Saturday, August 05, 2006
fun in the sun
Back in the Vancity tonight after a sun-drenched week of beach-combing, tanning, swimming, reading, drinking pear cider straight from the bottle, picking blackberries, raspberries, plums, and blueberries, eating massive bowls of Mueslix with fresh peaches, hanging out with my parents, petting the cats, obediently admiring my cats' morpses (that's mouse corpses for you newbies) on the front steps, and getting the most bizarro tan lines ever.
It was a nice week.
I did have a couple of meltdowns, mainly because when I'm left alone to think a lot I start wishing that my relationship wasn't so messed up and that I could just go out and shag some adorable creature and not have to worry about making things functional. I am frustrated beyond belief, and I'm starting to scare myself with this wild streak that I didn't even really know I had.
I felt so insanely ON at Jon's show last week, almost unhinged and like my comfort zone had suddenly expanded enormously. At one point I was dancing and singing along to the Nine Inch Nails' song Closer (you know the one, the I Wanna Fuck You Like An Animal one), with the kind of showiness I pretty much never exhibit unless I'm acting on a stage or drunk and stoned out of my skull. Jon said I looked hot, maybe because I was wearing my Calling Home t-shirt with ET on it, the one I can't wear when Hayley's around cause she hates aliens.
I. Just. Felt. Alive.
And I am alive, and I want to feel alive all the time. I just think I deserve it, somehow.
I ended up chatting to these girls from the club who I never in a million years would have talked to had Hayley been with me, and I sat in a booth at Denny's at 4:00 am regaling Sophie's friends with the most ridiculous (but apparently humourous) nonsense. I had ONE drink all evening and somehow felt absolutely on fire, like I could have kept going like the Energizer bunny and no one but myself could have stopped me.
Jon called tonight and I told him I really need to get laid. This boy forces me into honestly like smoke forces bees out of the hive. He's such a good listener I almost feel guilty for continuing to talk. He offered to be a friend and take me out and shag me. Aw, a pity fuck. I really think that's rather cute, and if I didn't value his friendship so very, very much I might have taken him up on the offer.
But enough about intense sexual frustration. Back to the weekend.
Oh the beaches. Oh the tan lines. Almost all the good beaches on the island you have to hike into, and the nicest one is a beach full of pebbles that warm up the water so the swimming is divine. I crawled and splashed and paddled and floated to my heart's content. I was reading Michelle Tea's The Chelsea Whistle, which is a fabulous book and you should read it even if you're not a fan of memoirs. It's a funny, sweet, racy, at times shocking, and gritty-like-sand-between-your-teeth portrait of growing up in white-trash small town America. I'm now about halfway through Peninsula of Lies, by Edward Ball, which is a bizarre and fascinating portrait of a transgendered and possibly intersexed man who rocked the quiet southern society of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1960s by getting one of the first sex change operations in North America. It's a fascinating yarn, and a surprisingly sensitive piece of social research.
Yesterday my parents and I hiked for more than an hour to get to arguably the nicest beach on the island. It's at the northernmost tip, on a peninsula, and on one side is a wave-washed and chilly seaweed garden of an ocean beach and the other side is a warm and sheltered deep blue lagoon. I swam on both sides, and walked around the point where the sandstone rocks have been carved out by the waves into the most bizarre and spectacular shapes imaginable. A family of swallows had nestled their babies into a lip on the rock face, and their little nest perched there so perfectly tucked-away in the shadows. Pink and green sea anemones fluttered in the tidal pools and baby rock cod darted away under the rocks. The waves crashed against the shore and I took a photo of my parents against th
e backdrop of the ocean and the city far off in the distance.
A wasp stung me as I was standing in the long grass by the rocks taking a picture. I was not pleased. The bastard started biting me and after I swatted him away he came right back again to puncture me with his venom-laden stinger. Fucking rapist of an insect. He stung me right on the inside of my leg about two inches from my crotch. NOT a good place for a wasp sting. It hurt for 24 hours and now it's just itchy. I forgot how much those stings suck. I haven't gotten one in years. I guess that's what I get for hanging out in the long grass in a bathing suit. That's what Jon Stewart would call DUE CARNAGE. I had it coming.
I have a big weekend ahead of me, hopefully full of sun and fun and many, many hot girls. It is Pride Weekend, the happiest time of the year. No, really. It's happier than Christmas, because at Christmas you have to buy things and eat too much and be cooped up inside when it's cold out. But Pride......Pride should be for everyone. In Nomeland, Pride would be a time when people could just be happy for once to be gay, bi, straig
ht, queer, trans, intersexed, whateverthehell, and no one would need to prove themselves to anyone else.
Oh idealism. How I wish I could hang on to it. But even now at only 22 years young there is that cynical little voice at the back of my head going: "dream on girl. This is as good as it gets."
Fortunately the sunny voice then chirps in with "This is pretty damn good. Quit yer whinin."
Enjoy the pics.
More to follow.
-N
