I have not written anything real for weeks, I know. It's been kind of a tough week. But I’m still out here. I need to write about the trip to Charleston with Jamie and Ellen, though, so here it is! I was going to write all briefly, but then I got carried away. You can tell by the way the style almost immidiately changes from brusque and factual to loquacious and over-detailed. Warning: it is monstrously long. Also: I got a new haircut and I love it. So. Charleston.
Friday
+We began driving at 9. Stopped for a bathroom break at 9:05. This set the order of the driving day.
+Ellen read us from the paper about how cute Tai Shan the baby panda was three times, as per everyone’s repeated requests. At one point, despite being the one driving, Jamie managed to look an amusing picture of Bush, Fox, and Harper, in which George Bush was clearly trying to pretend that he is as handsome as Vicente Fox, and Stephen Harper looked like a big, big nerd.
+Stoped at South of the Border to use the bathrooms. My god, it’s like a creepy, cursed ancient temple to the god of kitsch. I adored it.
+Some time in North Carolina we decided we would love to listen to Keegan’s “Best Rock of 1970-1974” CD. Upon putting it in we realized that every single song on this CD, about which we had been extremely enthusiastic and sanguine, is one of the worst songs we have ever heard. (side note: much discussion of the four humours all weekend. along with discussion of the word "nonplussed.")
+Great delight with Subway for lunch.
+On the last stretch of drive, a foul mood descended, and we realized that among the approx. five hundred CDs in the car we had nothing to listen to.
+We made it to Charleston at 5 and went directly to Keegan’s ship, the Ron H. Brown. (Keegan is in the merchant marine.)
Despite recent concerns over port security, as Ellen pointed out, there is absolutely no security at the port of Charleston. You can just drive right on to the dock. There isn't even a gate.
Keegan met us and gave us a tour. We saw:
+how tiny the rooms are (though Keegan's is very nice)
+that you can actually for real drive the ship with a joystick
+that they have lots and lots of board games
+the place where you would put a bathyscape, but since this ship has no bathyscape they use it "just like other people use their garages – to put lots of random shit in," says Keegan
+the engine room which looks honest to goodness just like the one on Firefly. It's like Keegan is Kaylee!
+the winch room, where Keegan was working on an enormous metal disk that almost killed a stupid technician (stupid because he was operating the machinery unsafely) a few days ago.
+Then we went to the hotel. At this point the Great Hotel Debacle began. I'm not going to record it here because it was just stressful and awful. It involved attempting and failing to coordinate with Leslie and her friends Amanda and Tim, miscommunication, and a lot of money. It was the very, very low point of the weekend. But everything else was great.
+We set out for dinner at Joe Pasta, which was delicious and wonderful. We had one of the greatest waiters I've ever had. He used to manage the restaurant, but now sells cars – they called him in because the city was completely swamped by the 35,000 people who had come in for the race (like we had).
+After dinner we went back to the hotel to go to bed. [more Great Hotel Debacle happened here, involving at one point me bursting into tears hysterically. But eventually I calmed down enough to fall into a very, very deep sleep. So deep that I didn't even hear Leslie and Amanda when they came in at midnight (having traveled separately from us)]
Saturday
+Race day! We awoke very early so as to be at the line for the shuttle buses at 8 a.m. In the lobby we also met Amanda's brother Sloane and his friend Eric. Eric was seeded 25th in the race, and looked somewhat abashed. Sloane is, like Amanda, so good looking it is hard to believe that he is real. They are like super-people.
We got downtown and began waiting. First we waited in line for the busses for almost an hour. During this time we saw lots of people in funny costumes. Then we finally got on a school bus and spent about forty minutes in standstill traffic getting across the bridge to the race start point. Once there we waited about twenty minutes for the race to start.
But then it did, and we started. Well – sort of. Actually, it was one of the most crowded experiences of my life, so it was all but impossible to actually move on your own. The course was absolutely packed. Jamie and I ended up jogging about sixty percent of it and walking the rest, which was good for me, as a non-serious runner. I also enjoyed the challenge of weaving around the masses of other people as we ran, as well as observing the people in costume (favorite one – a guy dressed as death).
Moreover, the bridge is absolutely stunning. It's two miles long, one up and one down. We were running on the up stretch, and I'm glad we were. You wouldn't think just a suspension bridge would be so beautiful, but it was. Even in the enormous crowd, it was somehow an almost spiritual experience. It's brand new, so it's still very clean and white and silver, and it absolutely soars up above you, looking massive but so delicate – like a cloud formation or something.
So I had fun during the race. Everyone else, though, I'm afraid, really really didn't. The serious runners were all extremely annoyed that there were too many people for them to even run – even Eric couldn't get enough space to actually get going. (To tell the truth, I feel a certain amount of perverse triumph that I had more fun than Amanda or Eric even though I am slower, fatter, and seventy thousand times uglier – all of their assets didn't, for once, guarantee them a nicer time than me. In fact, they were a detriment. I am quite sorry that Keegan and Ellen didn't have a good race, though. Them I care about.)
We went back to the hotel and ate brunch. I had a salad I enjoyed, though Amanda, Sloane, and Leslie did not seem to like their meals.
Ellen, Keegan, Jamie and I decided to go walk around downtown Charleston. (Leslie and Amanda wanted to nap and Sloane and Eric wanted to begin a pub crawl.) Here began the best part of one of the best days I've ever had. Charleston really is that beautiful. I had to stop every minute to take pictures like these.
We walked up the side of the river, which is fronted by glorious houses and a park. Then we walked out on the pier and sat for a while. We went to the end of the pier and looked at the harbor, and there were dolphins! More than I've ever seen before! They were really close, and they jumped out of the water a lot.
Then we walked back towards downtown. Keegan and Ellen got some gelato, and I got a piece of praline (which was really good). We looked in a neat shop. We watched some children having fun, saw a cool lizard, and spent a long time watching some great dogs, who were about as happy as creatures could possibly get (so was I, almost).
We spent a little time in a covered market where they sell lots of silver jewelry, but it was massively crowded, so we left and went to an Irish bar for a late afternoon drink. There was a family having a raucous and delightful birthday party near us.
Finally we walked back across town to the car. On the way went through an even older, even more perfect (because less nouveau riche) neighborhood, and down this street. We fantasized (as Ellen, Jamie and I had been doing all weekend), about all living in apartments in one of the huge houses there with all of our friends. I have difficulty thinking life would be very far from perfect if we managed that.
The sun was low, and I, at least, was sleepy but so content, as we got back to the car. We drove back to the hotel to nap/relax a little before going to dinner. Keegan and Ellen went to their room, and Jamie and I carried our books out to the pool. It was too cool to swim, but sitting out there (for a little while, anyway) was nice. We watched some very funny birds on the buoy line in the middle of the pool. One, a starling, was enthusiastically bathing. A crow came up and clearly wanted to bathe too, but was just as clearly frightened of the water. He kept stretching out and getting close… closer…closer…but then being unable to get all the way in. It made him terribly angry and he yelled about it for a long time. He got even madder when another crow came and bathed perfectly fine.
There were a girl and a boy playing banjo and guitar for a long time, but after a while they left and Jamie and I lapsed into silence. Eventually I was too cold and said so.
"I'm so glad you spoke up," Jamie said. "I wasn't going to be the first to wimp out."
"I broke the cold silence," I said, which initiated a weird period during which virtually everything seemed to be an unexpected pun of some sort: as we were going inside, I said "I wish there were a place we could sit…like a lounge or something."
At which point we turned and there, suddenly, was a sign that said "High Spirits Lounge." Then as we went inside there was a horse race on t.v. featuring a horse called "Well Hidden," – but you couldn't see the horse because there was a black menu box up on the screen, hiding it. It was rather matrixy.
We read in the lobby for a while (there were charming older ladies there) and then went up to the High Spirits lounge for a while, and then met Keegan and Ellen for dinner. The cab driver who took us was named Ron. "How's your night going," Keegan asked him.
"Oh, all right. Just getting started," he said. "I had a rough night last night."
"What happened?" Keegan asked.
"Man, it was my mom's 80th birthday party, and we had a huge party for her – about five hundred people and a band and everything" he said, gleefuly. "And the whole family stayed up all night and got tore up."
He told us how the kids had asked her "Mom, what do you want for your birthday?" and she said "Cash. You just give me cash."
"So we did," he said proudly. "We all got together and we gave her two thousand dollars."
[Note: I am not at all sure this is the right amount of money. But it was a lot.]
Then he laughed. "So I this morning I called her and I said to her, 'Mama, how about you take me out to dinner this week?' and she said 'I don't know, son, money's a little tight right now. Call me back after my check come.'
"And I know that right then she was sittin' there with that shoebox on her lap, countin' her money!
"'Mama,' I said, how much money you got in that shoebox?' and she said 'Call me back after my check come. You gonna be there to pick me up for the doctor on Thursday?'
"And I said 'Yes, Mama, I'll see you on Thursday.'"
Dinner was at a tapas restaurant called Meritage. It was, in short, one of the best dining experiences I've ever had. Every single thing we ordered was incredible, even the wine which we picked at random, and which was weirdly not on the new menu, but they had some still back in the back. I can't remember everything that we got (everyone ordered two things because tapas are so small, and we shared), but I do remember that not a single thing was less than extraordinary. Our waitress this night was also really excellent. Charleston is the land of very talented waitstaff.
As we were leaving, Leslie, Amanda, Tim, Eric, Sloane, and another friend of theirs whose name might have been Tiffany showed up. We had one drink with them (Tiffany told Keegan and Jamie about her wedding plans, while Sloane and Eric were immidiately surrounded by girls. Ellen and I had a conversation about children's books.)
Then Keegan, Ellen, Jamie and I left to go find a piano bar Ellen and Keegan had been to before. Our cab driver this time (whose name I don't remember) was, according to his story, an angry and disgusted Katrina victim. (At the time, I believed every word of his stories. In retrospect, I think he was lying about almost all of it because he could see we were young and drunk).
"Yeah, I fuckin' hate Charleston," he told us. "Yuppie-ass city. I got into it with a petty-cab driver last night. He thought he was gonna take me, but now I'll bet he runs when he sees me coming. He insulted me and shit so I beat his ass.
"And then I picked up this yuppie asshole outside a strip club. Wearing this pink sweater tied around his shoulders. And he started telling me that he was from New Orleans, but I knew that fucker wasn't from New Orleans, and so I asked him all about [here a long string of New Orleans neighborhoods, of which the only one I really recognized was Metarie] and he didn't know none of them, and so I beat the shit outta him. I mean, FEMA won't even pay for my fuckin hotel room, how are they gonna pay for this asshole to have a house out on Sullivan's Island?"
Like I said, at the time I believed him. And was intimidated by him. And so gave him a big tip.
Here we encounted the only real disappointment of the night, as the piano bar had closed and been replaced by a Blue Light Grill/Hippodrome-style loud tanned bar. But we rallied and went to a small friendly dance club where a very happy and enthusiastic cover band was playing, and danced. (A guy tried to hook Jamie up with his friend – not himself. He apparently thinks of himself as some doing some kind of service for his shyer comrades.)
Then we went to a rooftop bar. (By this point very, very drunk.) We looked down at the street (we got to watch a guy fall over completely sideways). And we went home and fell (at least in my case) deeply asleep.
Sunday
The plan Sunday morning was to go get breakfast and then maybe walk on the beach for a while. We set out, but alas the breakfast place was closed – but again we rallied, went on to the beach, and picked out another breakfast place, almost at random, called Café Suzanne. Which also turned out to be incredibly fortuitous (another keyword of the trip), as the food was incredible. And there was another really great waitress, who had lived in Charlottesville. Oh – and there was music, provided by Ed "Porkchop" Meyer, who was fantastic. He really sounded like Ray Charles, although he was a sixty-year-old Jew with a grey ponytail.
After breakfast we went down to the beach and walked for a long time. We spent a really long time watching an absolutely incredible dog, with a tail like a mop and a wild, intelligent gleam in its eye, and a beautiful gait just like a horse. Jamie swam even though it was cold, because she wanted to so much. We were bittersweetly happy.
It was time to leave. We took Keegan back to his ship, and left (somewhat tearful, especially of course on Ellen's part). The drive back was fine – progressively loopier and loopier, culminating in an unstoppable urge on my part to come up to Ellen and Jamie in a convenience store and dance, silently, and ritualistically, with a can of hash.
And then we got home. And were melancholy.
Friday
+We began driving at 9. Stopped for a bathroom break at 9:05. This set the order of the driving day.
+Ellen read us from the paper about how cute Tai Shan the baby panda was three times, as per everyone’s repeated requests. At one point, despite being the one driving, Jamie managed to look an amusing picture of Bush, Fox, and Harper, in which George Bush was clearly trying to pretend that he is as handsome as Vicente Fox, and Stephen Harper looked like a big, big nerd.
+Stoped at South of the Border to use the bathrooms. My god, it’s like a creepy, cursed ancient temple to the god of kitsch. I adored it.
+Some time in North Carolina we decided we would love to listen to Keegan’s “Best Rock of 1970-1974” CD. Upon putting it in we realized that every single song on this CD, about which we had been extremely enthusiastic and sanguine, is one of the worst songs we have ever heard. (side note: much discussion of the four humours all weekend. along with discussion of the word "nonplussed.")
+Great delight with Subway for lunch.
+On the last stretch of drive, a foul mood descended, and we realized that among the approx. five hundred CDs in the car we had nothing to listen to.
+We made it to Charleston at 5 and went directly to Keegan’s ship, the Ron H. Brown. (Keegan is in the merchant marine.)
Despite recent concerns over port security, as Ellen pointed out, there is absolutely no security at the port of Charleston. You can just drive right on to the dock. There isn't even a gate.
Keegan met us and gave us a tour. We saw:
+how tiny the rooms are (though Keegan's is very nice)
+that you can actually for real drive the ship with a joystick
+that they have lots and lots of board games
+the place where you would put a bathyscape, but since this ship has no bathyscape they use it "just like other people use their garages – to put lots of random shit in," says Keegan
+the engine room which looks honest to goodness just like the one on Firefly. It's like Keegan is Kaylee!
+the winch room, where Keegan was working on an enormous metal disk that almost killed a stupid technician (stupid because he was operating the machinery unsafely) a few days ago.
+Then we went to the hotel. At this point the Great Hotel Debacle began. I'm not going to record it here because it was just stressful and awful. It involved attempting and failing to coordinate with Leslie and her friends Amanda and Tim, miscommunication, and a lot of money. It was the very, very low point of the weekend. But everything else was great.
+We set out for dinner at Joe Pasta, which was delicious and wonderful. We had one of the greatest waiters I've ever had. He used to manage the restaurant, but now sells cars – they called him in because the city was completely swamped by the 35,000 people who had come in for the race (like we had).
+After dinner we went back to the hotel to go to bed. [more Great Hotel Debacle happened here, involving at one point me bursting into tears hysterically. But eventually I calmed down enough to fall into a very, very deep sleep. So deep that I didn't even hear Leslie and Amanda when they came in at midnight (having traveled separately from us)]
Saturday
+Race day! We awoke very early so as to be at the line for the shuttle buses at 8 a.m. In the lobby we also met Amanda's brother Sloane and his friend Eric. Eric was seeded 25th in the race, and looked somewhat abashed. Sloane is, like Amanda, so good looking it is hard to believe that he is real. They are like super-people.
We got downtown and began waiting. First we waited in line for the busses for almost an hour. During this time we saw lots of people in funny costumes. Then we finally got on a school bus and spent about forty minutes in standstill traffic getting across the bridge to the race start point. Once there we waited about twenty minutes for the race to start.
But then it did, and we started. Well – sort of. Actually, it was one of the most crowded experiences of my life, so it was all but impossible to actually move on your own. The course was absolutely packed. Jamie and I ended up jogging about sixty percent of it and walking the rest, which was good for me, as a non-serious runner. I also enjoyed the challenge of weaving around the masses of other people as we ran, as well as observing the people in costume (favorite one – a guy dressed as death).
Moreover, the bridge is absolutely stunning. It's two miles long, one up and one down. We were running on the up stretch, and I'm glad we were. You wouldn't think just a suspension bridge would be so beautiful, but it was. Even in the enormous crowd, it was somehow an almost spiritual experience. It's brand new, so it's still very clean and white and silver, and it absolutely soars up above you, looking massive but so delicate – like a cloud formation or something.
So I had fun during the race. Everyone else, though, I'm afraid, really really didn't. The serious runners were all extremely annoyed that there were too many people for them to even run – even Eric couldn't get enough space to actually get going. (To tell the truth, I feel a certain amount of perverse triumph that I had more fun than Amanda or Eric even though I am slower, fatter, and seventy thousand times uglier – all of their assets didn't, for once, guarantee them a nicer time than me. In fact, they were a detriment. I am quite sorry that Keegan and Ellen didn't have a good race, though. Them I care about.)
We went back to the hotel and ate brunch. I had a salad I enjoyed, though Amanda, Sloane, and Leslie did not seem to like their meals.
Ellen, Keegan, Jamie and I decided to go walk around downtown Charleston. (Leslie and Amanda wanted to nap and Sloane and Eric wanted to begin a pub crawl.) Here began the best part of one of the best days I've ever had. Charleston really is that beautiful. I had to stop every minute to take pictures like these.
We walked up the side of the river, which is fronted by glorious houses and a park. Then we walked out on the pier and sat for a while. We went to the end of the pier and looked at the harbor, and there were dolphins! More than I've ever seen before! They were really close, and they jumped out of the water a lot.
Then we walked back towards downtown. Keegan and Ellen got some gelato, and I got a piece of praline (which was really good). We looked in a neat shop. We watched some children having fun, saw a cool lizard, and spent a long time watching some great dogs, who were about as happy as creatures could possibly get (so was I, almost).
We spent a little time in a covered market where they sell lots of silver jewelry, but it was massively crowded, so we left and went to an Irish bar for a late afternoon drink. There was a family having a raucous and delightful birthday party near us.
Finally we walked back across town to the car. On the way went through an even older, even more perfect (because less nouveau riche) neighborhood, and down this street. We fantasized (as Ellen, Jamie and I had been doing all weekend), about all living in apartments in one of the huge houses there with all of our friends. I have difficulty thinking life would be very far from perfect if we managed that.
The sun was low, and I, at least, was sleepy but so content, as we got back to the car. We drove back to the hotel to nap/relax a little before going to dinner. Keegan and Ellen went to their room, and Jamie and I carried our books out to the pool. It was too cool to swim, but sitting out there (for a little while, anyway) was nice. We watched some very funny birds on the buoy line in the middle of the pool. One, a starling, was enthusiastically bathing. A crow came up and clearly wanted to bathe too, but was just as clearly frightened of the water. He kept stretching out and getting close… closer…closer…but then being unable to get all the way in. It made him terribly angry and he yelled about it for a long time. He got even madder when another crow came and bathed perfectly fine.
There were a girl and a boy playing banjo and guitar for a long time, but after a while they left and Jamie and I lapsed into silence. Eventually I was too cold and said so.
"I'm so glad you spoke up," Jamie said. "I wasn't going to be the first to wimp out."
"I broke the cold silence," I said, which initiated a weird period during which virtually everything seemed to be an unexpected pun of some sort: as we were going inside, I said "I wish there were a place we could sit…like a lounge or something."
At which point we turned and there, suddenly, was a sign that said "High Spirits Lounge." Then as we went inside there was a horse race on t.v. featuring a horse called "Well Hidden," – but you couldn't see the horse because there was a black menu box up on the screen, hiding it. It was rather matrixy.
We read in the lobby for a while (there were charming older ladies there) and then went up to the High Spirits lounge for a while, and then met Keegan and Ellen for dinner. The cab driver who took us was named Ron. "How's your night going," Keegan asked him.
"Oh, all right. Just getting started," he said. "I had a rough night last night."
"What happened?" Keegan asked.
"Man, it was my mom's 80th birthday party, and we had a huge party for her – about five hundred people and a band and everything" he said, gleefuly. "And the whole family stayed up all night and got tore up."
He told us how the kids had asked her "Mom, what do you want for your birthday?" and she said "Cash. You just give me cash."
"So we did," he said proudly. "We all got together and we gave her two thousand dollars."
[Note: I am not at all sure this is the right amount of money. But it was a lot.]
Then he laughed. "So I this morning I called her and I said to her, 'Mama, how about you take me out to dinner this week?' and she said 'I don't know, son, money's a little tight right now. Call me back after my check come.'
"And I know that right then she was sittin' there with that shoebox on her lap, countin' her money!
"'Mama,' I said, how much money you got in that shoebox?' and she said 'Call me back after my check come. You gonna be there to pick me up for the doctor on Thursday?'
"And I said 'Yes, Mama, I'll see you on Thursday.'"
Dinner was at a tapas restaurant called Meritage. It was, in short, one of the best dining experiences I've ever had. Every single thing we ordered was incredible, even the wine which we picked at random, and which was weirdly not on the new menu, but they had some still back in the back. I can't remember everything that we got (everyone ordered two things because tapas are so small, and we shared), but I do remember that not a single thing was less than extraordinary. Our waitress this night was also really excellent. Charleston is the land of very talented waitstaff.
As we were leaving, Leslie, Amanda, Tim, Eric, Sloane, and another friend of theirs whose name might have been Tiffany showed up. We had one drink with them (Tiffany told Keegan and Jamie about her wedding plans, while Sloane and Eric were immidiately surrounded by girls. Ellen and I had a conversation about children's books.)
Then Keegan, Ellen, Jamie and I left to go find a piano bar Ellen and Keegan had been to before. Our cab driver this time (whose name I don't remember) was, according to his story, an angry and disgusted Katrina victim. (At the time, I believed every word of his stories. In retrospect, I think he was lying about almost all of it because he could see we were young and drunk).
"Yeah, I fuckin' hate Charleston," he told us. "Yuppie-ass city. I got into it with a petty-cab driver last night. He thought he was gonna take me, but now I'll bet he runs when he sees me coming. He insulted me and shit so I beat his ass.
"And then I picked up this yuppie asshole outside a strip club. Wearing this pink sweater tied around his shoulders. And he started telling me that he was from New Orleans, but I knew that fucker wasn't from New Orleans, and so I asked him all about [here a long string of New Orleans neighborhoods, of which the only one I really recognized was Metarie] and he didn't know none of them, and so I beat the shit outta him. I mean, FEMA won't even pay for my fuckin hotel room, how are they gonna pay for this asshole to have a house out on Sullivan's Island?"
Like I said, at the time I believed him. And was intimidated by him. And so gave him a big tip.
Here we encounted the only real disappointment of the night, as the piano bar had closed and been replaced by a Blue Light Grill/Hippodrome-style loud tanned bar. But we rallied and went to a small friendly dance club where a very happy and enthusiastic cover band was playing, and danced. (A guy tried to hook Jamie up with his friend – not himself. He apparently thinks of himself as some doing some kind of service for his shyer comrades.)
Then we went to a rooftop bar. (By this point very, very drunk.) We looked down at the street (we got to watch a guy fall over completely sideways). And we went home and fell (at least in my case) deeply asleep.
Sunday
The plan Sunday morning was to go get breakfast and then maybe walk on the beach for a while. We set out, but alas the breakfast place was closed – but again we rallied, went on to the beach, and picked out another breakfast place, almost at random, called Café Suzanne. Which also turned out to be incredibly fortuitous (another keyword of the trip), as the food was incredible. And there was another really great waitress, who had lived in Charlottesville. Oh – and there was music, provided by Ed "Porkchop" Meyer, who was fantastic. He really sounded like Ray Charles, although he was a sixty-year-old Jew with a grey ponytail.
After breakfast we went down to the beach and walked for a long time. We spent a really long time watching an absolutely incredible dog, with a tail like a mop and a wild, intelligent gleam in its eye, and a beautiful gait just like a horse. Jamie swam even though it was cold, because she wanted to so much. We were bittersweetly happy.
It was time to leave. We took Keegan back to his ship, and left (somewhat tearful, especially of course on Ellen's part). The drive back was fine – progressively loopier and loopier, culminating in an unstoppable urge on my part to come up to Ellen and Jamie in a convenience store and dance, silently, and ritualistically, with a can of hash.
And then we got home. And were melancholy.
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