the century club
we got the cheapest beer we could find. since the purpose of the night was for each of us to drink 100 shots in 100 minutes, we needed quantity, not quality. we drove down the two lane road to the tom thumb gas station, the one that sold those huge aligator floats with the black plastic handles, and ryan, the oldest out of the three of us, bought a 24pack of Natural Light. ross made him get a can of menthol dip, and i said siiick like i always did and they laughed and bought two.
the night was clear; there had been a storm the day before that brought in layers of seaweed, the rough, branchy kind that made swimming in the ocean unappealing. we were sunburnt, like we were every year by the second day of our trip, and my skin was sticky from the aloe. ryan always got burnt on his shoulders, but i never noticed unless he was sitting down shirtless, like he usually was at lunch, becuase he was so much taller than me. ross, tranlucent skinned ross, was sunburnt all over, the fresh pink color that looked raw and painful. his whitish blond buzz cut couldnt cover up his red scalp; no matter how much paulette, his mother who put 100 SPF on her skin underneath her shirt, underneath her hat that shaded everything around her, underneath the umbrella that she rarely ventured from, warned him, he always ended up fried. it was a seasonal thing, a yearly loosing of our virginity, something that we knew going in would hurt but something that we longed for in november, when we hadnt seen each other in months and our skin was cool and pale underneath sweatshirts. they were jealous of me; my sunburn always turned brown by the morning.
we had been doing this for fifteen years- the three of us and our three mothers going to the beach for 4 days every summer. it started when ross was 2, i was 3, and ryan was 8. ross used to bite me so hard i would bleed and paulette would threaten him with the wooden spoon that never got used in front of me. ryan would play video games those first few years as ross and i napped, before the three of us became friends, before we became family, before we became more than family. paulette and my mother were roommates at auburn, and delores, ryan's mother, was paulette's ex-husband's best friend's wife. it was meant to be, for the planes to intersect the way they did. thats the way it goes with families- if one person had been assigned a different dorm room, it wouldnt have ever come into being.
we got the beer and took it back to the house. we rented a different house every year at a beachside community called seaside, this magical snowglobe where all the houses have tin roofs and white picket fences, where all the roads are cobblestone and all the houses are pastel. every summer the three of us sit on the screened in porch (they all have them) after the moms have gone to bed and talk about sex. ryan was the one who got me used to the idea of sex- what i had to look forward to, worry about, be embarassed about. but that summer, by the time i was 18, i had stories of my own, stories i always dramatized because really, they werent that dramatic, that crazy, or even that sexual. we brought the entire case out and sat in rocking chairs, facing the still, salty night.
we started the drinking game. the century club. 100 shots in 100 minutes. by 20 i was drunk and chasing every shot with a bite of peg's, ross's grandmother who bought me stockings for christmas and hosted me and my mom for easter every year, pound cake, which was, other than paulettes sweet pickles, my mom's bloody marys and delores's rice krispie treats, the most highly anticipated food of the year. nothing tastes more like the beach, like sand sticking to skin, like huge damp towels, like that yearly trip, than peg's pound cake. we kept drinking, getting louder and lewder, more explicit with our descriptions of sexual encounters or drug experiences (another thing that ryan taught me about), still rocking and breathing in the heavy, humid florida air.
at some point, probably around 70, we decided to go to the beach, something we had never done before at night. we were barefoot and i was wrapped in a blanket from the couch, its softness somehow cooling. we ran the whole way, our beers splashing, wondering what was going on in all those other houses. if there were three other sibling/bestfriend/cousins getting drunk on one of those porches talking about blow jobs and big boobs and acid. we figured not, since no one like us, since nothing like this, had ever existed before. we were out of breath and yelling to each other, my feet stinging from slapping the red cobblestone and my blanket dragging like a train. it was laughable, as so many things with them were, just because it was them. just because we only saw each other that one time a year, and every single thing that someone said or did was so weighed by the potential of becoming memory, nostalgia, it was either laugh or tear inducing. the best ones were both.
we got to the pavilion and looked out at the ocean. you couldnt see the continents of seaweed, there were no children on floaties or fat fathers. there were no umbrellas or coolers or people reading books. the moon was almost full and reflected on the water like a tiny world, suspended and buoyant above so many other worlds, so many less neatly contained universes. we stopped when we got to the top of the wooden stairs that led down to the sand. it was the most vast thing i had seen- it had no seams, no end. it was perfectly calm, perfectly undisturbed, and yet wholly alive, violently throbbing, waiting to be discovered.
i dropped my blanket and started running down the long stairway with the shallow wide stairs. they followed me, the clumps of our bare feet echoing back to no one or nothing else but us.
we're running now, towards the water, giggling and drunk, unsteady but sure. we're unstoppable now, we're where we belonged all along, with no one else but us, in a place thats known us as boiled down, as condensed versions of ourselves. as the truth, though we have yet to understand.
we're in the water, floating. theyre near enough to me that i can sense them, but i wouldnt know who i was touching if i did. theres a thump, thump, thump sound underwater and i say
do you hear that?
ryan says, yeah what is it?
i listen again and it sounds like someone stomping. it sounds like a hearbeat.
its us, i think.
it would be impossible to explain where we came from, the three of us. it would be needless and un-understanable. we came from each other, we came from places that have never collided and never will. we came from the same heartbeat. and we didnt.
i imagined us like a giant, asymetrical starfish bobbing up and down in the center of the moon's reflection. it is impossible to know how we got there.
but with family, that question is futile.
the night was clear; there had been a storm the day before that brought in layers of seaweed, the rough, branchy kind that made swimming in the ocean unappealing. we were sunburnt, like we were every year by the second day of our trip, and my skin was sticky from the aloe. ryan always got burnt on his shoulders, but i never noticed unless he was sitting down shirtless, like he usually was at lunch, becuase he was so much taller than me. ross, tranlucent skinned ross, was sunburnt all over, the fresh pink color that looked raw and painful. his whitish blond buzz cut couldnt cover up his red scalp; no matter how much paulette, his mother who put 100 SPF on her skin underneath her shirt, underneath her hat that shaded everything around her, underneath the umbrella that she rarely ventured from, warned him, he always ended up fried. it was a seasonal thing, a yearly loosing of our virginity, something that we knew going in would hurt but something that we longed for in november, when we hadnt seen each other in months and our skin was cool and pale underneath sweatshirts. they were jealous of me; my sunburn always turned brown by the morning.
we had been doing this for fifteen years- the three of us and our three mothers going to the beach for 4 days every summer. it started when ross was 2, i was 3, and ryan was 8. ross used to bite me so hard i would bleed and paulette would threaten him with the wooden spoon that never got used in front of me. ryan would play video games those first few years as ross and i napped, before the three of us became friends, before we became family, before we became more than family. paulette and my mother were roommates at auburn, and delores, ryan's mother, was paulette's ex-husband's best friend's wife. it was meant to be, for the planes to intersect the way they did. thats the way it goes with families- if one person had been assigned a different dorm room, it wouldnt have ever come into being.
we got the beer and took it back to the house. we rented a different house every year at a beachside community called seaside, this magical snowglobe where all the houses have tin roofs and white picket fences, where all the roads are cobblestone and all the houses are pastel. every summer the three of us sit on the screened in porch (they all have them) after the moms have gone to bed and talk about sex. ryan was the one who got me used to the idea of sex- what i had to look forward to, worry about, be embarassed about. but that summer, by the time i was 18, i had stories of my own, stories i always dramatized because really, they werent that dramatic, that crazy, or even that sexual. we brought the entire case out and sat in rocking chairs, facing the still, salty night.
we started the drinking game. the century club. 100 shots in 100 minutes. by 20 i was drunk and chasing every shot with a bite of peg's, ross's grandmother who bought me stockings for christmas and hosted me and my mom for easter every year, pound cake, which was, other than paulettes sweet pickles, my mom's bloody marys and delores's rice krispie treats, the most highly anticipated food of the year. nothing tastes more like the beach, like sand sticking to skin, like huge damp towels, like that yearly trip, than peg's pound cake. we kept drinking, getting louder and lewder, more explicit with our descriptions of sexual encounters or drug experiences (another thing that ryan taught me about), still rocking and breathing in the heavy, humid florida air.
at some point, probably around 70, we decided to go to the beach, something we had never done before at night. we were barefoot and i was wrapped in a blanket from the couch, its softness somehow cooling. we ran the whole way, our beers splashing, wondering what was going on in all those other houses. if there were three other sibling/bestfriend/cousins getting drunk on one of those porches talking about blow jobs and big boobs and acid. we figured not, since no one like us, since nothing like this, had ever existed before. we were out of breath and yelling to each other, my feet stinging from slapping the red cobblestone and my blanket dragging like a train. it was laughable, as so many things with them were, just because it was them. just because we only saw each other that one time a year, and every single thing that someone said or did was so weighed by the potential of becoming memory, nostalgia, it was either laugh or tear inducing. the best ones were both.
we got to the pavilion and looked out at the ocean. you couldnt see the continents of seaweed, there were no children on floaties or fat fathers. there were no umbrellas or coolers or people reading books. the moon was almost full and reflected on the water like a tiny world, suspended and buoyant above so many other worlds, so many less neatly contained universes. we stopped when we got to the top of the wooden stairs that led down to the sand. it was the most vast thing i had seen- it had no seams, no end. it was perfectly calm, perfectly undisturbed, and yet wholly alive, violently throbbing, waiting to be discovered.
i dropped my blanket and started running down the long stairway with the shallow wide stairs. they followed me, the clumps of our bare feet echoing back to no one or nothing else but us.
we're running now, towards the water, giggling and drunk, unsteady but sure. we're unstoppable now, we're where we belonged all along, with no one else but us, in a place thats known us as boiled down, as condensed versions of ourselves. as the truth, though we have yet to understand.
we're in the water, floating. theyre near enough to me that i can sense them, but i wouldnt know who i was touching if i did. theres a thump, thump, thump sound underwater and i say
do you hear that?
ryan says, yeah what is it?
i listen again and it sounds like someone stomping. it sounds like a hearbeat.
its us, i think.
it would be impossible to explain where we came from, the three of us. it would be needless and un-understanable. we came from each other, we came from places that have never collided and never will. we came from the same heartbeat. and we didnt.
i imagined us like a giant, asymetrical starfish bobbing up and down in the center of the moon's reflection. it is impossible to know how we got there.
but with family, that question is futile.
posted by Jessica Baxter | 4:53 PM
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