View current page
...more recent posts
Sleeping Around--Slacker's Travel Guide 10.8.98
The present blurs. And the past intrudes to remind us of the days that made us old.
Sun on my face, tide coming in, bar under water. Two hiking girls are escaping the island before the bar disappears completely. I hope to arrive on the island before the bar disappears completely.
(The doorbell rings, a voice explains, and two more critters join the fray. Erica, with a new boy, a new name I won't be getting tonite. Sure, have some bubbles, have a party. Doorbell rings, Marqin has a problem, can't get into
Mama D's. Marqin gets the mop and cleans bubble juice off the floor. Phone rings, LuLu say--Mr. Jim?, Yes? Marqin there? Yes, would you like to speak to him? No, just tell him he can come home now, good night. Okay, goodnight.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Marqin? What? You can go home now. Okay.
The girl who is less pretty takes my picture. It must look like I'm walking on water because the two girls look like they're walking on water, what with the bar just inches below the surface now. We are approaching each other, the
three of us, out in the middle of the harbor, walking, it appears, on top of the water, and the prettier of the two is about to speak to me, this, I can sense. Me, I'm just hoping the bar is wide enough for all of us because they're mistaken if they think I won't push them over the edge.
"You can't spend the night on Bar Island," she said, as if she were used to being taken seriously.
The next morning, having timed the tide correctly, I crossed back to Bar Harbor, and shivered for two hours until the sun was high enough to give me warmth. I waited outside in the October cold until the first door unlocked, and then I entered quickly, and was greeted by a formal waiter with a white
cloth over his forearm.
"Goodness, did you camp out last night?" He asked me.
"Yes, on Bar Island," I said.
"We got our first freeze last night," he said.
"That doesn't surprise me, I was very cold last night."
"Breakfast will make you feel better."
Coffee and blueberry pancakes on heavy china over white tablecloth. Like a proper tourist, vacationing in Maine, out of season.