Say Yeah Yeah
What’s great about my company is we are a large family – it’s always a love fest on these MLK trips. S and I went early for this one and got the festivities started with M, K and D – all wives of traders who always go early – all women I adore – and we danced the night away. The next morning, with the sound of the ocean lulling me into the sunlight I woke in a panic about LaLa and what to do about it. I wanted S to be up and ready to listen to every detail that was running through my mind but she was languishing in those last minutes of morning sleep so I went down and got her coffee to get her up.
The first thing she tells me is she had a dream about me where I had a flea and flicked it on her and she slapped the bed to kill it and then a thousand fleas came out of the bed and soon she realized she had leeches all on her legs and she yelled for me to help and I bit the leeches off of her one by one. My response? That’s gross, why the hell would I bite bugs off your legs? – Her response? You’re scrappy cuz you’re from New Orleans so it makes sense to me.
Then getting dressed I showed her my HPs that were a little holey and said Z did it and her response: “like father like son†– and we laughed deep in our belly on that one.
There was one time in the hotel room where I was putting my locket on and it fell and opened – S went to grab the contents from the bathroom floor and I screamed – don’t touch – and she said whoa, what is that? – and we laughed uproariously the rest of the evening at the contents of my locket.
When O arrived I moved to my room – Room 666 – hung up my bedside photo – and we proceeded to have the parties late night that had security coming round often. Our biggest party was Friday the 13th because no one could stay away from 666. It was this evening that H began referring to Ass Man and the name stuck. Then B&J arrived and J – who called me before we took off to tell me she was waiting to butter my biscuits and eat them up – was wanting one on one time and I tried to give it all to her in one big burst and she just said, hell she’d butter N’s biscuits too.
On the balcony one bright sunny morning as we all sat around looking at the magnificent ocean in front of us, T said “I read your blog and the one thing I can say is that you have loved and lived, which is more than I can say about myself. But truthfully I don’t know if it is worth the heartache.â€
That same afternoon I hung on the balcony taking in the sun and the crystal blue water – a single red balloon floated by, touching down on the water, then popping up and bouncing off the lounge chairs, the trees, the umbrellas. I couldn’t take my eyes off that red dot. Later, I lay face down on a lounge chair with a magazine with the sun hot on my back flanked by S and A and a lizard approached me and A said, that’s good luck and I said, come here little lizard, come here.
But it was Saturday, after a lot of girl time, and some boy time, and a lot of dance time, that I went to dinner and A was turning into Smurf and I worried because of present company and so tried to get her to eat and she snapped at me – “don’t take care of meâ€- and I said fine, but then P and I took her outside for air and then to the Prop Club for dancing. When we arrived, K was sitting there and she said “come here†and threw her arms around me and said how much she loved me – then she introduced me to L (J’s wife) and told me that they had lost everything they had in a fire. I told them imagine an entire city’s psyche bearing the load of what you went through and that is Katrina. Then K talked about how impressed she had been by mom’s dedication with her patients during the storm and evacuation. A gnawing feeling started creeping up about my mom and the graveyard shift and her overdoing.
I turned and behind me was D, who I have always adored, and I asked how the adoption process was going with the Chinese girl and he began telling me all the details up until now – he and M are awaiting a photo and are supposed to say yeah or ney – and he said, “Rachel, who says ney?†– and he asked if I am thinking of adopting still and I said yes, but right now in the process of getting divorced so navigating these waters first and not sure how to proceed so he starts telling me how to proceed and right then I started blacking out and I turned and asked K to give me her seat as I was feeling peaked and going down. Then I saw S making her way into the bar and I beckoned her over frantically and grabbed her hand and told her to help me.
She brought me to the bathroom and into the handicap stall and laid paper all over the toilet and I kneeled in front thinking I was going to get sick, thinking I had food poisoning, and then as I kneeled there with S rubbing my back and speaking soothingly to me I realized I wasn’t sick in my stomach, it was my head and I was having a full on panic attack. The first one I have had since moving back to SF ten years ago. By this time, T (who has had them) had come to check on me, S (who has had them) was kneeling on the bathroom floor soothing me, the Smurf drifts in and takes a seat in the corner of the stall, then K and J come in to see how I am doing – T goes into the next stall, peers over and begins taking pics of us while standing on the toilet, and pretty soon we are all laughing up a storm. T called them blog documentation.
We dusted ourselves off and walked out to the dance floor and Beyonce’s Crazy in Love was on full blast and I took A and lifted her into the air and twirled her. Then I did the same with D and J. All little petite girls I seem to be able to lift. Then S – not so petite – jumps into my arms and wrapped her legs around me and we twirled round and round to the music and she whispered in my ear – “nice recovery†– and I felt good and strong and safe because I had these strong women to care for me and was perfectly willing to have them do so for this evening.
One of the funniest things happened when A went for a run on the beach and two big dogs began chasing her and she freaked out and went into the ocean to get away and they kept her there barking at her. The owner ran out to get the dogs and was extremely apologetic but A, having been bitten before, was so shook up she screamed at him to get his dogs off of her and then she started crying. He took the dogs away, apologizing the whole time. She continued to run down the beach but her IPOD was ruined. When she came back, the man was waving to her and said again how sorry he was. She apologized for freaking out and he begged her to let him buy her another IPOD. She refused and realized this very handsome man with the English accent was actually Orlando Bloom, who was staying in a house with Johnny Depp because they are filming Pirates of the Caribbean 2. When A came back and told us her story – M said she was going to strap a pork chop to her ankle and run down there herself.
Then later on the beach talking to L and A – who met on jdate/Russian – were asking me about everything going on in my life and I tried to synopsize it all into bullet points and both were adamant in offering advice on what I should be doing but A said it is hard for you Rachel because you are a strong woman and men don’t like that. Yikes.
Saturday night some guys in the bar were staring at C’s wife’s ass, which caused a bar fight to erupt where S threw the first punch – B who threw a punch or two said he wasn’t in the best form – and all the girls wanted to see C’s wife’s ass the next morning on the beach because we wanted to see the ass that launched a thousand punches – H said later S must have attacked the guy with his sweater vest – and all laughed till we were sick again.
L said Sunday night at the party that she is leaving the company and I said, why? And she said because I’m moving to Africa and I couldn’t stop laughing – only because it was the answer I expected least from this little tiny speck of a girl but I got so tickled she just stared at me wondering why I thought it was so funny.
K – our fearless leader – was giving out his usual funny awards and awarded me the “true grit†award at our big party – for having braved Katrina while still managing to do my senior editor job – resounding applause from the 200+ people who have become a second family to me. If only he knew all that was braved. But I welped up so bad I was shaking when he handed me my cup.
Coming home Monday, S and I spotted a swing at the bar in the Freeport airport and went to have one last Mai Tai. H came over and the bartender was ribbing him for having all these pretty girls around him. H said, “Well, who you want to be is Ass Man because that one over there is going home to him and he is the lucky man tonight.†A thin smile crossed my lips and I said matter of factly: “he won’t be waiting for me when I get home.â€
A tender warm welcome home missive was waiting on my first stop but H’s comment had taken me down a dark path where even now I can’t seem to see light. Arriving home with no Bean to greet me coupled with this morning’s dark rainy skies has made inside and outside one. S came later in the morning to bring the Bean and asked what was going on with N and me, and I told him, and he said, sounds like N has issues. Yeah.
Here I was thinking I was making progress – will be good to see E this afternoon to try to pry this elephant weight off my heart.