Part 2

Part 2

SAT JULY 15, 3 PM:

Pops and I are on our way to intercept our squad at the Lavender Festival in Sequim.

En Route, my Cousin Tenny calls on our cell phone. His connection is static charged, no doubt he’s calling from the Bering Strait.



Cousin Tenny is an Alaskan Fisherman. A Crab fisherman. He has the Charisma of Bill Clinton and the pain receptors of a Stegosaurus. If he feels pain in his body I do not believe the messages make it to his brain.

Fade in FLASHBACK:

Tenny and I were on a boat together (yeah I fished once—only once.) He was locked into a grinding thirty-six hour high-stakes poker game at in some sea salt’s trailer. His eyes were super glued open from some white powder from an Eskimo named Joo-joo.

When the Fishery Chief shot the opening flare, the boats pulled from the dock. They left whether your on board or not. It was a death race to the good fishing spots, and no Fat-livered Captain was about to lose money waiting for a hungover fisherman. As our boat hit full throttle, Tenny sprinted down the docks and lunged into our boat with a fist full of forty eight hundred clams and a jagged cut above his right eye. He punched me in the chest and said, “Good Morning pussy!”

It was stormy. Monolithic swells, grey and determined. Sea spray smacked our faces like a fist fulls of gravel. The Kraken was writhing below. My gills had turned green. I looked over at Cousin Tenny. He was still drunk from the night before, but he was swinging on the nets, with a manic Viking Smirk screaming “woo-hoooo!” Puke flopped down the front of his rain gear, but he just laughed.

Fade Out:

Anyways, he was calling to bullshit. Tenny’s bullshit is premo! It’s swisher-house bullshit. He could sell bibles to Muslims. He could convince Latino’s to be vegetarian. Given enough time, he could convince Cheney’s hunting buddy to apologize for standing in front of the gun.

The American Media machine finally taps his industry for a reality show. THE DEADLIEST CATCH:

Tenny is finally on TV. Thirty years of surviving the cruelest of professions and what does he get? Our whole family waits for hours in front of the TV to catch a glimpse of our own flesh and blood become famous. The show is almost over and he still isn’t on camera. Then in the final seconds, we see Tenny. He bends down and picks up a life preserver. The title scrawl says his name is “TERRY.” And then that’s it. Lame.

OPEN AIR MARKETS:

The Lavender Festival is like any other open air thing—white tents and kettle corn. Globalization has so successfully swallowed the world that street fairs all look the same. Individuality and authenticity are no longer a real phenomena, but mere phantasms of regional marketing executives.

Open Air Market Roll Call:

1) The Wild Honey Hippie

2) Local Wine Dude who also sells that god damn wooden “puzzle” blocking an alcoholic from getting to the good shit. This device always makes its way into an aging golfer’s timeshare condo.

3) The guy who sells those pointless windsocks.
4) The “silver jewelry lesbian.”

5) Chain saw art guy. How does he survive? Who likes that shit?

6) The bi-curious pottery freak
7) The balsamic vinegar pusher.
8) Pewter Dragon Man

Shit you should never buy.

SAT JULY 15, 5 PM:

My dad and I meet up with the gang of five. Someone announces that they’re only having one glass of white wine because they are the designated driver:

SAT JUL 15, 9 PM:

The designated driver is shit faced. My Dad and his friends have lit into the scotch. They brandish Long Morn and Glenfiddich.

One of my dad’s friends has just fallen over the bench. He fell only the way a drunk could—in slow motion. Gravity stopped working in the 2X2 foot space where he stood. He just floated up and floated back down on his head. He looked like a ship run aground.

Party Talk arrived around 10 PM. Party Talk brought with it, its friends: Sincere Discussion, Future Plans, and of course Obscene Admission. There were cries in the night of, “Ok, ok, ok, ok, just, let me say this, let me say this and then you can talk…”

But the fire and Morgelloned eyes could not drown out the view from my dad’s deck:

The sun melts into a lilac pashmina over the evergreen shoulders of Victoria, B.C..

SUN JUL 16 9 AM:

Ugly Hangovers…to be continued