oceandoggy.com

This is gonna sound terribly politically incorrect but nice is wearing thin on me.

Not the nice of friends and family. Not the heartfelt goodness that wells up from the people you hold dear.

I’m talkin’ about the forced ceramic-glass-like nice imposed by banks and gas stations and grocery store owners.

The “How are you today, my name is whatever, and I’ll be helping you today and holding your hand through the scary bank deposit you’re making and can I possibly do anything else for you while I flash fake smiles and seem actually interested in your life and your day” kinda niceness.

Implants are less false.

I find myself yearning for more humaness. A yawn, a stifled groan, a muttered fuck you would be preferable to all this glossy vacuousness.

It’s ok to fart, people.

Yeah.

So I made the decision.

There are lots and lots of pros and cons and there was lots and lots of overthinking the whole thing.

But when it comes right down to it- I wanna do it. I want to drive these big motherfuckers.

And I don’t know why. I just wanna.

So I’m gonna.

Dudes this is just fucking magic.

I know. I know. My credibility withers daily but this is the best shit I’ve read in a long, long time.

Don’t get me wrong.

There were times when I was reading The Tiger’s Wife wondering why I was.

Miss Carol would look at me and go- do you like that book?

And I’d go, no?

‘Cause I wasn’t sure. It was cool and really well written, but I just wasn’t getting it.

And then it all clicked.

Like a smooth bore sliding home it slid in.

And it’s fricking magic.

Whew.

So, yeah. This was pretty much my holiday weekend.

Is it any wonder I didn’t post on Monday?

Is it any wonder I’m barely posting now?

More as short term memory coalesces. Or re-coalesces. Or whatever.

Decades and centuries ago I told my granny that I was thinking of driving dynamite across to the Eastern Shore.

Ooooh, stop, she twittered (back when twittering was something different) and patted my hand affectionately and told me she loved me and smiled up at me like grannies do.

But I was. Seriously thinking about it, I mean.

But then the years and years and years zipped by in gale force winds while I did other things.

But then.

In the last coupla months the dream has somehow re-kindled and taken root. And now its gnawing obsessiveness is becoming a siren song, something I’m not sure I can ignore much longer.

Dudes, I’m thinkin’ about getting my CDL and driving a tractor trailer. Not local, and maybe not long haul, but, yeah, maybe long haul. I know me. I could never drive local, and regional might be a stretch boring-wise, but, man the long haul lure is there and the hook is tight.

Escapism as epiphany, ya know?

I meant to talk to Miss Carol about this again tonight and break it to her, but it was her birthday and we did other stuff and I forgot so she’ll probably read this instead.

Ooooohh. That’ll be fun.

Granny’s grinning.

So I was sitting there, brooding darkly.

I’d just finished reading a really good book, quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read, and as I sat, thinking about it (the book I mean) I watched some little dramas play out.

The surf was head high and glassy so all the surfers were out. I love watching their gracefulness but I don’t harbor any awe. I mean, ANYBODY can surf. Hell, even I can surf.

sorta.

OK. I suck, and maybe I should be in awe. But I’m not.

But while I was sitting and mulling I saw two girls, obviously BFF’s, on longboards out beyond the break, talking. Suddenly, one of the girls slipped into the water to wet her hair and in one long gorgeously lithesome move came back up out of the ocean and sat on her board like she was sitting on a chair. While she kept up her conversation with her friend she slowly wrung the saltwater from her hair. It was mermaidic and simply beautiful.

They paddled in and I cracked another beer and a young couple, kids really, came and sat near us. They were unremarkable in their plainness, their ordinariness, except for the girl’s remarkable desire. While her boyfriend/lover/husband/whatever/ relentlessly fucked with his iPhone, her want, her need, for him to pay attention to her, to somehow validate and return the bruising rawness of her love for him was hard to watch.

When they were leaving, he handed her his precious iPhone and she nervously dropped it in the sand.

I went for a swim, I couldn’t stand it any more.

When I got back and sat down the wind had changed direction and strengthened. It was blowing more off the water and it was getting a little chilly. Miss Carol and me were fixing to head home when a kite blew by.

Honest, dudes, I’ve never seen anything like it. The kite was flying all by itself, trailing a couple hundred yards of string- it’s little plastic hand thingie bouncing over the waves. I watched it out of sight. It was forlorn looking. I felt bad for it. It seemed lost.

So I said fuck this and stood up and collapsed the chairs and picked up the cooler of empties and as we were breaking camp, a couple walked by, hand in hand. She was a little too fat or maybe a little too pregnant to be wearing a bikini and he was fluourescently sunglass wrapped, gold chain luggingly his mid-life crisis over the waistband of his too-touristy board shorts.

And as they walked past I saw that he(?) had a tramp stamp(?)

Jesus.

C’mon.