What's Left In My Right Mind

These are the only days I have, so I think I'll take them for all they've got.  More surfing, more carving, more spliffing, more writing.  It's the few and far between days, the empty canvas days.  The clouds come in while I'm sitting stoned at the end of the pier in Venice at the end of Washington.  I don't mind though, or I should say I don't notice because when I look up from the pencil and paper things are suddenly different.  The sun's gone and that nothing wind of before is now pushing onshore.  And when Mike calls, the waves aren't what they'd been when I'd told him to come surf.  But he's still frothing for some water time, so I Round 2 with him at the Breakwater where the tide's high and the peaks are shifty, but whatever, it's fun.  Not bad, but definitely not good.  Regardless, it leaves me starving, so we buy a 20-case of bottled Coors Banquet beer, and we grill up some Polish dogs at chez Mike.

[time for sleep]

I love the days I'm not working.  Days like today when they never seem to end and just stretch on forever.  That morning surf seems now so distant.  Eric's just got off from work and he comes straight over, still in business attire, for some beer, and some dogs and some Laker's basketball in HD.  "You guys feel like going out?" he asks.

"Eh, maybe."

"I don't know mang. I'm pretty beat. And broke."

"Hot tub?"

"Spliff?"

"Both?"

"Ha! Sounds good to me," I say.  "I need a shower anyways, I'm all salty and gross."  So we polish off one last round of beers and roll a spliff in Eric's car and smoke it on the way down to the Marina.  To the Ritz Carlton on Via Marina, but we park a block away by the firehouse and sneak in between the tennis courts by the docks.  Thoroughly stoned.

[time for work]

"Well, this brings me back," I say as we slink into the jacuzzi.

"Right?" Mike turns on the jets before jumping in.  "We used to come here in high school all the time," he tells Eric.  "Man, that was five years ago."

"Damn. Sick, dude. This is a pretty nice little spot."  The jacuzzi itself is bigger than most, probably twice the size of our standard round hot tub back at Pacific Shores Apartments in Santa Cruz, but then again it's the Ritz so it's not so out of place.  Just equally extravagant.  Almost expected.  And the pool... Well, the pool's just amazing.

"How's the pool?" asks Eric.

"Uh, perfect," says Mike and Eric scoffs.

"Seriously though," I say and I hop out and over, down some steps, and to the sprawling T-shaped main pool.  There's steam rising off the surface, and it's just so inviting that I dive in swimmer's style like those days way back when on the high school team.  Fuck, it's been a long time.  A fucking long time indeed.  Forever-feeling in the moment.  And as I rise steady to the surface with a spin so that I'm floating on my back, it's funny to me to think that Mike and I have been sneaking into the Ritz all this time.  It's been so long, and so much has changed, but not this.  Not this leisure escape nestled in the middle of the Marina.  I laugh, looking up, and the tip-tops of the palm trees laugh back from my perif.

80's Night and That E Party

In Santa Cruz, Thursdays meant one thing, especially in the fall when the school year was still young.  Well, maybe make that two things, but they were very closely related.  One, if it was Thursday, that meant it was 80's night at the Blue Lagoon, this seedy dive bar at the sketch end of Pacific Ave past the Catalyst.  And two, if it was Thursday, that meant it was almost Friday so we might as well get lit like a Roman candle off cheap beer and take shots of tequila, competitively, before trying to stumble down to the bars and dancing away the night to 80's nostalgia.  To those classics we all knew and just might have been conceived to.  After Lovefest, that little redhead Monster had joined our ranks for this weekly event because even though she was only eighteen, her fake ID always seemed to work, and she always worked it, no matter how many shots of tequila deep she was.  The salty dogs at King Street lived a mere five minute walk from downtown so we'd always congregate there for the race-drinking, twelve to fifteen of us on any given Thursday in the living room drinking Simpler Times and Red Oval in between shots of Jose Cuervo.  Or Hornitos or Cazadores if we were lucky.  Or Sauza if we were unlucky.  At least we had the wherewithal to always have limes handy for such occasions, such days like Thursdays.

[stop]

Salt too.  It didn't get us any less drunk, it just made it go down easier.  Hell, maybe it even got us more drunk.  But whatever, that was the idea wasn't it?  And it certainly worked.  As soon as 10:30 hit we were all snaking our way across Mission St and down the stairs to downtown, or at least we were trying to.  Maybe more towards 11:00 a lot of times.  Still, we always managed to get there, to Pacific.  Past the Red, past Motiv and the Catalyst and down into that hippy-bin the Blue with it's old, wood bar and pool table.  And in the back there was glass on all the walls of the dance-floor to make place look bigger and swankier.  There was even a tiny stage on the far side.  It wasn't a very high stage or a very deep stage, and we usually found our way towards it before too long because there was just nothing better than being sloppy drunk and movin' and twistin' on a dim-lit stage to old 80's dance tunes.  If you stood in just the right place, the AC would hit you right in the face, right there at the edge where the stage steps down.  And whenever I felt it, I'd close my eyes and throw my arms up, swaying, and shake my head and bounce on the bass with my whole body twisting.  Every limb stretched for joy and all the day's worries and pains faded because the dancing and the friends were too fun, and our choice moves would never waiver and always seemed to attracted the silliest of companions and pretty faces.  We made it a regular thing, and everyone else did too.  Everyone we knew who liked to go for broke and dance drunk with drunk girls up against the glass or spin them under one arm.  Or just dance at one another with silly dance moves we knew looked fly.  Super fly.

Sometimes Monster wore her mother's old onesie with the nylon stirrups and the shoulder-padded denim jacket part that buttoned down half-way.  It was still nice out in the fall so if it got too hot, she'd pull down the denim half and tie the arms tight around her waist and dance in her zebra-striped bra.  She danced hardest.  She didn't always make it all the way though, and one night she didn't, and had to take a piss on the way back while we were all walking so she pulled off her onesie to the ankles and popped a squat in a corner of the civic center entrance and let it go.  Some ten of us stopped and waited for her, and she said in a loud drunk voice, "Hey, we should really do some more drugs someday!  Like the molly kind!"

"Or the acid kind!" I said.

"At the King street!" said Max.

"Down."

"Yup."  And everyone looked at each other with silly, dumb smiles and nodded in agreance, and already from that very moment, there was anticipation building and excitement.

"This Saturday?" Grant threw out.

"Can we get the stuff by Saturday?"

Conor scratched his chin, smiling, and mused, "Oh, that shouldn't be a problem, not a problem at all."

"Epic."  We all jumped and hollered on that side-street Church until a police car slunk by and stopped in front of us while Monster's panties were still down.  She got up quickly and after a short talk with the officer, she was let go, and we all promised to get her home safe.  In the morning she woke up in Matt Swartz's closet bed upstairs at Western and vommed all over his pillow and almost his face.

[stop]

But that's something quickly forgiven and laughed off.  Just never forgotten.  Ever.  It's something that's smilingly remembered forever.  Something like that drug extravaganza, the molly and acid escapade that went down at King Street that weekend.  We got the tabs and the powder Saturday afternoon, picked up some capsules at the Herb Room on Laurel, and poured the two grams of MDMA out on the glass of a framed meshed portrait of Tupac and Prince so BB could cut it up and divide it out into twenty little baby mounds.  Then Minh would scoop them each up with a cut-open straw and capsule them.  They were quite good, probably because they were both science majors so measuring stuff out and scooping with a scupula just came naturally.

The tabs we kept on ice.  And that was to be a Western thing.  Just me and Boom and Conor and Matt Swartz were taking that acid train to lala land.  Everyone else took the molly route, but the trek was all the same.  We all gulped 'em down, the both houses, after a countdown in the King Street living room.

"3... 2... 1..."

"Whelp.  There's no turning back now."

"Oh, boy!"

"I'm excited!"

"This is going to be ridiculous."  We cleared the coffee table out so we had space to dance in front of the television.  The girls blew up balloons and put up streamers and tinsel everywhere, hanging them from the ceiling.

"Oh, pretty," said Dylan in the voiced he used to talk to Lizzie.

Then Grant had an idea.  "Oh!  Wait, I think I have something!"  And he ran up to his room and came back down with a blue light-bulb and a box of glow-sticks.  "It's a blue light," he said holding it up.

"Well, no shit, Sherlock."

He replaced the ceiling light in the living room with it, and the girls adorned it with a crown of tinsel, and when he flipped the switch back on the mood was markedly different.  My eyes felt like they were laying back in lawn chairs.  It was that kind of relaxing light that remained dark and seductive while still illuminating everything.  It was dance floor lighting, and Grant plugged his computer into the television so that his iTunes was playing dirty, electro-dance music through the home theater system and the visualizer was displayed on the big-screen.

"Whoa, Richard!  I'm not even high yet!" Matt got excited and popped open the box of glow-sticks, cracked them, and threw them all into the air yelling, "Here you go you fuckin' Richards!"

It was raining glow-sticks, and we all grabbed some and made ourselves crowns and tiaras and wristbands and elaborate necklaces of glowing green and yellow and blue and purple and pink wonder.  "Is anyone feeling a little funny?" I asked.

"Hmm."  There was a ponderance throughout the crowd, and everyone sat for a second, thinking inwardly.  "Not yet," came one answer.

"I don't think so..."

"Wait!  No..."

Maybe I was just farting in the wind at that point.  Maybe it was just the expectation of what was to come.  But we needn't have worried, because come it definitely did.  Like a goddamn thunderstorm.  Like the money shot at the end, and in the next ten minutes we'd all lost our minds.  Not quite departed from reality, but certainly free and forgetful of its stresses.  Everything that mattered was immediate and in the present, not the week past, nor the week approaching.  We were just prancing that acid-molly hippy dance, the twenty of us in the living room, frolicking through the tinsel and massaging the balloons, kicking them up off the ground.  It was a mind-racing riot in the blue light, and TV screen kept melting and swirling in some vortex abyss of rainbowed colors.  It was wild and overwhelming, but we all kept each other grounded and laughing uncontrollably, especially us acid kids.  And thank god for that, because that's something not too difficult to loose yourself in when you're all alone.  It's easy to the untrained mind when the feeling's still foreign.

I was getting the grip of it though, and the lights from the glow sticks streaked through my dilated eyes as we danced.  Others began to trickle in as the hour crept closer to midnight, friends who had gotten the memo.  They joined our wild rumpus and meshed seamlessly, so that the group was just one dancing entity that kept growing bigger and bigger as the night progressed.  Spliffs and blunts and beers, and Carnivale-esque masks and face paint came out of nowhere, and we reveled in everything, high and excited and in love the lives we were living and every friend around us.  Time didn't stop or slow down so much as to just didn't matter anymore, and that night went on forever until it was over, and we were all laying in a dazed, face-painted heap on the living room floor, smoking spliffs and rubbing each other.  Monster was in awe, with her shirt off, dragging her fingers back and forth from bra to waistline.  Dillon was still up dancing because, well, as he put it, "I can't stop, not now.  Just a few more songs."

They were all slow songs at that point, but he just kept rage dancing with that one-two step and his arms moving and his eyes bugging out of his head.  He might've gone a little overboard.  Not seriously, but in that silly way where he was sucking down water and beer like breast-milk mid-dance.  And me?  Why, I think I hit it right on the head, and I just laid there on my back with my eyes closed behind my sunglasses, smiling as BB ran her hand through my hair on repeat, as she did with Grant's.  Sleep had lost it's way though, and wasn't even close yet.

Paris: Alors en Danse

Marie-Chiara Tort.  For better or for worst, I don't really know if it matters, but I think.  She's always close to mind when talk of Paris arises.  Her and her sister share the apartment were staying at in the Ninth Arrondissement.   The Siene and the center of the city are at a distant walk's distance away so every day we not so reluctantly utilize one of the most important skill-sets we've picked up in our travels; that shadowy art of sliding through metro ticket gates after couples, whole families, businessmen, fiddlers and the such.  And then there's the quite intangible ability to accurately navigate across the city on the Underground.  It's a talent that comes and goes depending sometimes on Blood Alcohol Content.  We're sober professionals by now, impressive in my eyes especially with things like Los Angeles childhoods to consider, connecting meager bus routes from school to get home before dark.


So we all remotely stimulate the senses and the imagination.  Exactly.  Opera Houses and the likes are sprinkled here and there with gold statuettes and bold french lettering.  It's a city that flaunted its lavish architectural beauty.  Everything has the feeling of eighteenth century royal etiquette.  It probably has something to do with all the museums being old palaces and all the parks, palace gardens; luxurious and decadent in every regard.  And then there's the old men playing backgammon and puffing at their tobacco pipes under the patio in the tree groves.  And when the patches of summer showers find us, we duck under as well, engaging in heated battles of competition over cards in games of hearts to a hundred.  Leaning back in the heavy metal chairs, laying down hard Q's, that spaded Queen, with heaving breasts and pubic hair and a perm splayed across the card-face that suggested an early 90's photoshoot.  The cards are from a cliched little novelty shop across from the Moulin Rouge.  They sell humping stick-figure key-chains and penis mints and cards with naked girls on them, and they thankfully make our games of hearts infinitely more interesting.


The old men don't seem to mind, or care for that matter.  We're high on skunk Barcelona snicklefritz and Lucky Strikes and we speak loud English and laugh a lot.  "Les Stupid Americanes."


But at the bars, we're with Marie Chiara and her equally French sister, and they both know exactly how guys like girls' bodies to move, and exactly what kind of clothes those bodies should move in.  After all, they were French, and Marie-Chiara just so happened to have a giggly excited obsession with a particular female pornstar, Sasha Grey.

Quote of the Day: I Only Dream When I'm Sober

"Dreams are the touchstones of our character."


~Henry David Thoreau

EDC

It was late June, and we were graduates.  Finally.  We were still living in Santa Cruz, the few that were left.  Conor was living with a girl in a guest house down in Laguna.  She was a friend of Matty's from high school.  And Matty was on his way to Chile for some adventuring.  Dylan and Kameron had both moved to the city recently.  San Francisco living and working on salary or commission or both.  Grant and BB were inseparable.  So were Monster and Max until Monst went off on her own three week mother-daughter trip to Switzerland.  She'd be over there when we were for a little, but we wouldn't be able to see her.  Callan was in Africa at the World Cup, and then she'd be volunteering over there somewhere.  Mike had broken up with Kathleen.  Those precious rest of us were just living, some waiting for summer session, some waiting for a plane.

But in the meantime, why not another rave?  "All right, who's coming?" asked Mike.  He was still bummed because he didn't get to go to Coachella.

"I'm in, I guess," said Max.  I was too.  We already had our plane tickets to London locked down, and I'd been saving up, and I wanted to celebrate.  We all did.  Except BB and Grant whose relationship was a celebration within itself.  So Max, Mike, Boom, and I, along with the girls from the Bay Street house bought our tickets to the Electric Daisy Carnival.  And in no time we were there.

Saturday afternoon at the Coliseum downtown.  Jeans and flip-flops and a tank top.  And of course, my white sunnies.  Max brought a box of glow-sticks for good measure, and we make glow-stick bracelets and crowns to be safe.  We weren't on the floor that time, but in the rafters, midway up the collossal stadium seating steps.    It wasn't empty, not in the least.  But we had space to dance between the seats as the molly kicked in and the sun went down.  As it got dark, the stage came to life.  It was a monster of a thing that stretched across an entire end of the field, with towers of light six or seven stories high, flooding the crowd below.   And the colors played off the bowl of the Coliseum as well and the whole place was alight like a fire-pit as Laidback Luke and Benny Benassi killed it.  My eyes trained to the light as moths do, the side of my face rubbed up Sara's white fur vest.  And my hands crept up her hips to her bare back, and she slid in close.  We danced with each other and took ecstasy until our touching was the best thing imaginable.  We didn't move from that spot the entire night.  It was perfect.  A heat rose off the mass of people at the bottom of the cauldron and mixed with the light winds and the smoke from the smoke machines above a sea of single neon lights swaying in rhythm.  Trips to the bathroom became adventures back through a haze with refilled water-bottles.  Curious cases and pretty faces, I stopped to dance with them all, and maybe got a light-show or a kiss.  One girl gave me a beaded bracelet over our clasped hands.  Her glasses looked silly.

"What kind of glasses are those?" I asked.

"They're 3D."

"Ooo.  Tradesies for a little bit?"

"Oh, you have to try them.  Are you rolling?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Haha!  Here you go," she said.  "I'm on acid."

Ok, I thought to myself and I tried them on.  "Oh my God!"  I exclaim and take them off.  Then I put them back on.  It was incredible.  The glasses acted like a prism and all the light from the stage refracted into all the colors of the rainbow a hundred times a second.  Right before my eyes.  "You're on acid?" I asked her seriously.

"Mmm-hmm."  She said it slow and smiley smooth, and I handed her glasses back.

"You're incredible.  You're electric," I said and went to find the group of glow-sticks in the distance that looked familiar, back to my little blonde dance queen.  Armin van Buren closed it down with bright flames and fireworks at the end, and we all walked back to the cars in a daze, waited two hours to get out of a lot, then drove caravan down to Mike's boat in the Marina and all pasted out in heaps on top of one another in the tiny cabins.

"We're going to Europe soon," Max whispered.

"Fuckin' right we are," I said.

"Hey, me too!" wined Mike.

"In due time."  And the girls laughed.

Tahoe

It was the early winter, towards the end of January, but not quite February.  The week before MLK day weekend.  "So we've got a lot of beer and the Tahoe cabin's free," said Taylor.

"How free?" said we.

"It's open and empty and ready for raging and I have the key is what I mean," he said.

"Oh.  Well, then," said Max.  "What are we waiting for?"

"The weekend, obvi."  So we waited and the weekend came, and we took the earliest Explorer Sport out of Dodge on a Friday morn.  Not all of us, mind you.  We were staggered, caravaning in a trio of cars, no one actually following anyone else, just all racing down the same highway, early to the mountains.  Super early.  6:30 early.  Before breakfast, and when that breakfast burn came a-burning, we pulled over at the first Denny's we spotted in one of those tiny bustlers between the City and Sacramento.  Of course we were high, but not too high though; just a spliff's worth between three friends while BB drove.  Maybe four, but when we all went in, we were one shy and it was the long haired fellow, Matt from King Street that strayed behind.

"He says he's just a little sleepy," Grant told us when he caught up to us walking in.  "He's coming in a couple minutes."  But that's what they all say.  We were seated and had ordered and Matt still hadn't come out.  "Just get him some pancakes."

"And an OJ," said BB.

"And some tampons," said Mike.

"Ok, but wait.  I think there's something I can do," I said, and so I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys.  We were in a booth by the window overlooking the parking lot.  Grant and BB and Mike all looked at the keys and then out at the car instinctively.  Then I hit the panic button.  We could barely hear it through the windows, but still, it had to be a little loud because everyone else in Denny's just barely heard it too, and looking out at the car it was clear that Matt had heard it as well.  Except more so because he propped up like a springboard in the back seat looking thoroughly confused and bed-woken.  So I stopped.  But he collapsed back onto the seat that second, so I popped it again, and he sprung back up, and an elderly couple out to morning breakfast walked by, looking at the car queerly.  It just kept going and going until he got out, and he walked the walk of shame past the window with all us laughing, and past the hostess to our table.

"Good morning sunshine," said I.

He looked pissed, and at the same time like he was trying hard not to laugh.  Strong-jawed and purse-lipped, with tired, witty defeat in his eyes.  "Grr.  Morning," he murmured as he sat down.

"I hope you like pancakes."  said Grant, and he did.  And we had a good morning of it on the highway to Tahoe.  It was a dance jams and coffee affair, much to Matty's chagrin, which was understandable.  He'd had a long night the night before delivering pizzas.  But his chagrin was short-lived and by the time we reached the Tahoe city limits, he was awake and a-groovin' and butt-grinding in the back seat with the best of us.  Thank God, because when we got to the cabin finally, Taylor and his car had already arrived and were waiting for us on the porch, snowballs in hand, and we needed all the boots we had on the line.

It was a hard, snow-hucking battle to the door.  The path was icy slick, and the air was thinner at that high altitude so we were all huffin' and puffin' over the threshold, shaking the flakes off.  Taylor's cabin was cozy with a pair of bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs and a bed in the loft upstairs.  And the couch in the living room pulled out into a bed as well, which was handy because there was a gaggle of us, all the King St. house and me and BB and Taylor's freshman girlfriend.  Yeah, she was a freshman, but she socialized at a carefree senior level, and we all loved her.

The kitchen was on the smaller end of the spectrum as far as kitchens go.  It fit with the rest of the place though, cozy, and it didn't really matter either.  The only thing we cooked up was batches of hot cider with brandy and cinnamon sticks and little cloves in it.  We cooked up the first batch first thing, as soon as our bags were inside, because fuck, it was freezing and hot brandy cider just so happens to be the perfect cure for the frigids.  No need to find a super market, we brought all the supplies from Santa Cruz.  All the unfiltered cider, the two handles of E & J Brandy, a thing of cinnamon sticks, a thing of cloves, and, lest we forget, three bake trays of super strong pot brownies.  Brown-highs we called them, and we delved into those too around that time.

"Ok dudes, so get this," said Taylor, cracking a beer (his dad was in the beverage industry and an associate of his had kicked us a couple proper cases of Budweiser by the bottle).  "Our next door neighbor here has a bar in town called  the Tudor Pub and said he'd give us a sick deal on drinks tonight if we come in."

"Which neighbor?" asked Grant.

"Uhmm, the one on that side," said Tay pointing to the left.

"They got food there?" I asked.

"Yeah, dude.  It's bomb."

"Huh.  That sounds good enough for me."  And so it was for all of us.  So we drank hot cider when we were cold and ate pot brown-highs when we were hungry and before the sun went down we romped around outside making snowmen and snow-women and subsequently raping them, with no heed to gender.  And they just stood there and took it.  Like drunkenly erected snow bitches.

Such fun never lasts though, at least never at the same rate anyways.  When the sun passed over the horizon and the sky darkened, the inevitable dinner stomach grumbles came to.  None of us were in any condition to drive though, so we called a pair of cabs to come pick us up and take us to Tudor's.  A bunch of friend-girls from Santa Cruz were up in Tahoe too, and we told them to meet us there.  And meet up we did.  We crashed into them at the bar, upstairs, like pints in a "cheers", beer splashing everywhere.  Dinner was quick to get more drinking in at the long booth table that fit the lot of us, all twelve or so heads.  It was beers by the pitcher-full, by the three at a time.  Not after too long the simple drinking had devolved into drunken drinking games, into hockey and quarters, into never-have-I-ever,  and into King's Cup, and all at the same time because the table was so enormous and we couldn't all play with one another.  The girls with us were the girls, the same girls, the one's that were always there.  They'd come to King Street on Halloween and whenever there was a party they'd always show up.  A bunch of like minds and pretty faces who just liked to get high and drink as much as we did.  Super pretty, the whole litter.  Maybe it was the brownies (they had made their own, like ours, only stronger), but they talked liked kittens talked, always meowing.  And they laughed bubbly riots, and they didn't give a fuck, and that, I think, made them prettier.  But they didn't care, because I guess it didn't matter.  They were just blissful-eyed dreamers, in it for the thrill and the comedy.

And a comedy it was.  A veritable laugh shack of young, drunk adolescents stoned off pot brownies.  We were the life in the Tudor's lungs that night, only breathing between the wild yells and the care-free flirting and dramatic posturing.  We cleared out after last call and the tab was just over a hundred dollars.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Taylor's neighbor hooked it up and we tipped accordingly, and after we sorted out the payment he told Taylor there was no need for a cab.  "We've got a complimentary limo in the parking lot too, if you don't want to cab it." he said.

"Say what now?"

"Sounds baller!" I said stumbling.  "Where do I sign?"

"Oh, meow!"  We were all stumbling, half-falling down the stairs, half sliding on the ice in the parking lot.  There was a limo all right, and it was baller.  It was a late-eighties Lincoln limo, not bulky, and not too long and we piled in onto the faded leather seats.  Some of us sat on the floor, some on top of someone else, but we all managed to squeeze and it was cozy and all too convenient.  We convinced our driver to stop by Safeway for drunk munchies before dropping us back at the cabin.  And yeah, we might've been kind of a bother to the her, but what does a bar's complimentary limo driver expect?  We tipped her well, and back at the cabin, we had a pillow fight on the fold-out couch 'til we all passed out.

In the morning, after breakfast, Mike and I split a brown-high and took a little drive down to the hardware store.  The hardware store?  Yes, the hardware store because the night before I'd accidentally broken the shower head off in the bathroom downstairs.  Doing what?  Well, showering of course.  But don't ask me how I broke it, because I hadn't the faintest clue. I just knew that I either needed to get a sealing washer of a certain size for the old shower head, or just a new shower head altogether.

It was supposed to be a simple task; go to the hardware store and get the parts.  But nothing's really that simple when you've had pot brownies for breakfast.  The high crept up on us, and we were almost there, driving up Lake Tahoe Boulevard when I realized it.  We were listening to these crunchy tunes by Danger Mouse and MF Doom and the sun would flash bright between the trees by the lake.  It was hypnotizing. "Hey, wait." I said with a start.  "What street were we supposed to turn on again?"

"Haha, oh that's right." said Mike, dazed.  "I think it was Fremont.  Did we pass it?"

"Uhm, I don't know... Did you see it?"

"Maybe...  Wait," he made a concerted face like he was trying to grasp something.  Then, "Nope, I have no idea, haha!  Goddamn, how high are we!?"

"Haaaaa!  Dude, right?  When did this happen?!  Hazaah!"  It took was a few back-and-forth's on Tahoe Boulevard, but we found Fremont all right, and it was a fit of laughter the whole way.

Nel's Hardware was the place.  A little mom and pop's store with wood counters and walls covered with tiny drawers of different sized screws and nails and washers and wing-nuts and every sort of nick-knack you could imagine.  The only people around were two old timers behind the counter that greeted us when we came in.  They wore cheap, weathered-looking bifocals and matching old-person jackets, one khaki, one blue.

The shorter one, the one in blue raised his chin high to talk to us as we passed by, "What can I do for you fellas." He asked it matter-of-factly.

I took the lead on this one.  "Umm, whelp.  We're looking for a part for a shower head," I said, holding up the old shower head.  Thank goodness we remembered to bring that thing or we might've looked liked total idiots.  With any luck, we weren't anything out of the ordinary, and his eyes were too old to notice the red squint in ours.

"Hmm... yes," he said taking the busted shower head out of my hands and staring at it hard.  "Let me take you over to the plumbing supplies."

"Sounds good," I smiled.  Smiling's my favorite.  For me, it's a thing to do when nothing else feelings right, and hell, I wasn't much in the thinking mood at that point so it just came naturally.

[stop]

He waddled out from behind the counter the way old-timers do and then down an aisle towards the back and we followed in slow strides, pretending to think seriously about our shower-head dilemma and act normal.  Which we did stalwartly as he picked up individual washers and seals and held them close to inspect.  He didn't seem to have the one we needed, which I took from his muttering, "No... no... no," and shaking his head with each inspection.  But nonetheless, we stood there watching him with ho-hum disappointment.

"No..."

"Aw... Darn."

"Oh, maybe this one... No..."

"Nuts."

"No..."

"Well, shucks."  And so on.

And for a good while, stretching into a few minutes, until Mike stepped in, "So, just curious.  How much would it be for us just to get a new one?"

"Oh!" he said, startled, and then paused for a moment.  "Well, we got this one over here for twenty dollars.  That would be the cheapest."  And he pulled one down and held it out.

I inspected the ends to make sure the new one would fit where the old had been, "Hmm."

But the old man was still committed.  Resolute to finding the parts we'd broken, "No..."  In a quiet desperation, "No..."   We stood there and watched him for another two minutes, darting each other with quizzical looks in the faces because it felt like a long time.  A lot of soft-spoken 'no's trailing off.  More than a handful.  The smallest things become the most amusing when one's stoned enough to let it play all out and enjoy.

"This new one looks like it's gonna work actually, I think," I said to him, and I patted him on the shoulder.  "It's all right."

He was flustered and almost ashamed it seemed.  "Oh. Okay," he frowned and put the last washer back and waddled the same path to the counter with us behind him walking casually and slow, trying really hard not to laugh.  Really hard.  Lips pinned.

"So with tax, sir, that will be $22.56," he chimed.

"Well, all righty then."  Cheeks tight, not letting my smile out of control.  "Thank you kindly.  Have a good one." I said it with a squint.

"You too, fellas."

We kept our composure until we were out the door, and then we let it all out in a good laugh to the car. "Did that really just happen?  How long were we in there?"

Mike laughed., "I don't know, man!"

"That was ridiculous."  I caught my breath in the car, "Let's get out of here.  Which way is it?"

"This-a way," said Mike, pointing.  "Wait.  No, this a-way."  And I spun the wheel fast around and we chugged off back to the cabin.  To hillside sledding, and an open field snowball fight in crunchy knee high powder.  With everyone, the girls too, the dozen of us.  All those thrills of wintertime youth we cherished in the moment, but maybe not as much as we would later, the longer it slipped behind us.

[stop]

That night we went to Harrah's on the Nevada side and rambled around the casino.  Well, most of us rambled.  Max walked straight up to a blackjack table like he owned the place and bought some chips.  He didn't move from the spot for the the two hours we were there, and in the end walked away with one-forty in cash.  To Max, black-jack wasn't gambling.  There was always an expected rate of return with him.  Taylor tried his luck, but the dealer just ate up his twenty.  He tried at the roulette table and it took him too.  "Goddammit! I have the worst luck.  I should never gamble."

"At least there's free drinks," said Max.  A half empty long island iced tea sat on the table next to him.

"Yeah, where's my free drink?" I asked, looking around.

"You gotta be playing at a table, dummy."

"Oh..."  Well, shit. I flipped my wallet open and procured a tenner.  "How much you got, Matt?"

"I got a tenner.  What're you thinkin'?  I'm thirsty."

"Me too.  Roulette?"

"Why not."

"Ok, pick a color."

"Um... red."

"That's what I was thinking! We're gonna win for sure."  We got two ten dollar chips and put them both on red, before the ball guy spun the wheel.  "Oh, boy.  Waitress!  A long island please!"

"Make it two!" said Matt.  "A thousand thank-you's"

The waitress smiled a little more sincere than usual. "Of course, dears."  And then turned heel.

"Woo! It hit red!" Grant shouted.  He was watching over our shoulders.  "Y'all won!"

"Haha!"

"Are you kidding me?" said Taylor.  Hilarious.  Me and Matty ended up getting to eighty before pulling out back down at forty.  But we were still up, and had handful of free drinks to show for it.

A lot, I think, can be taken away from the way we approach life's temptations, and not always the bad ones or the stated ones.  Like packing into the car, everyone, the seven of us now, and driving off into the frozen night.  Ice was everywhere like a thick blanket and so the extra weight was a good thing.  Still, with any sudden acceleration, the back tires would spin wildly, and if I turned the steering wheel one way, they'd fish-tail out to the other.  Too fun, especially in an empty mountain casino parking lot.  But not for all.  Taylor in the back didn't like this game.  "Hey, stop it!  That's not safe man!"

It was a serious tone and I should've paid attention to that.  Obviously, I didn't.  "Oops, sorry," I said, and I pushed on the brakes 'til they locked and slid forward on still wheels.  Wee!

"I'm serious!  Cut it out!"  It was sharp, followed by a sharper silence, and I took note this time.

"My bad."  I glanced sideways at Mike in the passenger seat and he was biting his lip.  Not in a nervous way though, or anything like that.  He was trying not to laugh.  And so was I.

Oh, Sweet Dream, Come to Me Softly

I like running.  Well no, I shouldn't say that.  I don't actually run even.  I don't get it, personally.  It hurts, it makes me sore afterwards.  I don't like the shock to the knees, and I've always got more pressing things at hand.  Like all life's little stresses, for example.  And they're not always so little.  Yes, I must admit that I hate running.  What I love is running away.

Not the way Forrest Gump did it, but to the same virtue maybe.  Sometimes in a car, sometimes on a plane, but today it's on a bike, which I prefer sometimes because I can feel the world fly by through my hair, feel the distance grow behind me on my face, and feel everything faster and alive.  Today running away is galloping off to work, but it feels grand all the same.  And I only turn back to check traffic.

[time for work]