12.18.13

the wild iguanas seemed comfortable in our presence

"rushdie plays backgammon, and i love, love, love backgammon," said the beautiful young attorney seated beside me on our plane from puerto rico, "so i'm hoping we can play the next time i see him." man, i thought. i was feeling pretty good about frolicking with wild iguanas and having a feral cat party and scooping a bee out of the sea, but playing backgammon with salman rushdie sounds pretty boss. i need to step up my game again.

tropical vacations for people who spend a lot of time thinking about david foster wallace are interesting propositions. mostly they aren't sinister at all, and when one is reclining on a chartered sailboat in the caribbean with some of one's best friends in the world it's easy to feel suspended forever in the sunlight like a beetle in amber. then one returns to land and is commanded by the well-intentioned but intimidating queen of the concierges to smile, to smile more broadly, to smile more broadly still you are in paradise, and one is beneath the waves in a sea of childhood-holiday-photo angst. the sea is figurative and the sailboat is real, though, so one is still doing pretty fucking well.

images of indolence are on their way; in the interim, please enjoy this photo of an iguana on a patio table. i know i do.

7 comments:

LPC said...

Yes, L. in paradise has been giving me all kinds of cognitive dissonance. The iguanas helped;).

esb said...

I'm disappointed that you're back already. Was planning to live vicariously all the way through the holidays

lauren said...

lady, if i had the cheddar to spend two weeks in the caribbean i'd buy a place in iceland. also i get weird if i'm out of the city for too long.

Rachel said...

No one should ever be allowed to tell you to smile unless they share a minimum of half your DNA.

Looking forward to more iguanas.

Hannah Mae said...

For half a second I thought the iguana was the one playing backgammon with Rushdie. Iguanas are probably pretty good at backgammon.

uncle paul said...

The thing about iguanas is that they probably do share at least half of my DNA.

Hannah Mae! I was recently wondering where you was these days, but the only social media I do now is kidchamp.

lauren said...

my commenters are the best commenters. except tom, who has yet to claim the drink i left for him at the soggy dollar.