s good, Steve. You know, some of our prospective participants read those testimonials and find them somewhat disturbing. This reading material is a sort of final preliminary test we give people, a chance to think clearly about what, for many—let’s be frank about this—could become a disquieting, albeit localized, experience.”

“Well, I can honestly say that what people wrote was pretty much what I expected. You’re the expert, obviously, a leading scholar in this field, but in my own modest way I’ve read quite widely in psychiatric literature—I had to—as background research for my dissertation project. It was interesting to read these personal accounts because I’m used to reading more literary accounts of psychic disturbance, and some of the patients—as difficult as it must have been—did a pretty good job of putting their reactions into words.”

“Okay, then. Let me just tell you a little bit about the physical side of the experiment, and then I’ll put you in a slot for next Tuesday. The test itself takes four hours, but you probably won’t be able to get much work done for a day or two afterwards. Your, er, system will be a little bit fatigued. Just be sure to eat well and get lots of rest in the few days before and after the session.”

“No problem.”

“Okay. The experiment is quite simple. This is what will happen. You’ll be strapped to a gurney—just as a precaution, to prevent you doing any harm either to yourself or the staff while you are under the influence of the medication. One of my assistants will attach an IV that will administer the panic attack medication. We use an IV because it is the best way to get the medication into your system and quickly achieve the requisite levels of metabolization. Essentially, what we do is this: we give you a medication that will induce a severe panic attack, and then, as the, erm, attack takes it course, we study the results and the symptoms. But what this is really all about, Steve, is the antidote. This is a new pharmaceutical product—I actually designed it myself—that is intended to block the action of the neurotransmitters responsible for initiating the attack in the first place. You see, the only way that we can develop a medication that will help people suffering from these devastating attacks is to create the attacks themselves under controlled conditions and then use the antidote and study the effects of the antidote during the time when the attacks are happening. This study is designed to find a fast-acting medication that can be given to panic attack victims and relieve their symptoms. By participating in the study, you will be doing your own small part in bringing relief to millions of suffering people.”

“Hm. So I’d be like a Christ figure?”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“Right. More of a guinea pig?”

“Erm, I wouldn’t say that, either. Let’s just say that you will be contributing to the progress of science. In a small way, of course. This research is actually very important to pharmaceutical companies, which are anxious to market a drug that can bring an end to the psychological phenomenon of spontaneous catastrophic panic attacks. That’s one reason we can afford to pay you such a generous honorarium.”

“That makes sense, although like I said before, it isn’t the money that I’m doing this for—my curiosity has got the better of me here. I simply want to know what it’s like.”

“Yes, I see that. Well, I want to reassure you that there will be a physician and medical staff in the room at all times, just in case, erm, something ah...”

“Goes wrong?”

“No, no no. Nothing should go wrong. This is a precaution we take in case there is any adverse reaction on the part of participants—I mean adverse beyond the expected parameters associated with an induced panic attack, that is. We do what we can—with the blood test and medical history checks—to ensure that everything goes, not smoothly exactly, but in accordance with reasonable expectations. Frankly speaking, however, the precise effects of the medication we use to induce the panic attacks tend to be subject-specific, as you no doubt noticed in your reading of the testimonials.”

“Yes, I did notice that.”

“And we like to have medical staff there in the room in case you, erm, manage to work yourself free of the restraints or—and this would be an absolute worst-case scenario, one we do not expect to happen—if you somehow manage to harm yourself.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t imagine that happens very often.”

“Very infrequently, very infrequently. I should tell you, however, Steve, that we did have one, erm, unfortunate incident in a past trial.”

“Well, Dr. Berman, I’m sure these things happen. I’m sure the clinical staff are quite capable of keeping things under control.”

“Yes, in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are, but it is, erm, my, ah, professional obligation, my ethical and legal obligation, to inform you—with full disclosure—that, unfortunately, one of our subjects did manage to, erm, harm himself.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it was most unfortunate. To be honest, he would probably have harmed himself sooner or later anyway, but this particular subject did manage to trick the staff into believing that the antidote had already taken effect before it really had. Again, the action of the antidote—like that of the medication that induces the attack—is quite subject-specific. It works more quickly with some subjects than others. Sometimes, (though rarely),  a second dose of the antidote is necessary. And so, erm, as soon as the subject was unstrapped and had all his restraints removed, he rushed over to the window and put his, put his erm, head through it.”

“Was the window open?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Jeezus!”

“Yes, it was a deeply disturbing episode.”

“He didn’t er...he didn’t...”

“No no no no no! He didn’t die. But he told us later that he was trying to decapitate himself by running his neck along the jagged edge of the broken glass. However, I’m happy to report that the clinic was able to get a top plastic surgeon—one of the best in the country—to help rehabilitate the subject in terms of his self-inflicted wounds. And I will say also that, if you saw this person today, you would have to look at his neck very closely indeed in order to discover that anything amiss had ever happened.”

“Well, I’m very glad to hear that. I’m sure that must have been a quite anomalous development in the big picture of the study. I’m sure it probably won’t happen again.”

“We do everything in our power and bring all our expertise to bear on ensuring that it does not happen again, Steve. And I’m very glad to say that—aside from a few other relatively minor incidents—it never has, at least not in such a dramatic way.”

“Hm. Well, as I said, I’m sure I won’t be one of those people who have a bad reaction like that. I have such confidence in my own unshakeable stability that I am sure something of this kind will not happen to me. I appreciate your frank and honest disclosure, Dr. Berman. It has only reinforced my trust and faith in the professionalism of your staff and of your medical ethics in general.”

“I appreciate that, Steve. I can assure you that, in terms of ethics, the clinic and the staff, including myself, of course, adhere to the very strictest code of medical ethics in this entire field of research. I just wanted to be frank in letting you know that there is a very slight potential for unforeseen complications as a result of the experiment. This is why it is extremely important for you to be forthcoming about any underlying psychological problems you may have had in the past. I know the temptation is there with students—because of the large honorarium—to perhaps fib a little, but I just want to stress that being honest on the questionnaire and in your discussions with me is of the utmost importance—both for you yourself and, of course, the, uh, clinic. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, some people think that they can somehow trick the experiment, but the truth is that they only end up by tricking themselves.”

“No problem there, Dr. Berman. I wouldn’t recommend this experiment for everyone, I can tell you that! And I wouldn’t even think of doing it myself if I didn’t have the greatest confidence in my ability to keep things under control and to avoid the pitfalls of being dishonest with you or with myself.”

Dr. Berman penciled me into his timetable and showed me out of the office to the reception area, where he had me sign—in ink—a legal consent form and several complicated medical waivers. I tucked the appointment card into my wallet and left.

4

My girlfriend confronted me three days later. We had just finished breakfast, and she was getting ready to head out to class.

“Steve, have you been stressed out about anything lately?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, you’ve been screaming in your sleep.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Like, blood-curdling screams. I can’t believe you don’t remember. I have to practically pick you up and slam you down onto the bed to snap you out of it. Then you just sob yourself back to sleep. Three days now it’s happened.”

“Do I say anything?”

“All kinds of weird shit. Last night you were going on about HIV or something. I don’t hear it all, because by the time you wake me up you’ve already been at it for a while. First, it gets into my dreams. Last night I dreamed I was on that pod thing at the top of the CN Tower? I was reaching down to grab your hand to prevent you from falling. Christ, you were yelling! It was horrible, but before you fell off the tower I woke up, and there you were next to me, screaming bloody murder. When I tried to wake you up, you freaked out even more. Look at this...”

She rolled up a sleeve and showed me a bruise.

“Jeezus!”

“Yah. It’s like wrestling an octopus just to get you to wake up. It’s as if you think I’m going to kill you or something. On the one hand, you’re screaming for help; on the other, you’re terrified of being woken up.”

“Whoa, Jeezus! I’m sorry! I had no idea!”

“Three nights it’s been now. When it starts giving me nightmares of my own, that’s where I draw the line. Are you sure everything is okay with you?”

“Yeah, totally. I’m doing great in my program. The diss is coming along nicely. I’ll have my fourth chapter in by the end of the month. I’m in the zone. No money worries, nothing.”

“There’s nothing in your life that’s stressing you out that I don’t know about?”

“Nope. Nothing at all.”

“I was beginning to think you might be getting those panic attacks again, the ones you got after you failed your comprehensive exams the third time...”

“No no no: that’s way behind me now.”

“Then there was that paranoid episode you had at System Soundbar.”

“I think that was just because it was too crowded in the club.”

“Well, we can’t go back there, that’s for sure. Rick said you freaked out the bouncers.”

“Hm. I guess so, but Sweetie—nothing is wrong! I’m not stressed out about anything!”

“You aren’t involved in anything I don’t know about, right? Look—don’t be angry—you haven’t been going to Niagara and gambling again, have you?”

“No no no—of course not. God, I haven’t been down there for ages. What could be giving me nightmares? Well, I guess it could be some of the twisted narrators I’ve been reading. I mean, Rojack and Tarden—those guys are pretty twisted up.”

“Hm. I guess so. They didn’t seem to give you nightmares in the past, but maybe it’s the repeated readings. You don’t have any more money worries, right?”

“No. None. Nada.”

“You haven’t spent the thousand I gave you for our Montreal trip, have you?”

“Of course not! It’s sitting right there in the bank.”

“Only two weeks to go! I’m looking forward to that—I need a break!”

“For sure you do. Come to think of it, maybe that’s where my nightmares are coming from. You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. Your schedule has been tough this term. You’ve been stressed out a lot. Maybe I pick it up from you subliminally? Some kind of sympathetic response? I absorb it, repress it, and then it comes out in my sleep!”

“Wait. I’m stressed out, so you end up screaming in your sleep? It sounds like a scene in a Woody Allen movie.”

“Hm. Well, it’s some sort of anomaly, that’s for sure. Maybe something I’ve been eating has been giving me the nightmares? Like those spicy Korean instant noodles?”

“They are spicy, but I’ve been eating them, and I’ve not been having nightmares.”

“But you said you’d been having nightmares of your own.”

“Yeah, but they’re nightmares that come from your nightmares.”

“You can say that, but it’s probably not that simple.”

“Right! I can see this coming—I’ve got it back-to-front: I think your nightmares are giving me nightmares, but it’s really my nightmares that are creating yours!”

“It could happen that way... .”

“Right, Steve! Turn this whole thing on its head! You’re pretty good at that!”

“Oh, gimme a break! This is all probably happening because you’re going through a stressful stretch with your studies and your workload. Maybe, in some subterranean way, it transfers into my subconscious from your subconscious, without you ever intending anything like that to happen.”

“Ja, ja. Okay. Whatever. I just thought I’d ask. I’ve been worried about you.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. I think all of this stuff will disappear once you have finished your exams.”

“Well, that’s part of the problem, Steve. I can’t have you screaming through the night until the end of term, just because I’m so stressed out that I stress you out enough that you turn right around and stress me out all over again. That sounds like a slippery reflexive slope to me. Maybe an infinite regression. But at the end of the day, I need my sleep, all of it, if I’m gonna get through all the assignments I’ve gotta complete before we go to Montreal.”

“Okay. Tell you what. While you’re out, I’ll try to figure out what’s going on with me, in case there’s anything I missed or whatever. I’ll look inside myself and let you know what I discover when you come home. I’m sure it’s just those noodles.”

Off she went to class and that was the end of that.

I managed to talk myself into sleeping peacefully for the following two nights, and this little problem didn’t come up again, but then—with my appointment just two days away—I woke up ranting and raving again. Mel got up and turned on all the lights.

“Look, Steve! Something’s going on, okay?! I’ve never seen you like this. You act like you’ve gone to bed in fear of your life or something. Am I really stressing you out that much? I thought I was doing a good job of keeping stuff under control.”

“You are, Mel, you are! Jeez! I dunno. Maybe it’s all those murder shows I watch on A&E. They’re pretty grizzly.”

“I don’t think so. You’ve been watching those things ever since I’ve known you. Four years Mister Insatiable Appetite for Death and Destruction here’s been glued to the screen for that stuff. Why would you suddenly start having nightmares about it now?”

“Maybe it’s a cumulative thing!”

“Oh, come on, Steve! Something’s going on with you! I swear! What is it that’s stressing you out so much? You’re not seeing anyone else, are you?”

“No no no! Of course not!”

“I can’t help thinking these outbursts must have something to do with something you’re not telling me about. That weirdo hasn’t been bothering you, has he?”

“What? Gary? No, I haven’t seen him for ages. There’s a restraining order on him. He comes within thirty yards of me, he goes to the clink. Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make an appointment to see Dr. Llewellyn next Tuesday. Next Wednesday, I mean. I’ll see if I can find out something by chatting with him. I saw the guy three times a week for two years. He knows everything about me and my disturbed past. He’ll figure out what my nightmares are about. It’s probably just some residual stuff left over from my 2CB addiction in Ann Arbor.”

“What Ann Arbor 2CB addiction? You told me you only tried that stuff once!”

“Once, a couple of times. I dunno. That stuff was pretty potent anyway. Maybe my nightmares are some sort of somnolent flashback.”

“Jeezus, Steve! I know you’re bullshitting me when you start throwing all this bogus jargon at me. Maybe you should stop telling your students about the iceberg effect in Hemingway and start applying it to yourself! Man, oh Man! Sometimes I wonder how much of yourself is lumbering along in shadowy silence.”

“Nice conflation, Mel! Thanks for the Thomas Hardy allusion!”

“Who’s doing the conflating here? Sometimes my boyfriend’s just Steve Jenks, and other times it’s like I’m living with the Steve Jenks Muppett Show, you know?”

“Come on, Mel! Don’t gimme that Muppet shit! What’s next, Mickey Sabbath?”

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry! I don’t have any room for extra stress right now. I’m like two thousand pages behind in my Proust readings, okay? Then I’ve got four other graduate courses, Steve. Four! I can’t spend every night waking up in the middle of an Edgar Allan Poe story!”

“What is this, Mel? Argumentum ad Nortoniensis Anthologium?”

“No, No—I’m just worried about you, that’s all. And at the same time, I haven’t got any room for any more worries than the worries that are already worrying me to death.”

“Okay, okay, Mel. Just don’t worry about me, okay? I’m gonna be fine. I am fine! It’s just a couple of stupid bad dreams. I don’t know what it is. The noodles! Those Nong Sam Noodles! I’m sure of it!”

“Okay. Okay. It’s just kind of spooky, you know. I’m starting to feel fatigued from all these nights of interrupted sleep.”

“I’m sorry! It’s all my fault, even though it’s obviously not my fault! Look. I’ll go see Dr. Llewellyn next week, for sure. I’m sure he’ll make the nightmares go away. Just talking to him about them will probably make them stop.”

“You’ve talked to me about them, and it hasn’t made a scrap of difference. If I’m not mistaken, they’re getting worse...”

“Yeah, but you’re not a licensed shrink.”

“No, but I’ll need a licensed shrink if my boyfriend doesn’t stop screaming his way through every single night. I’m beginning to dread going to sleep myself. I’m gonna end up like Proust—needing a cork-lined room just so I can get some rest.”

I managed to make it through the next night without screaming, and then I had just one more night to go before the big day when all my financial problems would be solved. I decided I’d better keep myself up the day before the experiment. This made a lot of sense because it would mean I would be really fatigued when I went in for the session. The panic medication would have less effect on me because I’d be so sleep-deprived. In addition to this, I knew I wouldn’t wake up screaming during the night if I never went to sleep in the first place. At that point, I had not yet developed a problem with involuntary screaming while I was awake.

5

6

Melanie comes in singing one of her impromptu arias about A pluses and waves her Proust paper at me for a second before she stops short.

“Jeezus Christ, Steve! What happened to you?”

“Oh, I had a bit of a rough day, that’s all.”

“What happened?”

“Got in a fight with some guy down at Union Station.”

“Another fight? How did this happen?”

“Some dude asked me for a smoke. I told him the one I was smoking was my last one and he started screaming at me that I was a liar. Sonofabitch.”

“Jeezus!”

“Yeah. I lost it. I went over and started yelling back at him. But when I called him a loser, he went ballistic and pushed me into a wall.”

“Are you okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

She comes over to check for bruises.

“Nope. I took care of him alright.”

“Shit! What did you do? How did all this end?”

“I knocked him about a bit. Neutralized him. Then he took off running. Got the hell out of there. I’m just a bit frazzled, that’s all.”

“Uh, yeah! Was the guy okay?”

“Yeah, he took off. He wasn’t badly injured or anything. Nobody reported it. A few people saw it from a distance, but there weren’t many people around. Anyway, the main thing is—I got these today!”

I pull the ViaRail tickets to Montreal out of my pocket and hand them to her.

“Wuhoo! Montreal, here we come! Time to get tha hell outta Dodge!”

“Yup! Yes Sirree! I also made reservations at our Sheraton, the one on Rene Levesque? We’ll be there for the entire Mutek Festival, by the way.”

“Nice! But wait a minute—are you sure you didn’t get injured in this fight?”

“Nope. I’m fine. It was just one of those things.”

“You told me you wouldn’t get in any more fights!”

“Look, Mel. The guy attacked me. I just defended myself, okay?”

“Fair enough. As long as the guy and his buddies don’t come looking for you!”

“No worries. The only thing we need to worry about is whether we party at Metropolis or Stereo on Friday and whether we party at Sona or Aria on Saturday.”

“We can figure that out on the way up there! We’re on the night train?”

“Yup!”

“I hope you’re not gonna freak other passengers out with your screaming nightmares, ha ha!”

“No, no. I think maybe this fight thing cured me of those. Sort of an outlet of pent-up emotions, I guess.”

Mel is leery of believing this, but after ten days of me sleeping like a rock for twelve hours, her fears have subsided and we’re walking through the underground PATH system with our backpacks, on our way from the subway to the train station. We’re chattering about the DJ lineups, the necessity of taking an occasional break from school. We practice our Joual, rave about the virtues of Montreal.

As we scurry beneath the vaulted ceiling of Union Station, we are joking about what we’d be willing to do to have another go at experiencing the night life in Quebec. It isn’t hard coming up with hyperboles.

No price is too high to pay for a week of partying in Montreal.