Monday May 23, 2005
	Clearwater Beach, Florida.
	"How 'bout a corndog?" I say to the woman who is lying alongside me on the beach blanket.  "I don't eat that stuff," she says, then changing the channel on her portable Sirius satellite radio. She's 15 years younger than me and she's good to look at and I like her perfume and her manicured fingernails and I especially enjoy the way she cuts tiny pictures out of magazines (then gluing them onto her toenails afterward covering them with a coat of clear polish). "No hot dog?" I say. "Diet Coke," she says. A woman sitting on the sand to my right is listening to The Dope Show by Marilyn Manson and while she is listening to him she is testing herself. "Look at that," I say to my date, "She's peeing." My date lifts her head and a moment later says: "She got a pregnancy tester thingy." "They just made love," I say.  "Do the pregnancy testers work that fast?" "Diet Coke, Norm," she says then looking at me.  Jeez.  It must be me.  See, when people are balling one another just a few feet from me I can't help but notice and okay maybe half the people here are doing it (on the beach and in the water) but I'll never accept someone performing a public do-it-yourself pregnancy test. "She dug a hole into the sand and I could hear her pee going into the hole," I say. "C'mon, Norm." she says. "I'm pretty sure she smiled at me while she was peeing," I say.  "What kind of a person smiles when they're peeing?" "Diet Coke," she says.  To my left a Hispanic woman is dancing to music coming out of big speakers and she is wearing a bikini but she's too big for it and while she is dancing she is laughing and while she laughs she points her female finger in all directions. "What the hell is she laughing at?" I say. My date lifts her head and without hesitation she says: "She's happy."    "She's happy?" I say. "She's enjoying herself," my date date says. "She's enjoying herself?" I say. "You're bizarre, Norman," says my date then changing the channel on her Sirius Radio. Maybe five minutes passes and my date and I aren't talking and the Hispanic woman is still dancing and that's when I say:    "What the hell is she pointing at?" "C'mon, Norm," says my date then sitting up.  "Let's just have a good time."       PREVIOUS   HOME   NEXT