happy hangouts
I'm coming off yet another highly social weekend—something all three days—but I don't expect there to be a lot of detail analysis going on, so hopefully I can move through it all fairly quickly.
It started with Happy Hour with Laney on Friday, for which we went back to what we did several months over the summer of 2020: meeting at the park, in this case specifically Volunteer Park. We only knew for sure last minute that she was even well enough, with her injured hip (you can see the brace she's wearing on it, in the photo above), to do it as planned on Friday; she had to cancel the last couple of things we'd had planned. In addition, I'd had reservations made for "Patio Cielo" at Mercado Luna, the Mexican Restaurant on Pine and Summit where I've long been eager to try their rooftop deck. But, that also had to get canceled because I received a text from their reservation system telling me they were closing the rooftop deck Thursday and Friday "due to extreme weather conditions"—our high on Thursday was 93° and the high Friday was 90°. It was just as well, because I don't think Laney was quite yet in great condition to climb up to the roof of a building—the idea of meeting at the park, where she could walk all of right across the street to the grassy area from where she parked her van, was much more suited for her and where she was at in her healing process.
Shobhit went to the beach earlier in the day while I was still at work; I went home slightly early and then barely had enough time to assemble drinks, make a sandwich, and walk to Volunteer Park to meet with Laney alone at first. But, Shobhit ordered a dinner to go from Araya's Vegan Thai restaurant in Madison Valley on his way back from the beach, and then joined us shortly thereafter. We were there a good couple of hours before Laney finally said she needed to get back to the house she was cat sitting at, and in spite of the air quality being poor due to wildfire smoke from British Columbia, it was quite lovely and fun and chill.
I did spill maybe a quarter of my rum-and-Cherry-Zevia-Cola onto her spare lawn chair, though. I was a little embarrassed by that. I wasn't even buzzed! She was totally fine with it, at least. She didn't seem to care that much at all.
When Shobhit arrived, as soon as he reached us he wanted me to go back to the car he had just walked from to get the blanket tote out of the trunk. What the shit? Laney said she actually had another spare chair, but I went back to her van to look for it and couldn't find it, and Laney was not in the best condition to get up and go search for it for me—I had already found the chair I was sitting in easily in the back of her van. (Laney has an injured knee, remember; she has a good excuse and Shobhit did not). When I returned and Shobhit made one final attempt to get me to go back to the car, I still wouldn't, and so he went back to get the blanket tote. Laney was like, "Oh good"—she clearly wouldn't have liked it if I had acquiesced and just enabled Shobhit's laziness.
He came back with one of, I think, three blanket totes we have in the trunk, this one our first-ever use of a woven soft-plastic one I got as a prize for something at work a couple of years ago. Its surface area once spread out (and I did help Shobhit spread it out) is quite large, much larger than either of our other blankets.
There was one moment when, probably because by this point I was getting slightly buzzed, Shobhit said, "You're being really loud." This, admittedly, happens to me occasionally when I'm drinking. Still, I was like, "So what?" It's not like we were in a restaurant here. I was in the middle of a huge grassy area at the park! There weren't even any other park goers any closer than probably fifty yards to us. The way I see it, this was another benefit to our Happy Hour defaulting to the park. It was freeing!
The social event on Saturday was actually by far the most last-minute, as Gabriel texted me at 6:37 pm to ask, shot in the dark... available to watch f5 tonight? He was referencing Fast Five, and it had been since July 10—five weeks ago!—when we had gone over to their house to watch the fourth film in the series. During one of our texts exchanges shortly after that visit, Gabriel kind of acted like I was being presumptuous to say it would likely be a long time before he would want any visitors at their house again and thus it would be a long time before we would likely visit again. But, come on, get real. It's been five weeks, and he was making it clear that very weekend that we visited that he would probably want to do the next Fast & Furious movie watch over FaceTime.
And, sure, as of July 10 the prevailing thought was that the Delta variant was still not the dominant strain in our region, which I'm sure was the biggest reason why Gabriel and his family even came to their democratic conclusion that it was okay to have inside-the-house visitors at that time. But the writing has bee on the wall regarding Delta since June, and by mid-July it was absolutely clear it would be soon upon us. And here we are, in the midst of a steep incline of a surge of cases that looks fairly likely to be the biggest one ever (the key difference being that the vast majority of them this time are among the unvaccinated), with common predictions setting its peak to occur sometime mid-September. Even I am already insisting that we not have any unvaccinated visitors in our home, and although everyone in both mine and Gabriel's household is vaccinated, Gabriel's precautions when it comes to COVID have always been far more strict than mine. Thus, just as I felt this was the case right after that last visit (which, again, was still very comfortable, very nice, and lacking in stress), I just cannot envision another in-person hangout with Gabriel for another couple of months at least. And even that's only if the case rate drops down dramatically enough once we actually hit its peak, and of course by then we'll be contending with whatever other complications the fall brings.
So. Anyway, my guess is that the next couple of movies, minimum, in our franchise watch will again me virtual, while we're on FaceTime. Which is totally fine. The biggest difference with our movie watch this past Saturday, which we finally got started on at around 8:00 after Gabriel and Lea had their dinner, was that it was the first "virtual watch" Shobhit joined in on. He had joined for watching the last one at their house, after all, and I knew he would enjoy watching this ridiculous movie. This was my first virtual watch where I played the movie on the TV in the living room instead of on my computer, and I did not use my AirPods for the movie audio because this time Shobhit was also watching. A few times during the movie we had to pause it, and getting them to sync again on either end was only slightly tedious.
And boy, was the movie ridiculous. People refer to Fast Five as this "watershed moment" in the franchise's history, but I found it to be largely more of the same, honestly, especially after the fourth one. There was a lot of gunfire exchange between large groups of people I could not keep straight, like who was firing on who and why? Fuck if I know! Once they finally got to the famous climactic scene where the signature action set piece of the movie happens, though, where Dom and Brian are driving cars that are joining dragging a giant safe through the streets of Rio de Janeiro—okay, that was fun. Utterly ridiculous, yes, but fun.
The only other notable thing I did on Saturday was take myself to see a movie, Free Guy at Pacific Place downtown, which was . . . fine. I thought Shobhit might enjoy going to see it with me, but he declined; he had work to do for his Project Management class.
I actually did two things yesterday that qualify as socializing, but they were both just with Shobhit. So, alas, only one Social Review point for the day for him! He should still be happy though, as he gets three points out of this weekend, having taken part in the time we also spent with Laney on Friday and with Gabriel and Lea on Saturday (albeit virtually).
None of them quite include Ivan this time. He worked on both Friday and Saturday nights, although we did watch an episode of The Leftovers Saturday evening. Although he just looked at his goddamned phone the last quarter or so of the episode, and completely missed a really quite important plot turn. I was like, "Did you even see what just happened?" when the episode ended, and he just replied, "What happened? Tell me."
I suppose under normal circumstances Ivan might have suggested we watch another episode last night, but he just let Shobhit choose a couple of movies to watch instead. I suspect that Ivan sensed my frustration with his suggesting we watch The Leftovers only to not actually pay attention to it, and that probably played at least somewhat into his not suggesting we watch more last night.
For Shobhit's part, he made the rather unusual decision not to watch any news programs, because "it's too depressing." Honestly my first thought was, Really? The news is depressing most of the time! But, he knew most of the news would be about the fall of Afghanistan—the Taliban taking over after the U.S. withdrawal was inevitable, but it's still pretty depressing, to be fair—and he didn't want to spend the day hearing people offer endless conjectured opinions about it. And actually, the two movies he watched were my suggestions: I told him, yet again, that he would probably enjoy The Suicide Squad, which is currently playing on HBO Max; I even sat and watched it with him, my second time. I realized that movie is easily my favorite of the DC Universe films. I realize that's a pretty fucking low bar, but still. I really enjoy that movie. I think Shobhit would have enjoyed it more, but he was tired and kept nodding off.
When it finished, he asked if there was anything else he might like that's streaming. I went to check my working movie log for the year, and came across Greenland, a Gerard Butler natural disaster movie I paid VOD to watch and review in February, and is now also on HBO Max. I knew Shobhit would enjoy that one, and he certainly did.
Anyway! All of that was after we got back for the day after the fun stuff we did. First, we went out for breakfast. Shobhit had simply asked me what I wanted to do: make something at home, or go out? I liked the idea of going out, and so Shobhit looked up several places on Yelp to decide where we wanted to go. Finally we settled on this odd bicycle shop / café hybrid place down on Jefferson called Peloton. You go in, and the first room is the café, and the next room is a bike shop. Shobhit walked in there briefly and said, "You could take your bike here." But, 20/20 Cycle is only about half a mile from home, far closer than this place, and I really like them. So I have my bike shop for now.
I would go back to that Peloton place just for that breakfast sandwich with an egg and veggie sausage on it, though. It was fucking delicious. I couldn't say the same for the chai latte I ordered, however. I should start asking people if they make their chai from a powder. We make chai out of actual loose leaf tea at home (I've gotten so good at it I do it far more often than Shobhit does anymore) and coffee shops and cafes really have cheap imitations. I should stop wasting my time and money on that shit.
We got back from breakfast, and within minutes turned around and decided to go to the lake—specifically, Howell Park, which is where the mostly gay nude beach is that I first discovered by accident several years ago and to which Shobhit now goes to regularly. This was my first time there this year, but boy, did it hit the spot in this week's weather. And, I hadn't been swimming since . . . hell, has it been two years? I don't believe I ever went last year.
It's ironic that it's after I have re-gained most of the weight I lost about a decade ago that I have finally gotten so much more comfortable in my own skin. I love getting naked at the beach, and I love getting in the water naked. I don't much mind getting to see so many other hot, young, naked gay bodies either, but that's honestly not the primary appeal. There really is something liberating about being at a nude beach.
The flip side, of course, is the dangers of the sun. I applied sunblock several times, two of them very soon after I mostly drip dried after getting in the water. We sat on our Costco blanket tote right in the sun near the shore; honestly the good number of people who came and set out their blankets in the shade of the many trees of that park (which is accessed via a couple of tree-canopied foot paths, which is what makes it work so well as a nude beach) were the smart ones. If I ever went there by myself, that's probably what I would do. But, Shobhit wanted to be in the sun.
I think I did pretty well with the sunblock, although I did read the label on the can and was struck by the warning to stay out of the sun between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.—and we were there between noon and about three. It also says to wear long sleeve shirts and hats in the sun. Instead, we were there completely in the buff.
Well, at least I used enough sunblock not to burn. I was very careful to target certain parts of the body; I had nightmare visions of getting a scrotum sunburn. (Yikes.) The one spot I stupidly neglected, and I don't know why because I usually put sunblock there, was the part in my hair. I think I've got mild sunburn there; every time scratch there it kind of hurts. I am slightly red just above my pecs, but that's about it. We'll need to get more sunblock soon; that spray bottle, one of a 2-pack we got at Costco and should look for again the next time we're there, is now empty.
There were two guys there who Shobhit said are there every day. They must be retired and/or independently wealthy, I suppose. One guy was clearly a senior; the other was not young but not super old either; he could easily be in his late forties, maybe fifties at the oldest. The latter guy actually walked around with a gigantic platter of cookies to offer everyone—except, oddly, us. Shobhit thinks maybe "they think I'm weird" because they never offer him stuff when they offer it around to others. I find that to be a suspicious assumption, but who knows.
I didn't post any photos (although I took a couple; one of them shows my butt!—it's on Flickr but I'm not going to link to it), but I wanted to post something. So, just for fun, I posted this:
So today Shobhit and I went to Howell Park, a partially secluded, mostly (but not entirely) gay/nude beach and park on Lake Washington in Seattle. The water of the lake was a truly perfect thing to dip into today.
There’s around 80 people here. A guy walked around with a stunningly GIGANTIC platter of chocolate chip cookies, offering them to everyone. Well, almost everyone. He passed right by us on our blanket on the grass and didn’t offer us any.
Later, I took my second dip into the water. To my amazement, that same guy took the platter *into the lake*, offering them around to the ~20 people in the water. Except he *still* went right past me without offering me one! THAT MAN IS NOW MY ENEMY.
This generated a surprisingly active comment thread, in which I later also noted the guy walked around saying "Anybody want an edible?" Shobhit said last night the cookies had pot in them, but I don't think that was exactly clear. Still, they might have. And god knows, I would not accept drugs from a total stranger at a park—something Shobhit made the mistake of doing once at HempFest at Myrtle Edwards Park about fifteen years ago, and it went very badly. And even the possibility of drugs aside, Carrie Ann noted that I have no idea how hygienic that man is, or how clean his kitchen is. I mean, for all I know it's pristine. But also, for all I know, it's covered in rat shit. It would be better to have some idea, right? It's for the best that I did not have one of those cookies.
But! He still should have offered. It's the principle of the matter, god damn it!
[posted 12:31 pm]