The Longest Day: Part Four

For the past three days, I have been recounting a busy, happy day of a past weekend. It began with an unreliable handyman, continued with a self-help workshop, and developed further with a birthday dinner. Where I left off, we were looking to push the good times a little further with a nocturnal visit to the beach. Today, reader, you are to be commended for sticking around all the way to the thrilling conclusion.

I had been advised that a swim might actually take place, and so I had come prepared with my trunks and a towel. I need not have. We drove a short distance, parking a just a little way from the beach itself. Some people who had not been part of the prior festivities met us there, and informed us of police who were "busting heads" after finding some underage drinkers on the beach, which was officially closed. We did the sensible thing after hearing that: going back to the perpendicular street behind us and walking a block or so further to circumvent the authorities.

We had on hand all the things that make a night on the beach magical. There were good friends, acoustic guitars, cigarettes and unidentified beverages ensconced in brown paper bags. I partook directly only of the first two, but indirectly enjoyed the second two in the form of more cheery companions. We walked out onto the sand and took over a lifeguard tower which announced that no life guard was on duty. During years past of greater prosperity I assume that it was manned, and not simply a cruel, expensive trick played on swimmers in trouble.

 With the gentle strumming of our friends' guitars and the smoke of the aforementioned cigarettes both in the air, we all relaxed and luxuriated in this illicit, stolen trip to the beach. I enjoyed a very pleasant conversation with a lovely woman about our respective experiences in Florida. I had spent summers in my father's hometown of Gainesville and gone many times to Crescent Beach. She had grown up in Jupiter, and was inclined towards other beaches. I found it to be a stimulating discussion. Other, shorter ones filled in the time. I enjoyed it very much, and was quite sorry to cut it short, but knew that I'd better go in the car that had taken me or else take the chance that I would offend unnecessarily by bumming a ride from someone I didn't know so well.

The drive home started with more navigation-related anxiety. It took us some figuring before we got onto a highway which led us to a familiar freeway, at which point it was all good. Reader, you'll recall I mentioned how tired we were hours earlier. By this time, we were positively giddy with exhaustion. That's the state of mind you're in when some of the funniest conversations you'll ever have happen. So it was tonight, when some things I won't repeat provoked in us loud, endless peals of laughter. My seatmate in the back kept falling asleep, and while he proved to be just awake enough to hear the laughter, in the moment I kept looking at him and regretting that I didn't have the heart to shake him awake so that he might enjoy the joke as well.

Finally we got back to North Hollywood, and the sleepy guy took me the rest of the way to my place. I stayed away long enough to finish the food I had taken from the restaurant in a box and read with amusement the Facebook and Twitter updates being sent by people whose company we had just left. So it was that the day ended quietly and gently in my bedroom, with the smell of microwaved hamburger and the sound of a TV show both in the air as I succumbed to the advances of the Sandman.

Tomorrow: Something else!