You know? Remember adolescence? The almost romantic near-excitement of discovering your capacity for narcissistic introversion? Of convincing yourself that being depressed and lonely made you mysterious and important? The constant internal battle between the urge to cry/scream/“emote,” and the urge to dwell/ruminate/fester? Remember feeling invincible after concluding that your freakishness set you apart, that your loneliness made you pure and untouchable?

Remember the close bonds you formed with high school friends, when most of your conversations consisted mainly of the following topics:

1) lamenting how dumb/ugly/awkward/lonely you were yourself, and

2) convincing the rest of your best friends that their self-doubt was unfounded?

And then, remember that fateful day when you realized how dark and tedious and repetitive these discussions were, and having to find something else to talk about? Yeah, remember realizing that depression and gloom were, in fact, boring?

OK, I just waaaay over-simplified my high school experience and demeaned some very true friendships and emotions. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, so as much as part of me is in the mood to whine about my angst, another part of me is really not in the mood for schmaltzy, self-indulgent crap. So, I’ll tell you a story instead.

Someone snapped their fingers and turned summer into autumn. The first thing to change was the smell of the world. Balmy summer honey gave way to fiery fall crispness, which I far prefer anyway, so to whomever decided this abrupt change in seasons, cheers.

Today’s weather is overcast and rather cool, and it was showering a bit before. Big, friendly drops, spaced almost enough to allow dodging between them, falling lazily straight down from the cement-colored clouds.

If I could choose to be anywhere right now, I’d be smoking a cigarette on Bob’s back porch, crouched on the patio and squinting to scan his Vermont estate.

Bob is an angelic benefactor to a Vermont summer theatre where I used to work, an experience which contributed to my life more than I can say. Bob is … Well, if Bob can be compared to anyone, he would be compared to a very smart Forrest Gump. Wherever Bob shows up, good things happen. When you are at Bob’s house, picnicking on his lawn, friends you never expected to see will emerge from the hills like Smurfs from their toadstools.

Bob is a wealthy, elderly investment banker who works from home, and spends his days mowing his 250-acre “lawn,” taking care of numerous adopted/inherited pets (including the flock of wild ducks that have imprinted themselves on him and that return to his estate every summer, a couple of cats inherited from friends who passed away or actors who weren’t allowed animals in their apartments, and fish in his 6 filtered ponds,) and making his friends happy. He holds cookouts and parties for the theatre events, and openly offers his beautiful home to young people in need of a rent-free place to live and get on their feet or out of the woods. He has hosted my friends Piper, Amanda, and Milena when they were in need of a home, always with the most gentle, generous, and unobtrusive of intentions. Really, he is an angel.

He’s also really fun. His house is perfect for parties, what with the huge yard, the many ponds, the hammocks, the grill, the goddamn MOVIE SCREEN in the living room… The summer of 2001, he hosted the final cast party of the season, and the whole company went to his place to eat, dance, and get drunk.

(Hey: if you ever have a chance to party with a bunch of over-exhausted drama queens in desperate need of alcoholic recreation, oh do it! Such PARTIES, my friends. I was an intern and an apprentice when I worked there, which meant I worked my ass off with 20 other fledgling actors, building/painting/destroying sets, hanging lights, sewing costumes, designing children’s theatre sets, etc., on minimal sleep and with negligible recognition, for less than peanuts. There is no party more satisfying than that which is thrown as your only tangible form of payment. We went all out for these events. Despite their location in the Vermont countryside, i.e. in the mud and the trees, we would get as gussied up as possible, toil for days over what costume to wear [sparkles, silk, or wings?], what props were necessary [cigarette-holders, champagne flutes, full bottles of tequila, harmonicas?], how to become as faaaaabulous as possible for a full night of all-out fairylike debauchery.)

Anyway … the party in question … (and here’s where I switch spontaneously into present-tense narrative …)

I look like I belong at some bizarre hippie ball. I’m wearing this long, slinky black dress with amber sparkles, which I’ve slit up the side so that I can wear it like a glorified tunic with my jeans. I’m wearing Amanda’s silver sparkle belt and orange flip-flops. My hair (which was way shorter back then) is fro-ing around my head in an uncontrollable halo of homemade henna and highlights, and I’m without any makeup, jewelry, or underwear. I’m also drinking copious amounts of very tequila-heavy margaritas, and I’m dancing and bonding with my friends on Bob’s stone patio. The grill’s a-firin’, the beer’s a-foamin’, the moon’s a-glowin’, and I’m a-buzzin’.

After an unexpectedly deep conversation (which, in retrospect, I realize wasn’t “deep” so much as “drunk”) with my friend, Nick, I find myself in my own private circle of ONE on the porch. So happy. So loved. So drunk. Obviously, I decided that it is the ideal time for a swim. Yes, indeedy. Drunken night swimming all by myself. Always a great idea.

So, Luvabeans the drunken hippie fairy flips her floppy way off the porch, hops over the stream, clumsily scales the rock wall, and meanders over a few hills and valleys to the pond furthest from the house. There, she disrobes, leaving her ridiculous outfit in a carefully chosen spot of moonlight, and goes for a swim. There is a bonfire raging just over a nearby rock wall, and company members are drinking and carousing around it, well within hearing distance. So, I know I’m safe.

I love midnight skinny-dipping. I love water, I love being outside at night, and I hate hate hate bathing suits. My theory is that everyone looks better naked than they do in a bathing suit. Seriously. If you have a less-than-perfect body, the suit will just squeeze you like sausage casing, and cause any negligible amount of fat you may have to spill out in the least flattering areas. It is so much better to be without that. If you’re in the 1% minority that looks amazing in a bathing suit, then … think about it … you must look fucking incredible without it. So, boycott bathing suits. End of soapbox tirade.

Anyway, so I’m swimming. The water is perfect, the air slightly cool, the night is clear, and I know exactly where I put my clothes. Yup, I know …exactly … um … but I … I just swam in a straight line … I just swam in a … a little circle … I put them by that rock … no … that? Rock? Clothing? Shit.

For the record, I have never, never been able to swim in a straight line, even when sober, even in the daylight, even if I had a giant magnet attached to my head being pulled towards its pole on the exact opposite side of the pool. I used to swim into the wall at camp, and get tangled in the barrier-ropes at the beach. I’m also not very good at keeping track of things, even if they’re securely on my body.

So.

Cut to Luvabeans emerging cautiously from the pond and jogging several times around its circumference, in desperate search for her clothes. (God, I hate referring to myself in the 3rd person …)

I’m loping in a weird, drunken combination of tiptoe and sprint … you know, like a football player running through a tire course … yeah, except I’m totally uncoordinated, I’m wasted, I’m cracking up and trying not to panic or attract the attention of the nearby bonfire-carousers, and I’m NAKED.

After getting disgracefully muddy, and almost convincing myself that I’m going to have to swallow my pride and elicit help from my friends over the rock wall, I stumble over my clothes. They are also disgracefully muddy. I get dressed and galumph back down the hill to the party, damp, dirty and disheveled, looking like a crackwhore that fell asleep in a trunk in Hell’s Kitchen and woke up, bleary-eyed, in the countryside.

Needless to say, I keep drinking and regale the rest of the company with my tale of misadventure.

TA-DAHHHH!!!

Whew. I feel a bit better. Nothing like a naked story to shake a depression.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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