Merlot is a girls best friend!

It wasn’t a date. At least not to Gaylor. But so it seemed to be imagined by a burly bear-like creature blocking her crossing of borders from one side of town, to another. An unavoidable falling domino on a dark trail through undetected pungency of a packs' marked stamping ground.

He was the only person in a hotel right at the railway crossing. Going around it to cross the tracks, would be unlikely. Gaylor reflects on how she'd needed a drink, badly. Trekking with nothing but backpack and video camera from two blocks away, where she had been crashing with some friends on a sunny, happy hippy street until that night. Maybe it was around 10 pm, and the household matriarch, a still partying hard 40-something with a 30 year old boyfriend, and a 17 year old son who in turn had a 30 year old girlfriend - abruptly told her to leave.

"You have to go!" Christina screamed at Gaylor, kicked back in a beanbag after a bong. Stunned, she saw her face then crumbling, adding weakly, "Moon has overdosed. You have to get out of the way." Gaylor didn't have time to ask if that meant - what, did Moon just die? Or was she resuscitated? Gaylor didn't take herion just as Christina didn't either, at least not visibly - like her son living in the apartment under this sprawling open house did, with Moon. It was difficult to understand Christina allowing her 17 year old son to take heavy drugs, yet possible she didn't know until that moment. These are not the sort of things she thought about at the time though. A death of someone she only met vaguely, but cared about as a part of a bigger, hippy town family, was on the cards. Staggering off, remote from her body, all her usual self-awareness and instincts were disconnected.

In this shocked state, Gaylor somehow went from this house to another, a few doors along. People there were the hands to guide her floating body on until she would catch up with it again, sometime. “You should just go to Tipi Town!” they directed her to a pay by donation tipi village, inhabited by the usual alternative characters and travelers, but also in the mix were some of the dodgiest types - predators looking for anything, even rumors of date rapists, for some reason who are entrenched in any area.

At the bar, bear beckons Gaylor straight away. She has had a bad night but she has already left it behind. But then she’s nowhere. And young, too naive and friendly even for a 19 year old. The perfect prey.

He sleazily asks her if she wants a drink. Gaylor answers the natural response to a drink offer, an instant "yes!" She should have noticed how his face convoluted, as if it was rare for a woman to acknowledge him.

Perusing the wine list. "What's good?" she asks the bar dude.

"I would go for the Mountain Merlot"

"Ok, go ahead!"

"That's $20!" the bar dude demanded of Grizzly, who replied with "What! Is that a glass or a bottle?!"

He grimaces at the bar dude but glancing at Gaylor, who looks so young, she could have even been underage, grapples with chubby fingers for his cash.

She sips, refilling her soul, restoring some energy, but only a taste of the medicinal elixir is allowed as he growls at her immediately – to offer her speed.

“No thanks, no way. Sorry, look I should go” Gaylor is re-awakening, a suggestion of doing dangerous drugs deters her from any more of the nice wine, despite how provoked by it’s aftertaste, pulling on her tongue.

“Then a joint? My van is just across the road, stacked with weed!” he quickly proffered.

“Ok, you got me! Just a little smoke.” Gaylor thinks this might actually be the right accompaniment to the soft edge of the wine.

Opened up it was like the gaping mouth of a cave. The van is scary, a vintage ambulance that looks like a getaway car, nothing inside except a medical kit full of drugs. Bear passes some weed and papers, demanding she sit down and roll a joint for them. What he’s really trying to do is get her to sit halfway inside the van. From there it could only take a little push. Looming over her already as she was standing, he was almost double her height.

“That’s too much!” Gaylor states as he gives her a handful of tightly woven flora to roll, putting some aside. Springing back up as if a reflex then as she is getting increasingly uncomfortable in his presence. Otherworldly. That strange sensation of somehow stepping out of your own life, somewhere unknown. Danger is confirmed as he spins around to yell at her – “You’re trying to steal all my drugs!” Babble that she was not prepared to stay around and argue over with a bear.

Responding to his false accusation, the next part of his act is grabbing the video camera. Gaylor finds herself in a tug of war. He is clearly too physically powerful. Just as he is about to unzip the camera case, his back to her, she instinctively swings around. Splashing the remainder of her red wine into his face, then loudly smashes the glass down on the road. He screams like a shrunken cub now, wailing for mama bear, dropping the camera in shock, as if unable to comprehend. Does he assume the littler girl can’t possibly escape? Gaylor wastes no time in seizing the camera back, running towards any people.

Thinking she’s safe, what happened next is incomprehensible. Gaylor faces struggling to understand a next, more difficult level.

Stopping to catch her breath, a bouncer outside a venue she lands at asks "What’s going on? Are you ok?" The first thing you would ask a girl, who it turns out has an angry grizzly looking man, in a red-wine soaked white T-shirt, on her trail! Next thing a thudding voiced fat cop approaches. Instead of a "How are you" to a traumatized girl, he states bluntly "This man says you smashed a glass on him and stole $20!".

"That's ridiculous!"

"Oh yes! A witness across the street heard the glass sound!"

Gaylor almost laughs, recalling her quick exit. So, she’s inflicted a wound to the ego of a man who thought he was bigger than her. She tries to say it all aloud...

"A glass I threw on the road…”

What happens to others he lures in to smoke joints with him? She would have wondered then if she'd had the chance, but the cop cuts in…

"You could have hit him! What's in the bag?" Indicates towards her video camera case.

Unzipping the case, her shiny new $2000 video camera was clearly the first thing you could see. In a mesh pocket lining the lid, she has stashed her money, around $80 in various notes and coins.

The cop is deliberately ignoring her camera, demanding to know "What's that?!"

"My money?" There is a visible 50, 20 and 5 $ note through the mesh.

"Is that his $20! You must have stolen it off him! Give it to me!"

He isn't asking. Gaylor is opening the pocket, while trying to answer back, the cop's ears appear blocked as if he's wearing plugs. She continues…"Look, why would I steal $20 off someone when I obviously have other money and a video camera!"

Ignoring her valid point more than once, scaring her eventually with his aggressive tone, he literally steals this $20 note! Grabbing the camera case, bypassing the camera, even the $50 note - he takes out the 20, then storms off.

Caught up in a surreal numbness. Had she imagined this whole evening? Was she even awake?! She’s puzzling over whether she possibly is, attempting unsuccessfully to apply logic. If he'd genuinely thought on behalf of bear that she was a thief, he would have surely claimed the camera too. Did they guess she had the receipt, as it was new?

As he deliberately ignored the camera being pointed out to his face, this was clearly about something else. A mystery that was pushed even harder onto her when she was approached by another officer, months later, who insisted on arresting her for an alleged theft of $20. Gaylor was finger-printed, and given some sort of documentation which included grizzly man's version of meeting her that night in the form of some sort of poem. The stranger who ended up wearing tie-dyed wine, tried to make it sound like a “date”. The documentation included a photocopy of a $20 note! Is any of this common legal practice? It would take Gaylor some time to unravel what these events meant.

Inexplicable police behavior was already topical, but Gaylor was too scared to actually use the camera. It was reserved anyway for her collected adventures. If anyone wondered what was she doing couch-surfing with an expensive camera? Gaylor’s friends were all interesting enough to be filmed. And safe. She hitch-hiked sometimes, ending up in some yet undocumented scenes. Scrapbooking in her mind a road movie concept. Friends who were artists, in bands, or buskers, were all set to gain publicity along the journey.

Wearing black. At Moon’s funeral. Gaylor’s recent experience reverberates. A burden of enlightenment is set - knowing a corrupt system is a possible contributing factor of this death. Unless authorities were doing their job that night, of finding any other young people around town who might have put whatever was injected into her body in theirs, rather than stealing $20 notes off girls who it turns out wouldn't “pay in some other way” for a drink.

Five years later. Gaylor is in a new town now. Happy Hour invites into a café down a quiet alleyway, where she finds pizza and red wine to adorn a red and white checked tablecloth with. Relaxing with the red, she’s warmed inside, a sensual encounter of flavours, delicately spiced. A full bodied merlot! She flicks through a house magazine in this café with her happy hour red, the only companion needed.

Scanning the fashion pages, runway pics, ultra lavishness that can wait another day to be lived, enjoying the moment. Turning a page, one of those real life horror headlines startles her: "12 year old kids paid $20 for sex!" It is accompanied by a subtitle: “High income earners and legal professionals some of the worst offenders.”

Shaking deeply in fear and sorrow, Gaylor reads on. Apparently some of these kids disappear, even later in their lives. Suddenly colder inside, gulping more merlot, thankful for her life.

A recollection struck. That grizzly character. Did he really think he’d snared a $20 date? With a stranger, a young looking girl? It felt to her now, he was just like those creepy predators who took advantage of teenage runaways living on the street that she’s reading about. But how the police involvement? Was there a ring? Or he may have been some sort of dodgy undercover cop, or at the very least, a criminal who pays them for favors. None of these people will ever interest her again. New signs are realized. Power abuse is already a turn off, now clarified with these magazine pages before her. Gaylor realizes right then what her dream date would be, of all those everyday ones she’s ever had. Her dream date would be the man who fights these sort of powers back. Not those grizzlies ignorantly meandering through life, suspected of being part of the underground forces targeting women and kids. But those who oppose corruption. Determined to one day slay it. Like most women would prefer, and I suppose, most single females are lining up for.

Sipping wine, and waiting...