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glad the vacation is over
Sunday, October 10 1999
Two little expressions I just invented and hope to be using in the future:
More fun than a fat girl on birth control.
Drunker than a turd in a punchbowl.
I was dreadfully hungover and full of regrets and anxiety this morning. My back was sore, and when I went to look at it in the mirror I saw two horrible slashes across it. I vaguely remember some sort of horrible fight with Kim. Such scenes are stored in my brain as a few loose frames of muddled cerebral video with a low bassy soundtrack.
Despite such evidence of unsettled issues, Kim wasn't especially mad at me. Based on my actions last night she asked if I have a crush on Lisa L@tter, a preposterous notion that was nonetheless difficult to dispell.
The Exorcist was on teevee, and we watched the whole blessed thing. It seemed to suit my emotions perfectly. I'd tried to watch the movie once before and it hadn't really captured my interest at the time. But this time I could relate to the complex psychological issues being addressed. A spiritual or horror movie without a strong psychological basis is neither frightening nor interesting to me.
I myself felt as though I'd been through some sort of life-altering ordeal. It wasn't religious or even particularly spiritual; it was more (for lack of a better term) logical. I saw my recent life, up until now, as a series of pointless alcohol-intensified fuck-ups. Why was I allowing myself to be this way? I was I torturing Kim so much? She deserves better than all the shit I put her through.
These feelings were intensified by the recollections Kim made (until I demanded her to stop) of the many catty things Lisa L@tter had said about me last night, including that Kim "can do much better than" me.
After The Exorcist Kim and I walked out to Esplanade and bought some juice at the funky Whole Foods store. Some little black boys were out there trying to raise money, they said, for their band class. But they weren't having much luck.
At 4:00pm, Lisa L@tter came by to take us to the airport. On the way we stopped at one of her favourite seafood places in Metairie on Lake Pontchartrain.
As we passed along a canal I could see a political poster high on a telephone pole reading "David Duke for Congress."
The restaurant was a no-frills place serving seafood in a family atmosphere. As waves of nausea passed over me, I felt no desire to order anything, so, while I wasn't looking, Kim ordered me the fried soft-shelled crab. To my eye it looked a little like a Kentucky Fried Space Alien, and it did nothing to inflate my tiny little hangover-ravaged appetite. But it tasted good all the same. I didn't even try to eat the fries that came with it. Out the window I could see a tiny piece of the Pontchartrain-crossing causeway.
As our jet lifted up out of New Orleans and turned west, I looked down through a thin layer of clouds and beheld a thin strip of gossamer crossing Lake Pontchartrain. The causeway never looked so thin on a map.
The flight back to California took place during the slowest sunset I've ever seen, one lasting something like three hours. Our jet nearly kept up with the rotation of the earth as we headed due westward. Kim had specially-ordered us vegetarian meals, but what we got was sort of like what you get when you visit Aunt Thelma and announce you're a vegetarian: tasteless vegetables cooked to mush on top of white rice. Dissatisfied, we took the chicken dinner offered to us by the guy next to us, but it had the consistency of decaying wood.
Still, I'm indebted to Jenna the German Girl. She might not be on speaking terms with me, but as a United Airlines flight attendant and good friend of Kim's, she managed to get my girlfriend an extra sweet deal for our two tickets. And that's how we came to fly the friendly skies.
Steph and EJ were waiting for us at the San Diego airport when our little propeller plane from Los Angeles landed. When we were finally home sweet home, Sophie rejoiced. We'd decided at the last minute not to put Sophie in a boarding situation, choosing instead to entrust her to the care of Steph and EJ. This didn't mean that Kim didn't worry, that Kim didn't obsessively call home to find out if Sophie was still okay. She did all those things. But from all appearances, Sophie flourished in our absence. She gained weight and she even adopted Steph and EJ into her pack. While she was thrilled that Kim and I were finally home, she was also pleased that Steph and EJ were with us.
There was a 2-hour Simpsons marathon on Fox tonight and I couldn't keep myself from watching. But somewhere in the belly laughs came an unexpected public service advertisement about the dangers of skin cancer. It featured a guy with an ill-fitting plastic nose and cheek piece which he pulled off at the end of his little schpiel, revealing the hole left in his head in the aftermath of tumour-removal surgery. I wish they'd warned me; if I'd been a kid I'd definitely be in for months of nightmares. It kind of reminded me of the perverted JPEGs some of my readers occasionally mail me.
Some sort of refinery in a bend of the Mississippi River (we're looking southward here).
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