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.
