02 June 2008
 
Wilson

The day had no prospect of spinning out of control as it did. I rose with the intent of doing a piece about John McCain’s Senate time, and the birth of ambition. His personal life was in the process of melting down, something with which I have more than a little sympathy.
 
He found something that he did not owe to his Father, or his Grandfather up on the Hill. After years of agony, he had his Marlboros, his mind and a chance to ride the merry-go-round in the greatest show on earth, the Congress of the United States at the zenith of the American Empire.
 
Can’t blame him a bit for wanting to be one of the ponies himself, not can you blame crusty old Master Chief John Tower, the bare-knuckled Senior Senator from Texas.
 
Of course there was affection there. Tower kept his reserve status as an enlisted man as a token of his service, and a way to keep his perspective in a body filled with wealthy lawyers and the privileged.
 
Why would it not be hypnotic? It was harder than it was for Senator Clinton, who had a safe Senate seat lined up for her, and the potential opposition stiff-armed out of the way. McCain had to serve his apprenticeship in a Congressional seat, even if the way ahead for him was a well-blazed trail.
 
I was going to talk about what it is like at the beginning of that process, of being the Captain in the wood-paneled office, but I just couldn’t get it. There was another project laying on the desk, a story from a 94-year-old Admiral about some technical details on how the Cold War was won.
 
It is a good and unique story, but the only way to get the words to you were either to either re-type by hand or scan the physical document, and that was the long entry-way into the usual computer nut-roll of frustration.
 
I could see from my office window that the pool deck below was starting to fill up, and I needed to do a couple errands, and there was the prospect of a command performance with my older boy’s prospective mother-in-law. I wanted to look as though the kid had a father with prospects, so with the weather hanging on the low side of lovely, I went about my affairs.
 
There was cell phone conversation about a possible late lunch, though that slid right through errands and left me at the pool when it was done.
 
The demographics of Big Pink have changed. There are a lot of new residents here, and they are young. Many of them are female, and I was slightly piqued that our usual space on the pool deck, the one on the west side of the pool with the good light, was fully occupied with strangers.
 
Sara 1 and Ms. Hamilton were there, and not in the best place. I had to consider the best way to handle things. Mrs. Hitler had taken the blunt approach. Meghan, the hearty gal from Michigan with two dogs with whom Uncle Bill is waging a proxy guerilla war through the Condo Board.
 
Uncle Bill is very much of the One Dog party of interpretation of the Condo Rules, and the matter has a certain nuclear quality, since the image is of taking the excess canines away in paddy-wagons to Doggie Dachau.
 
Uncle Bill is sporting a goatee that makes him look more than a little like V.I. Lenin these days, so the imagery is completely mixed.
 
Meghan, for her part, had deliberately taken Mrs. Hitler’s Spot, occupied most sunny Sundays since 1988, a fact that was announced at 105 decibels from the sign-in table by the wire gate.
 
It was too crowded to really pay it much mind, and I did my time as the lowest form of life in Mrs. Hitler’s world, a renter who did Not Follow The Rules.
 
I think my first crime was playing my little radio on the pool deck. I don’t know. As a new arrival on the Island of Misfit Toys, I viewed myself as a sort of Waylon Jennings of middle life, an Outlaw. When I jot ejected from my first rental, not my fault nor by misconduct, I suddenly sobered. I did not want to be an Outlaw. I wanted a home.
 
That was the start of the real estate bubble, and the next cascade of mistakes that marked the new millennium. Clouds came in and the first wave of sun-bathers took off. There were at least two or three new owners among them.
 
I had no idea there had been so many deaths. One of the newbies must be in Jack’s old place. Life goes on.
 
I had not got my exercise in, and the clouds and lack of people to talk to suggested that it was time.
 
I plunged in and started to tread water vigorously- a thousand strokes is about a half hour’s work, and I started off. Three young men were on the east side of the pool deck, the narrow east side. I heard the clink of glass, and looking over, I saw they were drinking Coronas in the clear bottles.
 
That is a clear violation of the rules, just like the white volley-ball that bobbed in the deep end. What was it that Tom Hanks called his in the castaway movie? Wilson? I tried to imagine the face painted on the ball.
 
One of the young men tossed a flip-flop into the pool. They were loud and proud, and I realized they were part of another new Big Pink demographic. Young gay men. This has always been a gay-friendly building, but this was something new and more than a little aggressive.
 
I had to listen to their conversation, since the deep end where I tread water is only so far away from where they were camped. I was nearing a thousand strokes when they rose, and leaped into the pool.
 
“Excuse me,” I said to one of them, and he ignored me. I paddled slowly toward the ladder, happy that I was done, since they were taking possession of the pool, and began to throw the volley-ball hard at one another.
 
One of them was starting to lose his hair, and he passed by me fairly close.
 
“Excuse me,” I said. “There is no glass permitted down here.”
 
I wanted to say that they were going to ruin things for those of us who enjoy a cocktail in a plastic cup, but I didn’t have time for all the words. There rule is no alcohol, not to mention glass, and what is more, there is no ball-playing allowed without the express permission of the life-guard.
 
This guy ignored me as well.
 
The young men bounced the volleyball off the only other resident in the pool at the time, and Wilson ricocheted off an unoccupied lounge chairs. The balding guy got the ball back and they hit the man again, this time in the back of the head, laughing as they apologized.
 
A new class of Outlaws, I thought. Simmering, I toweled off. I shook my head. This must be how Mrs. Hitler feels all the time.
 
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com