Weimeraner

I burnt the shit out of myself today. I had it all planned out, timed it and everything. Somehow I forgot the sunscreen, and to take down my bathing suit straps, so in addition I'm going to have an asshole tan. Today wasn't shaping up for success by any count, I have to admit. 

Last night I had eight various mixed drinks, mostly mojitos, plus other people's leftovers, several shots, and some legal pot. I danced for three hours to reggae-bluegrass-jam. And then I punched some guy in the face. And then I tried to walk home so no one would see me upset, but when a stranger makes you feel fat and far from home, it leads to face-punching and tears.

So I slept too late, and woke up with a monstrous headache and waves of nausea. It threw me off all. day. They all warned me, too, somehow I always manage to fuck up. Every single vacation I go on, I give myself first degree skin cancer and ruin the experience of sitting thereafter. It also causes sun comas. I still owe the university a little work, but I haven't gotten anything substantial done because I find myself doing more napping than waking. 

Upon one of those catlike wakings, I was invited down to the beach to look for shells, which I can never turn down, and off I went, sans sunscreen again. My back is a total mess. As I sit here, I can see myself reflected in the shimmer of cooked flesh across my bare chest, and can only imagine what tomorrow will bring. It does occur to me at this juncture that I have a particularly weird experience to relate, though.

We went out with the intention of getting oysters on the half shell. One of the boys recommended us a little place up the road, so we decided to try it out. I'm just going to try to describe this experience in the following paragraphs, although this will be no means capture the full bizarreness of the evening.

We turned down a dirt road leading into a marsh, empty, and dead quiet. A few dark houses lined the row, and the trees grew so thick back there it almost gave the feel of twilight. The theme song from Deliverance comes to mind. Bobbee said we ought to turn back, that we were on the wrong road, but Dad pointed to a fucking dirt lot ahead and said, no no, that's gotta be it up there. We pull down there to find a mass of cars parked like hick trucks on a front yard, carefully orchestrated around heaps of garbage and plywood. Walking up, the road is lined with broken oyster shells and beer caps - actually, I thought the caps were little shells at first, but on closer inspection, realized this was not the case. The grand shadows of buildings that aren't houses finally greet us, surrounded on all sides by literal mountains of old oyster shells, and beyond that, the buggy steamy marsh. 

It took us probably ten minutes to figure out how to get inside and get food. A helpful sign painted, "Restaurant This Way" with an arrow greeted us, but as it turned out the arrow pointed to nothing. So we wandered around the complex for a while. There are a number of small, abandoned buildings full of garbage and wood, and painted bright colors, huddled around the foot of a larger main building. One of the smaller buildings is a train car. One is a 6 x 6 brick cube with the name of an attorney on a plaque outside and the door kicked in. The main building is literally sitting on cinder block stilts, and made of unadorned plywood. Two forty year old lawn chairs sit at the bottom of a ramp to nowhere, watching forlornly as oyster greenhorns climb the ramp to the top, only to find nothing there - although it does offer a lovely view of the rooftop moss garden on a building below. 

We finally found ourselves directed to a bait shack, where a man named Mimi will greet you and take your order, cash only, fried only, and everything good is out of season. Also there's a private wedding reception on the back dock, where rednecks in golf shirts and red baseball hats celebrate the union of their unpedigree pups. You order from Mimi, then walk back up the dock to the cinder-plywood masterpiece and find a good thirty people sitting underneath at plastic tables with mis-matched, degrading chairs. It looks an awful lot like the inside of a garage, with a concrete floor and junk heaped variously around, complete with a crappy garage cover band, consisting of my Uncle Benny's doppelganger, a beatnik conspiracy theorist, and a desperate Richard Simmons in the midst of a serious heroin binge. You seat yourself and just wait, sipping coke out of cans, until the waitress comes. She doesn't know where the food is going when it comes out, she just comes out and stands in the middle of the garage yelling your name until you claim your shit. 

And it's the weirdest seafood I've ever seen. Mimi swears it's all fresh caught in the bay, but it's been fried beyond recognition. They give you a 16-inch slab of fried fish, soggy fried shrimp, a hairball that's meant to be a crab cake, something called hush puppies which as best as I can figure are fried corn meal balls, all heaped atop the worst french fries I have ever had - though I'm sure they don't catch those. You have to get your own silverware and condiments and napkins out of a barrel. When we finally get called, the band plays - butchers - Tom Petty, and some guys start whooping and hollering and clapping like it's the rodeo. This is the low country experience, says Bobbee. While I was struggling to digest that mess, I watched a fucking Weimeraner run around the tables, sniffing at people and stealing pieces of fish and garbage. And the low country people were not fazed or even interested.

I should take at least a moment to describe the bathroom in the place, in closing. The walls are pinned up with old bedsheets from 1974, and all spare surfaces are graffitied with the nicest graffiti I have ever seen. Visit such and such a home living website. Goodbye to broken promises and forgotten dreams. I love you, Brad and Jenny. Michelle Branch lyrics. And the toilet was lovingly inscribed, Love Toilit (sic) Have a nice dump, have a nice day :), in pink hi-lighter. I like weird bathrooms and always take care to note especially memorable ones, but overall, this was probably the weirdest. I thought I was in the bizarro world. As we left, my dad leaned in and said, I have a quote from the men's bathroom for your blog, Clinton Pucket is a homo. And whistling Deliverance, we drove back to civilization. 

And thus ends my weird day. I'm not drinking for a ... week.