Crabs, pro-ball players, and disposable glasses.

G’s friend Mike turned thirty this weekend, and he celebrated by inviting a bunch of his friends to his mom’s beach house in Pacific City. On Saturday morning the guys went crabbing, and in the evening we celebrated. Some highlights:

G and I took the jet ski around Netarts Bay while the others were crabbing, taking occasional trips to the ocean, and around to the boats of our friends. The real fun began, though, when we decided to take the jet ski up inland, and got the intake grate of the ski so choked with weeds, G had to sink in up to his knees in muck to pry about eight dense handfuls of the crap out. Otherwise the motor would burn up, and we were four miles away from the boat ramp at this time. An earlier version of me would have gotten freaked out, but after two-and-a-half years with G, who has this kind of stuff happen all the time with great results, I just sat back and watched, my heart maintaining an even beat.

G’s friend Gaffi is generally a pretty mellow guy, a great cook, but prone to tumbling to the ground when he’s had a bit. This weekend, he fell twice, I heard: once out of the car onto the pavement, and then onto the carpeted floor on his way to bed. He got some pretty nasty rugburns all over his face, and all this happened before three p.m. He was down for the count that night.

Stretch, Mike’s older brother is 6’6”, and has a blow job story for every occasion. By the frequency of his stories, I am really surprised that I haven’t actually seen a girl do a face-plant into his lap and go to town. This weekend, he related the story of his guy friend from childhood trying to get in on the action. And also, during the crabbing portion of the day, there were four boats with guys on them – and only three crabs caught, or so we thought at the time. Stretch and his boating partners disappeared just before the rental boats were due back, and showed up hours later with seventeen more crabs. There’s sure to be a great blow job joke in there, but I’ll save it for another time.

A guy named Covington started the day out amicable and downright pleasant, but he turned out to be an Angry Steve. After a few drinks, he took to insulting everyone in his presence with what he thought were real zingers. For instance, the slight he directed at me was the simple, yet rancorous “teacup,” because I happened to be drinking out of one. Real scathing, folks. Apparently he used to be a pro ball player, though dubiously he was unable or unwilling to tell us what team he’d been on. A google search when I got back into the office turned up – you guessed it, nothing. After he fought with pretty much everyone in the house, Bureson finally slapped him, then punched him in the face, facilitating his departure.

Mike got pissed at everything, as I hear he usually does. During the crabbing jaunt in the bay G splashed him pretty good with the jet ski (he was actually trying to get Gaffi, but hey, Mike was in front of Gaffi). He was none too happy about that, understandably. But what I don’t understand follows - in the early stages of the party, when everyone was getting along and having a good time, he was wandering around in a state of irritability. Usually spending time with his brother culminates in the two of them beating the crap out of each other, but fortunately they both walked away still on speaking terms…this time.

G offered to give Mike’s mom, Francine, a back-cracking, which sent her into a prolonged fit of gasping and holding her back in pain.

Bureson and Malcolm were both attempting to catch the eye of Mike’s eighteen-year-old step-sister, and I think B won…though I’m not sure if he actually won, because by eight o’clock she was kneeling on the bathroom floor taking solace in the coolness of the toilet bowl.

Randy, Mike’s handyman at his home in Tumalo, showed up inexplicably and regaled us with his simple country boy comments. My favorite was this: He was in the kitchen with Francine
when she discovered that one of her expensive glasses had been broken. “You should throw it away,” he suggested.
“But it’s a hundred-dollar glass,” she said, dismayed.
“I wish I had a hundred dollars to throw away,” was his reply. So do I, Randy, so do I.