July 18, 2003
Together We'll Go Down to Nude Beach Together We'll Stroll on the Sand
I played hookey yesterday. Well, let me back up a little. On, Wednesday the boss asks me to be available to work that night. He had a very important meeting on Thursday, and he needed help formatting the documents that he was to present at this meeting. OK, fine, part of the job, I understand, I'll take my laptop home. In my haste to go to Costco that afternoon (I get very excited about trips to Costco), I left my laptop at work. Ooops.
I get a call around 9:00 pm asking me if I got the e-mails with the documents I need to format. That's when I realized that I left the laptop at work. Holy shit! What am I gonna do? I know! I'll use my Macintosh to format the documents and everything will be just fine. And that's exactly what I did. I worked on one of the documents at home, and it worked out very well. I just love the inherent flexibility of the Macintosh. It's a godsend for sure. But I neglected to consider one thing: the graphics in some of the documents are linked to the document, not embedded in the document, which means that the picture in the document wouldn't show up in the high quality that was needed for the presentation, which meant that I had to go to work. It also didn't help matters that one of the documents I was to format hadn't even arrived yet. The sales guy who was responsible for the document was at an evening reception and didn't get the file to us until midnight. So my first question (or thereabouts) was: Why do you people insist on waiting until the very last minute to prepare documents for the next day? You knew about this meeting a week ago. I was twiddling my thumbs a week ago. Why do you people work my nerves?
So I went back to the office. At 11:45 pm, I signed in a the front desk and went in to work. And I was there until 6:00 am the following morning. No shit. I did my little format dance, e-mailed the file back to the boss, completed the redlines that he sent back to me, and on it went through the wee hours of the morning, clear 'til sunrise. Our office has a view of the bay from Oakland to the San Mateo Bridge, clear and unobstructed, and the sunrise was beautiful. I haven't seen that many sunrises in my life. Can't say it was worth it on this morning, but it was a nice finishing touch.
Anyway, at 6:00 am, I left work and went home. I was tired and that was that. Around 4:00 am, I was thinking, "yeah, I could stay here until 5:00 pm tonight. I could work a full day today after all of this. Yeah." And by 4:30 am, I was thinking, "fuck that, where's my bed?"
Around noon, Roommate came home early from work and suggested that we take a roadtrip down the coast to Monterey. Did I tell you that I lived there for eight years? That's where we met in fact. I was still a little groggy, but I thought, "that's a nice idea. OK." So we packed up a nice picnic lunch, got in my car and drove down to the Monterey Peninsula. It was about two o'clock when we finally left, and the traffic was smooth.
We made it to Gilroy (a.k.a. The Land of the Stinking Rose, and it stunk beautifully) by about three o'clock where we marveled at the thermometer in my car that read 109° F (42° C). A hundred and nine. Why? Tell me...look me in the eyes and tell me why in god's name you would choose to live in this area? The same for all of you who live in the desert: Palm Springs, Vegas, Phoenix, etc. What is wrong with you people? It was 82° F (27° C) as I drove through San Francisco yesterday and that was too hot. Forget it, I've ranted about this enough in the past. You should know how I feel about the heat.
So by the time we reached Monterey, it was 4:30 pm, and 64° F (17° C) and breezy and nicer than I remembered it being. I spent so much time trying to forget the life I lived down there that I forgot about how pretty it is down there, too. Driving down Del Monte Avenue past the Naval Postgraduate School and the grove of eucalyptus trees, past the wharf, past Del Monte Shopping Center, I didn't have to force myself to acknowledge the natural beauty of the area. And what's more, it became so obvious that some things will never change. The faces will come and go, but the places will always be there.
Except for the Dream Theater which was demolished to make way for a tiny little shopping center, the blasphemous bastards! I remember walking my ass down Prescott Avenue from DLI to watch my favorite movie of all time Dial "M" for Murder in its original 3D presentation at the Dream. It was one of the neatest movie experiences I can remember. And it's just one of the memories that I had blocked out for so long which came barging through my mind. Like the floodwalls had fallen, everywhere I looked I saw my past. Eight years is a long time to live in one place. And being as small as it is, Monterey has memories all over. I mean to be nostalgic, by the way. I didn't fight it yesterday, and I can appreciate it now, understanding where its place is in my life.
We drove down the coast a bit to Garrapata Beach. A long time ago, Garrapata was the nude beach for the Monterey Peninsula. All the gay men in the area knew about it. Well, let me step back a bit. The beach is about a mile long, give or take, and the first half of it was mostly straight. If you ventured past the half-mile mark, you were entering gay naked man territory. And if you made it all the way to the end of the beach, you would be in gay naked man heaven, or at least one of my versions of it. I used to go there every weekend. I would drop my friend Skot off at his salon in Carmel, and drive down to the beach for the day. And I spent the whole day there. High tides, low tides. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Whatever. That was my place to be. As such, I was thin and had a good tan year round. And to clear things up a bit, I was never naked on this beach. I am much too modest for that. I changed my clothes there, and during the brief thirty seconds it took me to take off my pants and put on my swim suit I was naked. And that's all. Oh, and I guess there were the times when I met guys for a little hey hey on the beach, which really is all it's cracked up to be. Can you be in a more beautiful location than in a rocky cove in front of the wide open ocean? I so loved it there. In fact, it's one of those places that I know so well, that when I close my eyes and think of it, I can remember every nook and cranny, every hill in the distance.
Roommate and I met on this beach almost ten years ago. September 12, 1993 we cruised each other on this beach, and the rest is, well, the rest. Yesterday afternoon, we walked down the beach as far as you could go. The tide was in, and the summer tides had taken most of the sand away from the rocky coves, so we couldn't go all the way down. Still, we found a nice spot and sat in the sun for a couple of hours. It was amazing to me to sit there and let all of my memories wash over me like so many tides had done before. I mean that, literally. Before I was wise enough to seek out the free tide tables at Longs drug stores, I took my chances guessing whether that wave was going to hit me this time or not. I lost at least two pairs of Wayfarers and countless cassette tapes on that beach. I can still see myself running down the beach to the water's edge trying to save my towel and backpack. It's not like I was sitting at the water's edge to begin with either. That's how badly I misjudged the tides. Don't let this happen to you! It might be anal to check the tides before going to the beach, but it's worth it! I think that's funny now.
Oh, and the poison oak! That stuff runs rampant all along the cliffs of the beach. I used to wander around up there watching the men below, waiting for the sun to set. It was like I was on the edge of the world on the edge of that cliff looking out at the ocean. But I had no idea what poison oak was or what it could do to you. Not everyone reacts to poison oak, and unfortunately I do. The first time I "caught" it, I had no idea what it was. I saw a red blister start to appear on my lower leg, and it itched like fuck. Over the course of a few days, I watched that blister grow from my ankle almost all the way up to my knee in a big swollen patch of red. After a day or two, the blister started to scab and then ooze. It was the most disgusting thing I ever saw. And it was painful, not just itchy. It was so bad that at times it felt like I had the flu. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't help but scratch the stuff. I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought gangrene would set in and my leg would fall off. Eventually it went away, and my leg healed, but it was a very hard lesson to learn. After that first time, I was affected by it again, but only minorly and maybe twice after that. It was never as bad as the first time, probably because I became so paranoid by the stuff.
These are the memories that I have blocked out. It feels like a whole other life has opened up to me, and again, I'm not trying to sound corny. It's so true. There's so much there that is buried under hatred and anger and bitterness and regret. There's so much there that can be relished and appreciated. I understand people a little better now to put all of this where it belongs, or at least to try to put it where it belongs.
Wow, this is really long. I'll stop here. I'm pretty sure that I'll have more to say on this as I decide to let it back in my life, you know?
Have a really nice weekend.
