You take your car to work, I’ll take my board

It’s been a wild weekend. Some highlights:

Friday afternoon, I proved to Julian that I’m only good at shuffleboard when I’m playing against him. We played doubles against a couple of strangers, and he narrowly saved our asses from my incompetence. Then, when we played against each other again, I whooped him by a twelve-point margin. He declined a rematch.

Friday night Marta, Chris Baker, Julian, Laurel and I went night swimming at the arboretum. The sun had set about a half hour before, so I was hesitant to jump off the bridge – the last time I had tried to do so in similar light levels, I hit the water face-first with my eyes open, making my eyeballs feel like they were floating around in four times as much fluid as they strictly needed; it wasn’t pleasant. Neither Chris nor Marta had ever jumped before, which only added to my fears, but I thought of something Chris had said earlier, as I picked him up from his apartment in Kelly’s Volvo. I had just said something to the effect that we were nerds, and Chris sorely objected. “No way are we nerds, man. Strip away the keyboard and it’s all razorblades and skateboards and shit.” I decided right then and there that I had a new mantra, and the abandoned 520 onramp made a perfect testing ground. I jumped first, since I was the least likely to injure myself and could pull them out if something went horribly awry. The water was completely still and as reflective as the surface of a mirror, throwing back the dark outlines of trees and making it impossible to judge how far away it was. I closed my eyes halfway down and hoped for the best, and didn’t hurt myself at all. To my surprise, Marta followed shortly after, and Chris came with only a little more deliberation after her jump. To both of them I give the highest order of props: they’d never jumped before, yet did so when I, an old hand at the bridge game, had qualms. Chris must have brass balls the size of casaba melons; I’d say the same for Marta, but won’t in deference to her sex.

After bridge jumping we met up with Alison at a truly enormous house party on 8th Street. It was great to see her after a summer of absence, but after we’d caught up a little I wanted to get the hell out of there. That the cops hadn’t come yet was a miracle in itself, and that no one had gotten beaten up or killed was nothing short of amazing. The crowd overflowed into the street, and they were right out of a “Too Hot for TV” episode of Springer – as Alison and I talked on the sidewalk, no fewer than three guys relieved themselves within spitting distance, and earlier, still a block away from the party, we witnessed what can only be described as a Springer-esque exchange between a very ghetto couple (“You still owe me money, bitch!” “I don’t owe you any fucking money, you asshole!”). We left quickly.

Marta and I slept on the flat roof of Half-Price Books with Julian, behind whose house is a tall ladder granting access. We slept great, but woke at 5:30 and stumbled back to our beds.

Saturday Marta and I took a trip to Costco. I always buy more things than I have space for in my freezer, and I always fail to learn from the mistake. This time was no exception, and I am now so well-stocked with Eggo waffles that I salivate at their mere mention � see, there I go. Marta has an almost supernatural knack for finding sample tables, those holy islands of snacking goodness attended by old women in clear plastic hair nets, and we took advantage. Cheesecake, roasted chicken, Odwala beverages, it was all ours, albeit in very small portions. Somehow we left part of her car in the parking lot, and were amazed that it was still there when we returned for it five hours later.

Sunday I went surfing at Westport. I still can’t feel my hands – it’s not painful, it just feels like the limbs are asleep. The sunburn, on the other hand, is very painful. I had forgotten, for probably the fifth time in my life, how badly one can get sunburned under a cloud cover. My nose erupted in a thousand tiny bubbles of agony, and I had to call in sick this morning so that I could lie in the dark, smearing aloe on my wounds and moaning. I’ll survive. The highlight of the drive home came at a gas station in Hoquiam: the femullet, the rarest of all mullet sightings, yelled at her children from the front seat of her baby-blue Buick Skylark. The best part: affixed to the side window was a decal shaped like a speech bubble reading: “Bad girls… need a good Licking!” I shit you not.

I told the tale of that day in the third person to get some practice doing so. The prose still reeks of my voice and personality, but at least I don’t say “I” in every sentence. It’s a step in the right direction, I’d say.

Posted in Musings.