Are Friends Electric?

Melissa feets be GONE! I'm back from Nags Head, NC (technically Kitty Hawk, since I believe mile post 4 is still KH territory) after spending about a day and a half holed up with eleven people and a lot of sunburned tootsies. Yes, the tops of my feet and the back of my neck (I had my hair pinned up while at the beach) were the only two places on my body I forgot to slather with sunblock. That shit's SPF is like a fuckin' sherpa's chuba compared to the spots left untouched. Whooo doggie, I learned my bleepin' lesson.

Mr. and Mrs. Connelly from the breakfast bunch aren't exactly the beachy types, but we encouraged them to at least meander down with us to the shore line, and watched as they daintily prowled the outer edges like cats weary of getting their paws wet, stopping to gawk curiously at all the alien objects (shells, seaweed, a human ear) that rolled up to their feet.

This beautiful black lab followed her owner down the the beach to park next to us, and Al went over to pet her and watch in amazement as she proceeded to dig into the sand with a truly impressive determination. The woman said that "Sally" finds the tiny crab holes in the sand and proceeds to dig and dig until she unearths the little bugger from its den. I couldn't stop laughing at that dog's ass in the air, her barking becoming a faint echo as her face a near 45 degree angle deeper and deeper down that hole...

But Sally's efforts pay off. Although her new playmate wasn't too thrilled about being displaced, and she did get nipped in the nose and tongue several times for her trouble. She was having such a ball that Al's friend Tim grabbed my camera and got down on his belly to capture this moment as Sally and crustacean catch a breather in between their Dance Of Deaaaaaath (uh, for the crab, that is -- it didn't survive for more than two minutes. Sally lived.)

A couple of young girls, friends of Al, stayed with us during the weekend. Both very sweet, but very quiet and subdued, especially compared to all the other loud, obnoxious louts in the house (well, I suppose that would be me really). Spent a lot of time sunning themselves and reading quietly. Meanwhile, in the background, Sally is ass-up again in another crab hole.

Back at the beach house, Al's busts a move to The Bee Gees on Joe's iPod. TRAGEDY! When your rubber breaks and your sperm escapes it's TRAGEDY! (don't look at me, Al says this is how he used to sing it when he was a kid).

Joe and Al slow dance to the piano and strings opening to Springsteen's "Jungleland". Joe had made a playlist of everybody's favorite music for the weekend, and Al was livid that Joe forgot to include his all-time favorite Bruce tune. But wheeeee, Joe lied! Al was so surprised and overcome to hear it pop up on the iPod that he and Joe embraced and all was forgiven. Meanwhile, everyone continues to ignore the Olympics on the television.

While Tim was outside grilling the tuna and veggie kebabs, Dave and Hunter worked on the salad with all fresh ingredients from the vegetable stand on the drive down to the shore. I always love the strange and sweet way they communicate with each other, like some kinda twinsspeak shorthandy thing that couples seem to pick up over the years. Hunter barely had to use words to explain to Dave how to pluck the cilantro stems -- or maybe Dave's just unwrapping a miniature candy bar from our collective table of community junk food that everybody brought to the house with them. We were all pretty much on a neverending sugar high that entire weekend. Explains all that dancing, I suppose.

Mmmm, Hunter's homemade kamala olive and squash torte! Wasn't much left of it after dinner, even serving eleven hungry beach-weary epicureans. Most of the gang are all so used to having breakfast with each other every Sunday we don't even know how to function around dinnerstuffs. If we can't pour syrup or ketchup over it it fails to register as anything remotely edible to us.

Can't remember what Hunter's dancing to on the iPod here. Then again she might have been just stoked that the torte that she had made only once before came out as expected. At least it didn't turn out like the lump of mysterious charred "evil" turning in the rotisserie oven that she and I laughed about for months.

As night settled over the beach house, we wound down from dinner with our now-traditional game of iPod charades, in which Tim here, seconds before, trumped the previous year (and probably every year after) by dropping his shorts and baring his naked ass to mime the word "moon" in a song title. Meanwhile, I think the Jamaicans won something at the Olympics. Running or whatnot. Whatever. I just saw the bare ass of the man who roasted my tuna kababs. It's offically time I turned in.

Sunday morning at 7:30am, and Mike is already up and struggling with the Wii, of which I still haven't gotten the hang. And that damnable trivia game was rigged to make me lose on purpose (I know, I know... aren't they all?).

Another last dip in the waves, which were rougher this morning and exhausted all of our old-people bodies within minutes of being tossed about like the breakable playthings we are. Still strange how I live within 15 minutes of the beach at home, yet the only time I actually get into it is when I leave home and drive over an hour away. At least Tim and Hunter appear to be enjoying themselves (as they dash for their lives screaming towards the shore).

And I suppose no weekend of middle aged cranks hopped up on sunburn and torte would be complete without April (one of the two younger girls, who is the girlfriend of a concert promoter mutual acquaintance) comped us with some Regeneration Tour tix, which I think means that the likes of Howard Jones, The Human League, Belinda Carlisle, ABC, Naked Eyes, and A Flock of Seagulls all sing their one hit and leave the stage, and then Melissa spends the rest of that time at the hot dog stand wishing she was back at the beach playing iPod charades with naked man-ass again. But good times were had! And I'm home and I'm as tired and as hungry as a black lab ready to tear the limbs off a sand fiddler! Two days without sleep -- let me rest, my lovelies. Let me resssssst......................................