Blackout

I was out in the wilds of New Jersey on Saturday to go to a cookout, hosted by my dear friend David (you will remember his guest-blogging moments here). It was sticky hot, David stood proudly at the grill, swathed in smoke, cooking up a storm – wayyyy too much food – all delicious. There were tons of kids running around. Swinging on the swings, racing about, falling down, screaming in pain, getting the boo-boo kissed, and then racing back into the fray. Then there would be occasional breaks in the chaos, when the kids would all sprawl about on the grass, sucking down juice-boxes. Silently contemplating what they wanted to do next. Once refreshed, all hell broke loose again. Only this time their tongues and lips were stained purple, or green, from the juice.

David’s wife (an excellent friend of mine, from way back) made dee-lish mojitos for the grown-ups. She looked up the recipe on the Internet, and they were damn fine!!! She huddled over her concoctions like a mad scientist. Squeezing limes, scooping sugar, mint-leaves scattered about …

I took 2 sips of my first beer, and then promptly spilled it. Which then became the huge joke – how WASTED I was. David kept saying, “I have never seen you so WASTED!!!” I kept protesting, “I am stone-cold sober, I’m just clumsy!”

We ate chicken, there was salad, we sat around in the backyard, David had lit Tiki torches around the edges, so the whole scene had a Survivor-esque feel. Someone was going to get voted off, that much was certain.

David and Chris smoked cigars. Children ran about, having so much fun that their entire personalities degenerated into shrieky sweaty hysteria. I remember summer evenings like that, when I was a kid. At one point, they all got it into their collective heads that they needed to have some vitamins. It was all about vitamins. It was an EMERGENCY. Their little voices calling out the kitchen windows at us, “Where are the vitamins? We need some!” Plaintive wails.

At one point, a thunder cloud rolled by – it was like a scene from Day After Tomorrow. We could see the front marching in. We welcomed it. Maybe the humidity would break. Thunder. Then a brief rainfall. Not too heavy, we all stayed sitting at the umbrella table … waiting for the cool breeze to follow.

No cool breeze followed. We were disappointed.

And then – an hour or so later – when it was fully dark out – there was a blackout.

The Red Sox game was on inside, and we heard it fizzle out. The entire neighborhood plunged into darkness. We weren’t sure the extent – if it was a repeat of last summer or what. Turns out it was just that area. The kids, all massed up in the house, gorging themselves on vitamins apparently – made a HUGE DEAL out of how scared they were. You know. Cause it’s fun to be that scared, especially if there are EIGHT of you. And your parents are right outside.

So little weepy melodramatic children would come out to the table, sniffling, “Mommy, I’m so …. scared.”

Mother would take child into her embrace, never letting go of her mojito, of course. “Ohhh, it’s okay. The men are working on it now. It’ll be fine.” The power was out for a couple of hours. There were some issues with getting more mojitos made (the juicer was electric). Squeezing of lemons and limes were done by hand, in the back yard. We lit candles. We kept eating the food David had cooked. We all got kind of drunk. The ice melted in our drinks. The kids were all pig-piled in the hot living room, having the TIME OF THEIR LIVES being soooooooo scared.

Power went back on, finally.

Sleepy sweaty children were carried home. They were worn out. From all that fear, and from all those vitamins. Hair plastered across their sweet little foreheads.

The party wound down. David was going to give me a ride to the train (now back up and running) – but we had missed one of them, so I had an hour to wait for the next one. David and I sat in the darkness of the backyard, and had this unbelievably intense conversation. Hard to describe. We got “right to it”, as we say. In 2 seconds flat. Great stuff.

He sees things in me that I have a hard time seeing in myself.

I suppose the same is true for him.

He gave me a lot to think about, actually. We sat at the deserted train station, waiting. The heat had not broken. The night was sticky, smudgy, and the moon took your breath away. Almost full, enormous, blurred out across the sky – like Edvard Munch would paint the moon. Put my head on David’s shoulder, my old old friend, and we waited for the train to come in.

He sees my flaws, my faults, my vanities, my problems … and doesn’t judge. He doesn’t get impatient. He doesn’t scorn me, for not being perfect, or for being difficult.

We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. The night was a blessing.

Another thing that was a weird blessing this weekend – is a writing surge I’ve had. I slept for 4 hours on Saturday night, woke up early early, and wrote for a couple of hours until I had to go meet my friend at the Guggenheim. And I came home last night, and wrote for a couple hours more.

The John Wayne dream prevented me from writing this morning … but I’ll get to it.

Brain buzzing with ideas. Well, that’s nothing new. The brain is ALWAYS buzzing. But it’s when the fingers start itching to write it all down that the process gets going, and you can get out of your own way, and actually produce something.

Without itchy fingers, the ideas in the brain are worthless.