lexBlog

« Gettin Bikini-Ready! | Main | Some Pics from St. Martin »

Tue, April 5

April is Empty!

My dad told me today that my blog was blank. I freaked out for a moment, thinking that perhaps the server failed me and all my entries were lost. Or perhaps that as punishment for not blogging in so long while I was away, the blog packed its bags and took a bus to Arizona. But phew, dad explained that since my blog is organized by month, and I hadn't written yet this month, “April was empty”.

No more! With this entry I will help to fill lonely April.

Just when I thought I knew this city like the back of my hand, the subway up and starts acting funny and making me feel like that time when Gillian and I snuck off to NYC in eighth grade. We didn't know the subway from Adam but knew that it was a dangerous place where HOMELESS PEOPLE!!! and KIDNAPPERS!!! dwelled, so we pretending we spoke French in case anyone asked us for directions. Too bad we didn't know French past "Non" and "Oui". We figured, how many trains could there be, and hopped on a random train hoping it would bring us to Soho. I knew we were in trouble when I noticed we were going over a body of water...To Coney Island.

Anyway, that is how I felt tonight on the 6 train from 86th and Lex, coming home from seeing Jonathan Safran Foer read at the 92nd St. Y. I thought I'd get dropped off at Broadway Lafayette, but ended up in China Town. Those darn "skips stop" trains! Damn construction!

You know how sometimes when you hear an author read from his book, namely when he's reading the protagonist's voice, and it ruins it because every time you try to imagine the character speaking, you can only hear the author's voice? Well, in the case of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", hearing Jonathan speak in the voice of his nine-year-old protagonist elevated the words. They sounded better coming from his voice, than just imagining the character's voice. What a book, and I'm only on page 40.

Ok, the vacation scoop:

My tan is not too faded yet. We returned from sunny St. Martin on Friday night, well, with the plane delay it was more like Saturday morning (4:30 a.m.!)

I had the best time with J and my family. Every dinner was like a party. We drank and ate and toasted and ate, and had after dinner drinks and dessert and ate, and went home happy. Every day we watched a perfect sunset. J would take Ash to get himself a drink while she drank pineapple juice at the bar on the beach before dinner while I showered. At the beaches, he'd pick her up off the lounge chair and run into the water as she kicked and screamed. The day he was scheduled to leave (he left early in the week), she said, "Now who will I play with?"

Hey, that's what I was wondering too!

On the first night, we were serenaded by a guitar-playing guy named Matteo at the restaurant. He made me sing "I Will Survive" to the whole restaurant, and I shook a maraca to all the parts of the song I couldn't remember.

On the second night, J and I tried to sample some of the nightlife in Maho Bay. Last year, I had met some college guys at my hotel and they took me to some of the clubs in that part of the island. It was a different season, and probably much later in the night when I went last year. This year the party didn't even begin to get started until we pulled out of the parking lot. We did watch the planes land literally twenty feet away from our view by the water's edge at one of the clubs.

My family went to the Butterfly Museum, where we got a very guided and detailed tour and watched butterflies mate. One butterfly took turns sitting on our fingers. We were advised to dip our fingers in orange juice, which would attract a butterfly from a mile away.

J, my dad, and I went scuba diving with a group, on two sixty-foot dives. It was my first dive since being certified, and I was surprised that there was no real preparation like when I was taking dive lessons. Everyone, as soon as they jumped into the water, was just told to go down. Normally I would have been nervous, as the dive instructor in Mexico had us make all these hand signals to prepare for our descent, but this time I was just like, "OK. I'm going down."

Everything was fine until we dove near a sunken tugboat, and swam through its windows. I felt like my tank had stuck in one of the windows, and pushed my hands against the boat to get through...A sharp pain like really spiky teeth biting in to my hand burst through me. I didn't know what had happened or how the hell to tell anyone about it. I obsessively checked my hand to see if it would swell into the size of a balloon, and asked my body if it had just been poisoned and whether or not I'd lose consciousness shortly. I motioned to J but he didn't get it, and just nuzzled his mask against mine. I tried to tell my dad, but he thought I was asking what time it was (I was pointing to where I really got stung, my wrist). Finally, the dive master seemed to know what was up. He rubbed sand from he ocean floor on my wrist, and later, pulled me down to one of those sea plans that looks like a large human brain, and rubbed sticky stuff on me. It seemed to help. I later found it was fire coral, and when I told my brother Justin, he told me the best thing would have been to pee on it.

Humph.

Before J left, we visited a little island that you have to take a boat to. It feels like a private paradise (though over the years, the cruise ships have been slowly overtaking it, the dorky passengers all snorkeling together in big t-shirts, in one tiny sectioned off area, and scaring away all the fish). Thankfully it was a quiet day when we went this time. J and I walked to the more unexplored part of the island, separated from the beach by what looks like a desert wasteland. We took pictures and watched the surf. It was the kind of moment that as you're living it you tell yourself to remember it and save that moment for a dreary day in April in the city or when you're stuck waiting on line in noisy Whole Foods. Just picture those waves.

We had lunch and celebrated dad's birthday with a brownie dessert, as bikini clad French girls sang happy birthday.

Dad, Ash, J and I went snorkeling and fed bread to the fishes. We were rewarded with a swarm of big gray fish, yellow and black striped ones, and needle-nosed fish that followed J and I wherever we swam long after the bread was gone.

After J left, Ash cultivated a profound fear of roaches. When we had dinner at the harbor in Marigot, she saw one scurrying along the boardwalk and literally climbed on top of my dad, to the highest point (his head), screaming to get away from the roach. From that point on, she insisted on being carried whenever we were by the dock.

One day we decided to try a new beach. This Rasta type guy ran the beach bar there, and shouted at us "Hercules is on his way!" every time he picked up a beach chair or umbrella. He had a pet iguana that he let all the children hold, and I even had a turn with it for a few minutes. When the iguana got restless, I went to the guy to return it. He picked it up and dropped it INTO HIS PANTS. His bathing suit shorts. Nothing between the iguana and his manly flesh.

Gross.

I said to him, "Good thing that iguana was crawling all over me". He didn't get my sarcasm and wore an expression of sincere "Yes, you are lucky that this iguana has touched my genitals and climbed all over your skin, yes you are."

(Shiver of repulsion).

Need I mention that we had to swat flies the entire time we ate?

Maybe I was too young the past ten years we've been going there, but I'd never realized that they served rum shots at the end of every meal there. Dad and J enjoyed them, but after the third day of rum after my salad, I was done with it.

Anyway, it is good to be back.

On Saturday, J, Chien and I went to Gramercy Tavern for a drink. I had a pear cobbler martini, which was delicious but not very alcoholic. I was starving, because as usual I was eating at 10pm and hadn't eaten since noon. Thank goodness for the salty nuts (and I'm not talking dive bar nuts, these were fancy cashews and pecans and walnuts in a delicious saltysweet coating) at the bar. Chien left when J and I were seated. The artichoke salad had real artichoke hearts instead of the grated raw artichoke you sometimes get in those salads. J had these huge fresh smoked sardines, that I said "ew" to until I tasted it. I had a fish stew as my entree that smelled amazing when we were sitting at the bar and the guy next to me was eating it (I am a sucker for saffron), but was so full for some reason I couldn't eat more than a bite or two.

When I went to the bathroom, I heard giggling and two women's voices in the stall next to me. I had an inkling that these must be the girls in ripped T-shirts and bleached hair that had shared a very intimate embrace when they greeted each other at the bar earlier. One girl made a "pssssssss" sound like she was trying to make the other girl pee. I was like, "This is Gramercy Tavern! You're eating in the back room (that's the stuffy part, while J and I were in the front room)! Have some class!" When I got back to our table, I told J we had to watch to see who would exit the lady’s room. Lo and behold it was the giggling ladies. So here's a poll: Were they doing coke or the hanky panky?

Our carbon monoxide detector just went off. For the record, in case I do not wake up tomorrow, we figured there is no carbon monoxide, the battery just needs to be changed. All of us are too lazy to get a new battery and test this theory.

Cross yer fingers!

Posted by lexzog at April 5, 2005 12:12 AM

Comments

Post a comment