when the giants come to town it's bye bye baby
I haven't slept in 37 hours.
I was in Ohio this weekend, idyllic Akron with its little wooden churches like arks overturned and vast flea markets and surprise Waffle Houses. My best friend got married yesterday. He's one of those best friends where I am pretty sure I was never in love with him and he was never in love with me, but something in the back of my mind keeps insisting that it was a very near thing.
So I watched him get married, and that was lovely. Then there was the reception and the open bar and everything that goes along with it. The story of the wedding is our friend from Seattle, who brought her Navy boyfriend along, got him (and herself) ridiculously hammered, took him down to the country club's basement to give him head, got caught (and apparently the female bartender who caught them brought like three other people down to see it), got drunker, and propositioned that same bartender to have a threesome with them as some kind of drunken revenge (the logic was not clear to me, as I was only stoned). The bartender declined; everyone in the building knew about the whole saga in like twenty minutes.
We didn't get back from the reception until three in the morning, and my flight was at six-fifteen, obviously there was no point in sleeping. Akron to Atlanta to San Francisco, the long long way home, and listening to XM radio in the air is like listening to it underwater. I was wiped out before I got on the first plane, much less the second, or the shuttle to the BART, or the BART itself, or the walk home from BART with all my gear with me.
But then! I got home, sunken-eyed, zombie-walking, just in time for the Giants game.
Oh, the Giants game. This weekend, all we needed to do to go to the postseason was beat the Padres one game out of three at home, so naturally we lost the first two. We were following the game on the iPhone everywhere we went in Ohio, me and my two best friends in their snazzy wedding suits, hunched over with our heads together in the back booth, cursing the luck and cursing Barry Zito (my lil bro informs me that I need to get a new boy--but I've invested a decade in Zito! Surely it would do no good to sell now), and swearing to each other, "they'll get it done, they'll get it done."
Normal circumstances I would have napped immediately upon arriving home, would have eaten something because Quizno's was twenty-five hundred miles ago, basically an entirely different planet. Instead I lay around with my radio and four fingers crossed on each hand, pressing my palms to the wall of my room that is closest to the ballpark, praying in that ill-defined baseball kind of way. Once the Giants had a lead, I put on John Lennon singing 'Hold On,' and played it on a loop.
And then:
VICTORY!
The Giants beat the Padres just now, and won the National League West. We're going to the playoffs for the first time in seven years. Champagne sparkling on everyone, getting in people's eyes. There are fans cheering in the lightwell, and singing the Giants fight song down in the street. I'm gonna go out and join them.
Beautiful weekend, anyway. I could be more excited, but I'll probably need to get some sleep first.
I was in Ohio this weekend, idyllic Akron with its little wooden churches like arks overturned and vast flea markets and surprise Waffle Houses. My best friend got married yesterday. He's one of those best friends where I am pretty sure I was never in love with him and he was never in love with me, but something in the back of my mind keeps insisting that it was a very near thing.
So I watched him get married, and that was lovely. Then there was the reception and the open bar and everything that goes along with it. The story of the wedding is our friend from Seattle, who brought her Navy boyfriend along, got him (and herself) ridiculously hammered, took him down to the country club's basement to give him head, got caught (and apparently the female bartender who caught them brought like three other people down to see it), got drunker, and propositioned that same bartender to have a threesome with them as some kind of drunken revenge (the logic was not clear to me, as I was only stoned). The bartender declined; everyone in the building knew about the whole saga in like twenty minutes.
We didn't get back from the reception until three in the morning, and my flight was at six-fifteen, obviously there was no point in sleeping. Akron to Atlanta to San Francisco, the long long way home, and listening to XM radio in the air is like listening to it underwater. I was wiped out before I got on the first plane, much less the second, or the shuttle to the BART, or the BART itself, or the walk home from BART with all my gear with me.
But then! I got home, sunken-eyed, zombie-walking, just in time for the Giants game.
Oh, the Giants game. This weekend, all we needed to do to go to the postseason was beat the Padres one game out of three at home, so naturally we lost the first two. We were following the game on the iPhone everywhere we went in Ohio, me and my two best friends in their snazzy wedding suits, hunched over with our heads together in the back booth, cursing the luck and cursing Barry Zito (my lil bro informs me that I need to get a new boy--but I've invested a decade in Zito! Surely it would do no good to sell now), and swearing to each other, "they'll get it done, they'll get it done."
Normal circumstances I would have napped immediately upon arriving home, would have eaten something because Quizno's was twenty-five hundred miles ago, basically an entirely different planet. Instead I lay around with my radio and four fingers crossed on each hand, pressing my palms to the wall of my room that is closest to the ballpark, praying in that ill-defined baseball kind of way. Once the Giants had a lead, I put on John Lennon singing 'Hold On,' and played it on a loop.
And then:
VICTORY!
The Giants beat the Padres just now, and won the National League West. We're going to the playoffs for the first time in seven years. Champagne sparkling on everyone, getting in people's eyes. There are fans cheering in the lightwell, and singing the Giants fight song down in the street. I'm gonna go out and join them.
Beautiful weekend, anyway. I could be more excited, but I'll probably need to get some sleep first.