Daily pages at 750words.com. About 30 mins.
Remember that time we went skiing? You were wearing that bright red sweater and matching stocking cap, complete with little poof-ball on top. I was wearing all black, very slick, very ninja. You said that. You said, “You look like a ninja.” I was so happy. Then you said “You look like a big fat ninja.” And I was sad. Then you said “But a fat slick ninja.” And slick was in italics, so I felt better. So you know what we did then? You know what we did.
Shredded.
We were like a Michael Crichton novel on the slopes. I don’t mean his famous ones, but his earlier stuff, when he was writing under a pen name. When he was in medical school. The ones he wrote that were so formulaic. We were formulaic. We cut and we slalomed and you were like a fish and I was like a slick black ninja. I hit a tree. I knocked over that tree. And we stood over that tree and we just sort of looked at it and you took off that ridiculous red stocking cap and held it over your heart and we mourned that poor dead tree.
Killed by a fast fat ninja.
Say that nine times fast.
No, don’t.
After that, in the bar. the Double Diamond. You, hitting on the girl serving drinks. Me, hitting on the bowl of peanuts. You thought it would be funny to tell her about our day in surfing argot:
“Cresty was nice but the ankle snappers were groady like chowder and the barneys were charging all the rollers. I tried to back door a grinder but it got so gnarly my chinese pitched a pearl and the party turned into mushburger. You know what I mean? Noahs and men in gray suits, every cap was a dust biter, but you know me, babe, if it’s good enough to get broke off a proper chunk, I’ll take a small piece of some of that funky stuff.”
She gave you a shot on the house. Then she looked at me and I said how there were no prices on the menu, so everything’s free, right? And she said:
“You know how if you cut a crumb in half, you don’t get half-crumbs, but just two more, smaller crumbs? Your wit reminds me of that.”
Later, alone in my room, I wept piteously.
The next day, driving to another slope, another resort, another day of formulaic shredding, I showed you the above, in my journal, word-for-word, and you crossed everything out, except for “I wept piteously.”
“It’s the only part worth reading,” you said.
I laughed uproariously, and you ripped the notebook out of my hands, and crossed out “I laughed uproariously,” You had that look on your face. The one you got, I bet, after you were done with the girl who served us drinks in the Double Diamond. Or later that next night, the girl from The Bunny Slope. We were doing the Endless Winter thing, you in your red sweater and me in all black, you with your wenches and me with my peanuts. My tiny peanuts.
It was the same look I gave a bowl of tiny peanuts when it was finally empty. Tell me. Tell me how I can get so fat on nothing but the free drinks you get off wenches and bowls of tiny peanuts. I ski all day. Every day. There hasn’t been a day since we met when we didn’t ski and go to bars. Why am I so fat.
Why are you so angry.
Judgmental, you said. Standing on the top of Greg’s Drop, still one more ski resort, one more mountain, one more red sweater and me in something stretchy, tight, taut, naughty if I was wearing it, say, in that piss-dungeon where you found me.
Judgmental, you said. After I said you were always tearing me down. And then you decided to tell me how to ski Greg’s Drop using Jai Alai terminology.
“This one looks like a partido, partner, but its more mala than guente. Hit turn seven at speed, go libre on the fuenton, and be careful of the effecto near the trees– we don’t want another dos paredos, not if we’re going to zaguero a bunny at The Mogul tonight. Okay? You got that? Picado, pelotari, pelato, easy as hair pie, with a hellafied gangsta lean, getting funky on the mic like a old batch of collard greens. See ya at the bottom, you fat black ninja”
And instead of weeping, or laughing, I loaded up my MSR and readier her for .338 Lapua Magnum. I don’t know what that means, but I know you hate Latin.