Twice the Age, Infinitely More Experience
I have a subtle competitiveness that most don’t seem to notice. Or, if they do notice, they seem to call it something else more along the lines of “let the other person win.” Of course, that’s not actually the case, but in my long and eventful life, I’ve learned that when somebody is really good at something, and they are able to completely trounce you, you have much less incentive to continue competing with that person in that event. The problem here is that I like competing in events in which I do well, but if I do too well, whomever I am competing against will stop competing if they feel they have no chance at beating me. So often times I won’t go all out, which leads many people to believe that I am mediocre at best in many areas.
I lavish in the thought of people calling me mediocre, it makes it just that much easier to for me to impress people; making other people have low standards of you is very important to impressing them. That’s horrible life advice, but when it’s just you and a ten year old competing for the coveted title of “Best Diver at Jake’s Parent’s Marina’s Pool Party,” I pull out all of the stops. Allow me to explain.
I was driving back from the Reel Big Fish concert in Virginia Beach. Jake had told me that Faye and Jessie were leaving from the DC area at 4pm for his marina. I left allowing myself a little over four hours for the three hour trip. Unfortunately, it seemed as if I was a harbinger for bad traffic over the weekend and the three hour trip once again turned into a little over a five hour journey.
Being the smart guy that I am, however, I had the foresight to pack for Jake’s boat just in case I went directly from the beach to his boat. Somehow I managed to half ass this packing process. I guess I didn’t seriously think that I would actually be making the direct journey and that was enough excuse to pack poorly. All I brought in addition to the clothes that I had for my trip down for the concert was a bathing suit. Not another change of clothes that I would need on Sunday, not a towel, simply a bathing suit.
I made a pit stop in Fairfax to pickup my sunglasses that I left at my Fourth of July celebration, which was not so much a pit stop as it was an extra 90 minutes of travel time. I arrived at the boat at around six in the evening which made the entire trip a little over six hours. I have been to Jake’s boat several times before so I walked directly to it thinking that he, Faye, and Jessie would be on the boat. They were not and instead I was greeted by Jake’s parents. Interestingly enough, Jake’s mom has the same type of watch as me, which read beer thirty. I think I downed two beers before Jake and crew came back ten minutes later.
We all continued to drink and talk on the boat. It was an absolutely beautiful day, sunny and warm with a nice breeze, but best of all, there was no humidity.
The marina festivities, which were the sole reason that I made the trip to the boat, didn’t start until eight. We had no problem killing time until then; time just flies when you’re drinking beer.
At eight we moved to the pool of the marina to help tap the kegs; literally. They were having trouble getting the tap into the keg of Yuengling, so Jake and I being the experts we are with tapping kegs of Yuengling offered our services. Well, Jake did, I didn’t offer to help since there was another keg close by that was already tapped. I offered to help that person pour the first heady beer off the top of the keg. Jake didn’t have much luck with the troublesome Yuengling keg, so he came and offered his beer drinking services to the person with the already tapped keg.
Of course, the food didn’t start until eight thirty so we did what we do best, drink. We were walking back to some lawn chairs where Faye and Jessie had shacked up and Jake nonchalantly told me that he had had a conversation with Faye and she told Jake that he was to make sure that she and I didn’t make out. Of course, I realize that I’m a sexy bastard and that all girls want to make out with me, but Jake declined to help her and instead said he would do just the opposite and encourage me to hook up with her.
Normally there wouldn’t be an issue with hooking up on a boat. I mean, that’s sort of the whole point of going out on a boat – there are tight quarters and it gives you an excuse to sleep very close to certain people. The problem here was that Faye was not single; she has a boyfriend who was at the time in Egypt or some other such country. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this, unfortunately, I have met her boyfriend, so man-laws come into play. I think there’s a loophole there since I met Faye before I met her boyfriend so I might actually be exempt from the man-law; however, I wouldn’t be exempt from my conscious. I don’t think I could cuckold somebody and then look at him in the face and pretend nothing happened.
I made a comment later in the night that insinuated just that point. I mentioned how it sucked that Jake had Jessie to hook up with (as they have been doing for sometime), but it was somewhat unfair that I couldn’t hook up with Faye. When I made that statement I could have sworn that I saw a look of hurt of Faye’s face, although that may have just been my drunken ego playing out. In either case, however, morals suck.
If you must know, the extent to our hooking up was that we spooned on the boat, mostly out of necessity (the boat sleeps seven, but there were eight of us). Let me tell you, it’s not an easy task to stop yourself from making out with a girl that is lying right next to you, especially when you’re still drunk. In fact, I don’t even know how I managed to make it through the night without at least one inappropriate grope.
But I digress. We walked back and had a nice chat, much of which involved Jake and I peer-pressuring Faye and Jessie to drink more wine until the food was finally ready. We ate, drank a bit more, and then finally decided we were ready for the pool. Of course, we didn’t have our bathing suits on so we had to trek back to the boat in order to pick them up and change.
We quickly scurried back, refilled our beers, and jumped into the pool via the diving board. The only people in the pool were kids in the ten year old range. We were definitely “those drunk assholes.” Jake and I put our beers near the pool, but out of the diving board splash range for easy access. After several marvelous dives, that could only be completed by drunk people, a little girl came and said we were going to have a competition and that she was going to judge it.
Jake pulled off his patented sideways back flip thingy, which is about one of the ugliest dives you’ve ever seen, but still looks pretty cool. I managed to do a 1 and a half, which I thought was pretty impressive given my level of intoxication, and the fact that the board wasn’t so much of a spring board as it was one of those cheap white boards that people have in their backyards.
Apparently our dives intimidated the ten year olds to the point where instead of trying to beat us they were just going to piss us off, so instead of trying to do a fancy dive one of the kids jumped off the side of the board to get as close to our beer as possible. This action caused our beers to be chlorine-water filled. We were upset that our beers were ruined, but happy that we managed to kick these ten year old kids’ asses.
Eventually the kids left and it was just the four of us left in the pool. We kept doing dives off the board while old people were dancing to the live music that was being played. It was quite the scene. One of the dives that I did was not so much a dive as it was me simply jumping on the end of the board as if it was a trampoline. The second time I did this the lifeguard came over and told us not to do it anymore. Apparently he didn’t want strap us into a backboard, to which Jake responded, “Don’t worry, we can strap ourselves in.”
I think this really just goes to show what a bad idea a pool party that involves alcohol and food is. The fact that we managed to go almost the entire night before we finally got a warning from the lifeguard was amazing. I guess they understand who pays their salary (note: Jake’s parents are members of the marina, everybody else with us was not, therefore, none of us actually causing problems actually pay their salaries.)
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