Charleston, Chewed - Part 6

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Tiffany and I were still in a hazy reverie, deciding exactly where we would place our retirement shack on this beach, when Terry and Nina trotted up, ready for adventure or at least something that didn’t involve sitting in a hotel room and trying to figure out how the remote for the TV worked. We waved them in the general direction of the Tiki hut and the cocktail cruise director that we had the slight crush on, and they scampered forth.

I suddenly realized that I had left something very important up in the room. Exactly what that was, I don’t remember at this point, but I do recall that an item of inestimable importance beckoned me back into the building. This proved to be a critical error on my part, as the remaining three members of our party were left unsupervised for a short period of time.

I was gone mere seconds, swear.

When I returned, the territory we had staked near the fancy surfboard table was completely empty. Instinctively, my eyes swiveled to the Tiki Hut bar. Nope, I didn’t recognize any of the well-lubricated fools currently engaged in an impromptu limbo dance using some jammed-together stir-straws as a pole.

I scoured the surfboard table, hoping that at least one of them had had the proper etiquette to leave a clever note advising of the new location for the social engagement, elegantly written out on fancy, quality-stock stationery. Such a missive was not to be found.

What the hell?

Then, amidst the keening cries of the gulls, I noted a slightly-higher-decibel squeal that I knew from past experience was a satisfied noise that Tiffany could make whilst doing something that she found pleasing. I pivoted ocean-wards, scanning the shoreline, and my eyes settled on a clump of people currently frolicking in the lapping waves, plastic cups held over their heads in the universal symbol of people partaking in an activity they would normally shun if there hadn’t been alcohol involved.

Skanks. They couldn’t wait two minutes for me to take care of personal matters so that we could all virginally plunge into the sea as one? God.

I immediately turned and marched back to Julie the Tiki Cruise Director in her little hut. I was apparently behind the game in the inebriation circle of life, and dramatic steps must be taken. “I need something strong, please. I need to go slap some people.”

Julie just smiled and shoved an icy cup at me. She dealt with this every day. No big. Next?

I snatched up the beverage, gulped down a healthy slug, and tromped across the deck toward one of the little stepped entrances to the actual beach.

Then I encountered the sand, and plans changed. One cannot march in outrage across ground that is not stable. One cannot march at all. I was soon slithering about in shifting quartz molecules that were intent on knocking me facedown. And when I sloshed a wee bit of my adult nectar out of the cup? Well, we were done with the Little Eva trudging across the tundra business. I’d get there when I got there.

Hours later, I struggled up to Terry, Tiff and Nina, and discovered that Tommy and Christie (parents of the son that we were all supposedly here to watch graduate from The Citadel) had apparently been air-lifted in at some point. They were all having a swell time at the waterline, wriggling their shoeless toes in the gently-crashing waves, and talking about, I don’t know, things that you discuss when your feet are wet.

I tried to participate in the conversation as much as I could, with all of them jabbering away and performing content-enhancing hand gestures, but I had been out of the loop too long and didn’t have the necessary background intel. They had moved beyond me.

So I decided to take off my own shoes and wander about in the cresting surf, which was really enjoyable at first, but quickly loses it’s luster when you are holding aloft both footwear and beverage-wear. Too many things to keep under control. I was about to hurl my shoes further up on the sand and let the gulls do what they may with them, when I spotted a couple off to the left, playing Frisbee in the water.

This was a guy and a girl, neither of them giving the impression that they were old enough to drive. But they certainly understood the fundamental mechanics of anatomy and, more strikingly, the public display of such. The Girl was clearly invested in doing everything she possibly could to test the structural integrity of her bikini top, leaping about and waving her arms madly. The Guy insisted on pawing at his drenched crotch with a frequency that would make hummingbirds pause in wonder.

As the Girl euphorically tossed the Frisbee with complete randomness, some mystical thing suddenly took place that I didn’t catch, and they immediately lost interest in the flying disc, instead choosing to run towards one another and start shoving tongues wherever physically possible, waves crashing over them as they lowered to the frothy sand.

The forgotten Frisbee sailed over my head, plunked into the water, and then bumped against my legs a few seconds later. I picked it up, pondering if I should suggest to the couple that it could be used as a primitive diaphragm.

“Hey, where’d you get that?” asked Tommy, as if I was waving about the Hope Diamond.

“It just came floating up,” I responded secretively, then turned and threw the disc as far as I could in the opposite direction of Burt and Deborah in their frantic From Here To Eternity juvenile bumping. I could hear the water splashing over the child fornicators turn into steam as the disc gently landed and skidded to safety.

Tommy gave me a thumbs-up for my gliding skills, then turned back to the thatch of people on the shoreline, conversing. It seems that Priority 1 was now the pursuit and conquering of food. Where could we find sustenance?

No one was immediately sure. But all agreed that it would be a splendid plan to march forth from the hotel and analyze the profferings of Main Street Folly Beach. Various intriguing options had been spied on the journey in, all of them located on the mere wisp of town acreage on the other side of the hotel. Surely satisfaction was within walking distance. Cheers of agreement arose.

Thusly the clan did depart. Shoes were gathered and a trek across the beach ensued.

I paused, and glanced briefly at the nuptial ground where the young lovers had shared forbidden fruit for all to see. They were gone, even the indentations chastely erased from the sand by the forgiving waves. I looked the opposite way, and there was the Frisbee, dry-docked, alone and forgotten. A symbol of the ways and means we manipulate objects and people and then toss them aside.

Okay, it was machine-formed plastic. But I never want to be that Frisbee. You?

I turned and followed the others to the hotel deck. From my lagging vantage point, I studied the outfits of my companions, in case something went terribly wrong on the streets of Folly Beach and I had to identify them in a police lineup…


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