Start of Summer

I want summertime to be my island where I don’t have to deal with anyone. I want a time when I don’t have to deal with family or friend politics, when I can hit the sack late and wake up on my own terms rather than my alarm clock’s. I want freedom to go around the city or to just stay at home and to have nothing on the horizon. During summers as a kid I would get up early but then do nothing–watch morning TV until the soap operas came on, marking the perfect time to leave the house to see a movie or catch the train and walk around somewhere.

This summer is not shaping up that way. Already there was the Vegas trip and there’s the family reunion in Florida approaching, a possible road trip with Brian and Paul, plus summer school training, summer school itself and the university. Plus, I’m trying to set up a routine that will get me down to 190 (for starters). It’s a lot of stuff. It’s certainly good to have activities and responsibilities during the summer, but I feel a little melancholy at yet more evidence of my childhood being left behind…at age 26.

The Vegas trip was dynamite. I guess I had nothing to fear. Special K was awestruck by the spectacle, which is what Vegas will do to the first-timers. We spent so much time just walking and talking and looking at stuff that I barely had time to gamble. Maybe gambled only twenty or twenty-five bucks.  One thing that kept coming to mind, though, is that I must travel to Vegas one of these time with an actual girlfriend (or at least a lady friend willing to blur the lines for a weekend).  The strip was sprinkled with couples strolling up and down and I told her that I felt like I was Pvt. WhatUpThen, marching in military formation next to her everywhere we went and could I throw an arm around her to relieve my self-consciousness?  Well, no, she said…and it would have been awkward.  But no more awkward than when passers-by volunteered to take photos of us for the hundredth time.  Anyway, it really was badass.  No, really!  Would I do it again?  Perhaps.

Also, we saw Tommy Lee, Wayne Gretzky, Jake Steinfeld and Scott Peterson Dean Cain.