Wading in the Velvet Sea

Thursday morning in Sally started slowly. Not hangover slowly, but more “damnit, I shouldn’t be this tired and not on assisted living” slowly. Just couldn’t get out of bed. Didn’t help that the room was quite possibly the darkest this side of Guatanamo Bay. There are blackout curtains, and there are black hole curtains, and this room featured the latter. We would have pulled the curtain back, but as luck would have it, our window faced, on basically level ground, the outdoor pool. Can’t have them peeking in on me flexing naked in the mirror. That’s private time, yo.

We ended up at a breakfast joint called “The Egg and I”. Not sure if there’s a pun in that title or not. I mean, it doesn’t really sound like “The King and I” at all. They might as well have called it “Little Shop of Eggs” or something. I mean, put some effort into this, people. In any case, if you’ve got some capital and are looking for a boffo investment, I’m telling you: open a breakfast place in Sally. There are only two that we could find, and both were packed to the brim. The residents/tourists of Sally freakin’ love their waffles, man. Most places that we visited while up there had a bare minimum of traffic, but each morning, trying to find a quiet place to eat was like trying to find a quality film on Pauly Shore’s IMDB page.

After breakfast, she went for a spa treatment. I didn’t, because even though I’d essentially gone on a gay pub crawl the night before, didn’t see the need to exfoliate anymore than I had 24 hours previously. It takes a lot to lay dormant the hairy hunter within. However, I did something equally rare for yours truly: I laid out in the sun and did nothing for nearly an hour. This is impressive on two fronts. First, I’m Irish, with skin tone set at either “pale as a ghost” or “rock lobster”. I’m generally in “glow in the dark after a bright light’s been shined upon me”, and try to avoid looking like a B-52’s song if possible. In addition, sitting still without a television in front of me to dull my senses usually lasts 5-8 minutes before I go batshit insane and start biting things. But I had a novel, a pair of $1 sunglasses (thank you, Super Saver section at Target), and 30 sunblock. It was one to grow on.

On the “to do” list for our time in Sally was a visit to the local American art museum. In the interest of killing time, I suggested we walk there. I won’t say it took a long time to get there, but let’s say that if we left at the same time Frodo and Sam left the Shire for Mt. Doom, we wouldn’t have beaten them by much. Not sure what wormhole through space/time that we walked through, but hot damn, that took a lot longer than expected. I felt like Ron Burgundy, screaming intermittingly, “WALKING WAS A BAD CHIOCE!” Plus, I was walking towards art, not, you know, boneless buffalo wings and cold beer. So that might have had something to do with how long that walk felt.

Determined to not repeat the mistakes of the previous night, we decided that “drinking before 9 pm” would just lead us to once again be asleep before Jay Leno started his monologue. So we made dinner reservations for 8:30 and chilled out post-art walkathon. The temperature dropped to the mid-50’s by the time we got home later, but throughout the night I’d randomly get overjoyed by the crisp, non-humid air and say, “Damn, this is some great air quality!” BY the end of the night, I’d shortened the phrase to, “Quality AQ, baby!” Just a short stone’s throw away from randomly shouting out gas prices while driving on the highway was I. Might as well just start hiking my pants up to my nipples and move to Florida.

The restaurant we went to was a basic surf-and-turf place, with one exception: the four-foot high, five feet in diameter wide firepit that sat in the front of the building. A FIRE PIT. Kick. Ass. And it came in handy. Cuz while that AQ was kicking ass, The Girl was slightly frigid when not placed within 3’ of the FIRE PIT. A pit that, as previously mentioned, kicked ass. The walk out there, however, also kicked ass, with the word “our” placed in the middle. Boston spoils us: you can get drunk and never have to worry about driving. Sally made sure everything was sorta kinda within walking distance, but really, you should think twice before doing it if you know what’s best for you. We took a trolley (Sally’s form of public transportation” back into the heart of town (aka, Norman Rockwell’s Big Dig, as mentioned last time).

After a failed attempt to get a drink at Bar #1, we ended up next door. An unassuming bar, but one that featured karaoke, baby! Awww yea! I was ready to bring it on to levels that Kirsten Dunst had never dreamed. The Girl had only read about my karaoke exploits, but never seen them in person. I ended up doing a “Greatest Hits” night, with “Rebel Yell”, “Subterranean Home Sick Blues”, and finally, “Your Song” all being performed, in addition to a duet with The Girl on “Tainted Love” in the middle of all that. On her part, she did “I’m Only Happy When It Rains” and “Rock the Cashbah”. I can’t say how good we were, but I can definitely say we were better than the two girls who butchered Eiffel 65’s “Blue” and the two idiots who thought it was a smart move to perform “Cotton-Eyed Joe”.

Least The Girl enjoyed my performances, especially the little Elton John tribute…something I’d actually done two and a half years ago for her, here in Boston. Only at the time, she wasn’t there. Hell, we weren’t even together. So a nice little way to end the vacation and brings things around full circle, methinks. And before this gets too sappy, I’ll stop, wave goodbye to Sally, and move on ahead. After all, I don’t want you to feel a little bit funny, that feeling inside, if the feeling is vomit welling up from my schmaltz.