Beach Blogging

Thank god I have internet this vacation. I can't imagine how I once survived for a whole fortnight without the joys of facebook and the blogosphere to keep me amused in between hour stretches of extensive nothingness (albeit the best kind). But things are different this vacation, different in a way that makes me wonder how long it will be before I simply opt out all together and just spend New Years at home freezing cold but happy in the company of friends.

Where am I exactly? I'm on the quaint, somewhat agrarian little Island of St. Croix in the USVI (This is fortunate, because I left my passport at college. Thank god for my Card Of Shame) where my grandpa owns a condoe in a nice little complex on the beach. It is on this beach that there resides a beach shack, and this is where our tales often begin.

But dear Bobby (canadian man who owns the place, bitchy and fabulous in the best way, actually witnessed Studio 54 in the 70s!) passed away over the course of last year. My bartender buddy JJ (great to talk to, grew up in Saudi Arabia, speaks funny possibly from all the drugs he used to do) has been MIA for at least 4 years, perhaps learning to be a gunsmith on the mainland. The cook Dawn (former hippy, always wears tie-dye greatful dead shirts and pigtails) was also nowhere to be seen today, but there is still hope for tomorrow. The shack was still open, run by some other people we know at the complex, but I doubt I will ever again spend my afternoon hours bonding with the shack crew.

This leaves me with Maggie. We apparently used to play together in the pool as toddlers, but I have no recollection of this. I do however, remember that the first time we re-met as pokemon obsessed 5th graders, we insisted on spending every moment together and actually cried when we had to part. Each year since (excluding last and maybe one or two others) we have remet again, and it's always been an interesting progression. The first year she was a hardcore tomboy, and we both just hung out obsessivley and played gameboy and pretend games on the beach. A year or two later she had opened up a bit more to skirts and purses, looked down on video games, and enjoyed talking to trees (spiritually) and running barefoot in the woods even in winter. Another year or two, her parents had seperated, and her mom had come out of the closet. The last time I saw her two years ago, she gave me a mind opening talk about gender expression v. gender, hinted at being bisexual, and stopped shaving. Today we picked up just about where we left off: sitting under a tree debating the real v. mythological nature of the female vaginal orgasm.


But once the catching up was done and the intellectual conversation lost its cause, I wondered exactly how far we had come from our inseperability of five plus years ago. Though we still both seem to genuinely enjoy the others companionship, even if it's simply for walking on the beach or reading, things may well never be the same again. When we first re-met in 5th grade, our lives seemed to run parallel to each others, making the thread that bound them even stronger and many times closely wound. But now we've both branched off and developped in about 10 different directions, and like I said, we will probably never be as close. I've seen this happen to many of my friends over the years: some things never change, some do. Reunions are always welcome and great fun, but unlike our early gradeschool friendships- we are no longer bound at the hip and have become all too seperable. And with what little wisdom I've acquired over the years I can't help but wonder- Will this happen to the friends I have now?

It's a scary thought: Only seeing those I now consider as part of my extended family only once or twice a year for a brief catch up session over coffee. I'm sure I'll have made new friends, but to think that years of quality times and deep bonding could be reduced to that. It's almost sad.


But until then I do have some good news to speak of. When Maggie has left in two days I will simply spend more time doing what I did this afternoon, and what the tropical vacation was truly engineered for: getting drunk on the beach. (shout outs to the beautiful sign at the beach shack telling anyone under 18 they cannot consume alcoholic beverages) And when that gets old, well, I guess I'll see you back home in the snow next New Years, and we better not just be catching up over coffee.