A Filthy Slash Rotten Wonderful Day at the Beach

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t tell you I love you, Lucia, 

that's what you say but I know you're turned on by other women, not just me Henry.

looking at themselves in the bathroom mirror, they brush their teeth, then braid each other’s hair, native style. 

They walk the short distance to Dog Beach pushing a cart with a couple of folding beach chairs and a loaded cooler in it.

A friend Carlos mentions nude beaches. 

At Nude Beach they drink bottled beer, Lucia squints, putting on her Ray-Bans, looking seaward, looking for Cuba

when gravity fails Angels take flight.

Someone's kid yells,  

fin, 

people run ashore, not panicked, but wanting to get ashore. 

At T-Bones, the boss makes trippy cocktails blending fresh mint leaves, ice, and coca paste. 

Are you familiar with our menu?

Yes we are, we'll have the lobster chowder on homemade bird nests, Greek salad, and a pitcher of Rum Cocas

what kind of dressing on that salad? 

Garlic sour cream, 

the food takes forever, the kitchen’s backed up, it’s Sunday. 

They're 3 pitchers of medicated goo to the wind, too loaded to eat. They take a doggy bag home for their neighbor's Golden Retriever, Billy. 

Finally home, they sit at the kitchen table and talk about  Raymond Carver, his film Short Cuts, and the failed and wasted lives of blue-collar workers from the Pacific Northwest. 

I’m reading Raymond Carver, he’s depressing, I’d rather read Marquez, his stories transcend everyday life to a place where there's hope for all humanity.  

Yes, I get it, 

what’s on HBO, Henry? 

I’ll check the TV Guide, 830 PM,

oh, here's a freaky bit,

Doctor Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

I’ll pop some corn, quierdo. 

Sitting with their legs up on the coffee table the couple munches popcorn as the plot unfolds, 

... an unhinged United States Air Force general orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52, who were following orders from the general, from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.

It’s impossible, isn’t it? 

God, I hope so.