friday, tuesday, ... what's the difference?

it's friday. yaay. but it doesnt' really feel like a friday. something's off. it really feels like a tuesday, or even a wednesday. so there's something i didn't stick in here earlier: i strained my back over the weekend and spent most of the week at home, on my back. suppine. so the last few days sucked like an industrial strength hoover. it's still not completely back to normal.

i was looking forward to doing some hiking this weekend. methinks i'll do a quick hike tomorrow. i don't get to take my fancy new backpack up though (i keep discovering new pockets in the thing each time i use it). sometimes i'm tempted to simply have a portion of my paycheck wired directly to rei.

and my all-time hero rajini is back. my life will never be the same now that i've discovered this site. i miss sitting 4 feet away from the screen in a theater packed with people screaming, jumping and generally exhibiting symptons of advanced nitrogen-induced narcosis.

given that i wasn't really a part of civilization this week, i'm a little starved for things to say. so i'm going to cheat and stick in a little story i wrote a few years ago. it's a bit corny. but you'll live through it.


Seagulls See More Than They Let On

One side of the ticket said 'W003' in slanted script. Nothing on the other side indicated what the arcane symbols on the reverse meant. Yuri turned the ticket over a couple of times just to make sure that there wasn't anything else on it.

"What do you expect to find there?" Susan cut in sharply, "A user manual for the ticket? Maybe they'll consider putting pictures on the ticket. What the heck does the ‘W’ stand for?”.

Yuri turned in his seat to look at her. His legs were sore from sitting cramped up in her two-seater sports car. He wanted to stretch his legs, he craved fresh air, he needed to get out of the influence of the wretched unremitting thumping that pulsed out of the speakers and he desperately needed to get to the men's room. A steady throbbing in the back of his head reminded him that they'd had to forego lunch in their hurry to make the last ferry. The tequila from last night didn’t make things any better. He hadn’t had time to pack, just barely enough time to throw a few things into a bag and run out to the car. He tried to stretch but gave up when he felt a sharp pain in his back and slouched down lower in the seat with a small sigh.

Susan stared back at him defiantly, daring him to retort. "So mastermind, cracked the code as yet? Or is your back still hurting and stopping you from thinking?”

Yuri marveled that she could pout, frown, snap at him and still get away with it. Susan was the nicest person he knew except when she was mad at him.

"Umm ... I have a feeling that the ‘W’ stands for Waitlist. I could be wrong though. I’m sure we’ll get on this ferry." he said in a hesitant murmur, almost to himself.

"Waitlist? You mean like a list of people who may not get on the ferry?" - It was more a scream than a question - "you mean to tell me that we went through all that to get on the waitlist for this crummy ferry? You have got to be kidding me here. That's ridiculous, there's no way I'm not getting on that ferry today. Stop sitting there with that stupid look on your face; ask that guy what the ‘W’ stands for”.

Yuri rolled down the window and called out to a man in blue overalls. All Susan caught from the man’s reply was the word ‘waitlist’. She slammed her hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

"That's just great. Perfect! Sure, Mr.Smartypants knows everything. Oh look there's the ferry station. Look at the long lines for the tickets to get on the ferry. But Mr.Smartypants knows better than to drive towards the shortest line. No sir. My super-smart, technological-marvel boyfriend knows that Murphy's Law will suddenly kick in and make that line move slower. So, Mr.Know-it-all tells me to drive to a longer line because he's sure that'll move faster" she said in one continuous torrent.

Yuri squirmed in his seat and took a deep breath but Susan wasn’t done as yet. "You see that green car there? That car was behind us when we got off the freeway. He headed towards the shorter line, got a ticket before we did and pulled into that spot four cars ahead. I bet his ticket doesn't have a ‘W’ on it" she fumed.

Yuri looked away from her at the steel-blue water lapping the pier. A solitary white seagull speckled with grey sat on a railing near the car and began to inspect its feet. And to think this was supposed to be a romantic long weekend. Just what they needed to get their relationship back on track again - lazy walks on the beach and leisurely ferry rides. He wanted to make the ferry too, wanted to have time with her away from the rest of the world but Susan was reacting wildly for something that wasn’t really his fault. He’d never given her roses before; he’d always thought it corny but he’d arranged to have a hundred roses waiting for her in their room when they checked into the hotel.

"Bird watching now? Tell you what Yuri, if that moron in the green car gets on the ferry and we don’t, I'll ... I'm going to ... I don't know but it'll be really bad. We can’t even get a refund on the hotel and I’m not spending another weekend at home watching brain-dead movies.” Susan had lowered her voice a couple of notches but was still irritated.

Yuri bit back a sharp retort and stuck his tongue out at the bird. It looked just like the pretentious puffed up bird on the cover of Susan’s dog-eared copy of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ by Richard Bach. Yuri detested the book with all his heart. He hated books with morals and he hated books that had talking animals in them. He especially hated it when Susan curled up on the couch and read passages aloud from the book which was mostly about a moralistic bird who was obsessed with the fact that he could fly. A philosopher in feathers and a yellow beak was something the world should not have to deal with.

It was still early afternoon but the sun was low in the sky. The windows on his side fogged up and the seagull went slightly opaque. He was tempted to trace patterns on the glass but knew that it would only irritate Susan further. The last time he’d tried playing nots-and-crosses on the caked dust on the side of her car she’d had a fit. The bird looked up wearily from his feet and seemed to look Yuri straight in the eye like he’d seen it all before.

“Sure buddy, stare all you want” Yuri thought to himself “I’m sure this scene looks funny from where you’re sitting. You guys have it easy; you can simply fly away if things get out of hand. I’m the one cooped up in this miserably small car”.

Yuri turned to look at Susan. Her hair was a bit tousled and a few strands of hair fell across her eyes. “Maybe if we’d started a little earlier we’d not be here with a waitlisted ticket. Yeah, maybe if we’d started earlier than noon we’d already be on the island so stop making it sound like it’s my fault. You’re the one that kept dropping off back to sleep despite my calling you every half hour trying to wake you” Yuri managed in a voice that was calm but edged with irritation.

“Now it’s my fault? Unbelievable! It’s easier to get out of bed when one hasn’t gotten hopelessly drunk at their boyfriend’s party the previous night. And the night before and the night before and the night before.” Susan cut in sharply. She continued “You didn’t seem to complain about my drinking then. In fact, I seem to remember you urging me to join you guys in your endless machismo drinking game. Or maybe you didn’t notice that I was getting a little drunk and tripped over a cable? No, how could you? You were too busy hitting on Alice”.

Yuri let a few seconds march by in military precision before he said “Your so-called friend, your best buddy was hitting on me in case you didn’t notice… and don’t think I didn’t see all the ‘friendly’ hugs you were giving Stan. Every time I turned, there you were like a pendulum off his neck. Tick-tock-tick-tock, like a metronome. What kind of a guy changes his first name anyway? Stanunathan Rama-whatever evolves to Stan in the US of A. These Indian guys try way too hard to fit in”. He continued in a sing-song voice “Hi! I am Stan and I am very humbly pleased to have made your acquaintance. I study computers and I have an elephant called Moti back home. In my spare time I like to hang out in malls looking at chicks out of the corner of my eye.”

Susan’s cheeks turned a fetching shade of red. “Yuri, this isn’t about Stan at all. Stan is the sweetest guy around. Are you accusing me of flirting with him? Why don’t you just come right out and say it like an adult instead of hiding it under all those layers of hostility? This is so typical of you. You make a vague accusation, cover it with a dozen layers of verbal icing and then you retreat into your corner before I can respond. What does his changing his name have to do with anything? You know what? I think I’ll explode if I sit in here any longer”. She got out of the car, slammed the door shut and walked towards a small low building a few dozen yards away.

Yuri cursed aloud. He wished he’d been the one to storm out; he really needed to use the men’s room. Fighting was getting to be a habit. Their relationship had pivoted around gradually till their roles were almost reversed now. Susan had been the calm, logical one while he was prone to fits of anger and tantrums. She’d taken his mood swings, his petty cynical remarks and his irritability all in her stride. They’d never had a fight the first few months when they’d started seeing each other. Gently at first but increasingly firmly she’d started to push back.

The first time they’d fought, Yuri was taken aback by how unwilling she’d been to bend. Admittedly he had to share in some of the blame. Susan had wanted him to meet her parents and invited them over to her house for dinner. She was nervous because her parents didn’t know that she was seeing someone. Especially someone whose father used to be in the Russian nuclear program and had defected to the West under dubious circumstances. Yuri was smart, would graduate with a doctorate in artificial intelligence within a year and had excellent prospects but he lacked the one quality her parents wanted in a prospective son-in-law – he wasn’t Chinese.

He was nervous and turned up a wee bit drunk. Her parents were perfectly polite but expressed their disapproval with excruciating subtle oriental tact. The dinner was a fiasco. He spilled his drink, slurred over a few words and was quick to refute everything her father expressed his opinion about. The high-point of the evening was when he pinched Susan’s behind as she walked past him carrying the dessert. The sound of the bowl hitting the carpet was drowned out by a choked gasp from her mother.

Things might still have been fine if Yuri had been a little contrite when they were clearing up after her parents had left. Instead he’d harangued her about putting him through the ordeal of meeting her obviously unsociable parents. She’d faced him then with her hands on her hips, water still dripping off her fingers onto the waxed kitchen floor with a blank look on her face. “Get out right now” she’d said softly, almost in a whisper. Nothing else, but the tone of her voice made him cringe. He sent her flowers and silly mushy poems every day for a week before she agreed to see him again.

That night marked a change in their relationship. He wasn’t as confident about her anymore, he tread warily where he used to flail about without a care, sure that she’d smile her indulgent smile and let it pass. Yuri would still sometimes push things till he sensed that Susan wasn’t going to budge further and then back down immediately. They soon found an easy rhythm that suited both of them.

Yuri was jolted out of his reverie when the door opened and Susan slid back into her seat. She’d pulled her hair back tight and her face looked freshly washed. The tiny lines of fatigue that had edged her eyes were gone.

“You should go wash your face too Yuri” she said, her voice offering a peace pipe. She reached out for his hand and squeezed it but Yuri wasn’t ready to be mollified as yet. He jerked his hand away and turned the radio off. “I don’t know how you can listen to this crap. It’s just insolent noise” he said stiffly.

“You’re going to try to blame this whole thing on me aren’t you? Whatever made me think you’d change?” asked Susan, astonished. “We would still have made it here on time if you’d helped me when we got the flat tire. The flat tire, I might add, that we got when you were driving” she continued.

Yuri laughed aloud. “You’re blaming me for the nail on the road? Are you implying that I aimed for the nail? You really are something” he managed between chuckles.

Susan let a full minute before go by she said in a strained voice “No Yuri, I was talking about what happened after; when I was trying to change the tire. Not only did you not help change the tire, you actually made it harder”.

“What do you mean made it harder? I helped figure out how to open the jack didn’t I? Why is it my fault that your fancy, cool, expensive German car has incomprehensible instructions in the manual?” Yuri said, barely holding back a laugh.

Susan continued “So you had to sit by the sound of the road and read out the instructions with that stupid German accent? That ridiculous accent that sounds like something out of those stupid B-grade war movies you force me to watch with you. You could at least have helped me pull the spare tire out of the boot”.

Yuri let that one slide by. It had seemed a funny idea then to read the instructions aloud with a guttural accent but it retrospect it struck him as being plumb dumb. He should really have helped her lift the tire at least. Instead, he’d clowned around and pretended to hitch a ride with every passing car.

He turned to look at her. Her face was flushed and a thin blue vein along the side of her neck pulsed erratically. An errant strand of hair fell across her eyes and she pushed it away with an impatient motion. He’d never seen her this mad before, had never seen her so confrontational. It was like discovering a whole new person inside someone he thought he know well. He was used to her backing down if he pushed her far enough and he wasn’t sure he knew how to handle the new Susan.

“Yuri my boy” he thought to himself “this is it - the moment of truth. Are you a man or a mouse? Sure, you made a mistake, but are you going to let her push you around like this? Are you going to back down and let her walk all over you just because you know she’s right?”

He looked again at the bird who by now had hopped to a different railing. “Hey Jonathan, help me out here. What would you do if you were me? What if you were arguing with Mrs. Jonathan Livingston? Would you poke her in the beak and fly away when she pushed you against a wall? Or would you stay and fight and argue till both of you can’t stand the sight of each other for days? No. You wouldn’t fight at all would you? You understand that there are bigger things in life. There’s more to a relationship than having the upper hand. There’s a whole universe out there and it’s nice to have someone to share it with.” The bird looked him straight in the eye and lazily lifted one wing in silent approbation.

The car in front of them started to move forward. A few hundred feet away the line of cars started entering the belly of the ferry.

“Finally! At least we’re moving now. Yuri, you realize this whole thing is dumb; and it really is your fault if we can’t get on the ferry” Susan said with an impish grin. She flared up easily but cooled down just as quickly.

Yuri looked back at her evenly. “What do you want me to do? Threaten the ferry captain with a loaf of bread to let us onboard?” he said, his characteristic flavor of dry humor barely concealed beneath the surface. Then, with an evil sneer, “No sudden moves or I’ll crumb you to death”.

Susan chortled and suddenly they were both laughing, clutching at each other in the cramped space of the car.

The line moved steadily. They were one car away from entering the ferry when a yellow-vested man held up a stop sign. He turned to shout to someone on the ferry and when he heard the reply he pulled a chain across the road and locked it in place.

“Sorry folks, that’s it for today. You can get a refund on your way out or use the same ticket tomorrow” he said while walking away.

“You know what’s really funny about this?” Yuri started.

“Yuri, shut up”.