Just In Time

A few weeks ago, I shared the five words that I believe best describe me: funny, lucky, angry, tall, and incomplete.  Had I extended the list to six words, I probably would have added “punctual.”  I am never late for ANYTHING –- meetings with colleagues, dinners with friends -– and this is quite a terrible quality to have in a world where seemingly everyone else regards being on time as either impossible or unnecessary. 

I am so painfully punctual that, despite massive real-world experience to the contrary, I always assume that others are late because I’VE screwed up or because something has gone horribly wrong.  Hold on a minute, am I supposed to be in Conference Room 3A or 2A?  Were we going to meet at my place first or just meet at the restaurant?  Wow, my buddy is 20 minutes late, I better check the news to see if there’s been a fiery car crash.

Alas, I’m always right where I’m supposed to be and there are never any car crashes, at least not ones involving my time-challenged friends, thank the Lord.  And so I sit and wait.  And wait.  And wait.

But for how long?  Well, that’s an interesting question and it all depends on the situation.  At work, I go with the 10-minute rule.  All I do all damn day long is go to meetings, so, hey, let’s just reschedule and you can show up late for our meeting next week, too.  It’s trickier with friends and REALLY tricky with the ladies. 

Many years ago, I asked a girl out and we arranged to meet at a Thai restaurant on the Upper East Side.  I really liked this girl and, of course, I showed up precisely at the appointed hour.  I told the hostess that I was expecting a friend and waited patiently outside the restaurant for Sarah to arrive.  Ten minutes passed.  Twenty.  Half an hour.  No Sarah.  At 45 minutes, I pulled the ripcord.

“If a pretty brunette shows up looking for a guy named Tom, tell her I left,” I said to the hostess.

“There’s a girl inside who’s been waiting for someone,” she said, much to my disbelief.  Where was this little tidbit of information earlier in the evening?

The hostess led me to the back of the restaurant and, sure enough, there was Sarah, sitting by herself, finishing up her dinner.  She looked at me and I could tell right away…she was PISSED.

“Where have you been?” she said sharply.  “I’ve been here for almost an hour.”

“I’ve been outside,” I said.  “Waiting for you.”

“Whatever,” she said, signaling for the check. 

Even in a snit, she was good looking.  And she had been beyond punctual.  She had showed up EARLY.  Be still my clock-like heart!

“Let’s at least get some dessert,” I suggested, but, no, the night clearly had come to an end.  She let me walk her home (safety first, after all), we shook hands at the front door of her apartment building, and I never saw her again.

Actually, that last part is not entirely true.  About a year later, I was glancing through the wedding announcements in the Sunday New York Times and there she was.  Holy crap, I thought, that could have been me. 

I bet the ceremony started right on time, too, goddamnit.

Feelin’ the Love in Bermuda

I recently returned from a four-day vacation in Bermuda.  You have to love a place where the official logo is a pair of pink shorts –- a clever combination of the island’s legendary pink sand and the enduring popularity of Bermuda shorts among local businessmen.

I’d been to Bermuda once before, when I was maybe 15 or 16 years old.  This was a time in my life when I was VERY interested in girls, but completely clueless about how to ask a girl out or how even to SPEAK to a girl for that matter.   (Yes, I know.  Some things never change.)  

There was a family at our hotel who hailed from the U.K., judging by their accents.  The daughter in the family was my age and she was BEAUTIFUL.  She had blond hair and blue eyes, and she wore a blindingly white bikini every day.  I was in love.  I never said a word to her, of course.  I didn’t even know her name.  But I was in love.

My therapist likes to say that I am very comfortable “living inside my own head,” by which he means that I am prone to constructing elaborate scenarios and dialogues in my mind.  (This is not entirely unhelpful, by the way.  I often find myself in situations –- at work, with family and friends -– where the conversation unfolds almost exactly the way I have envisioned it in my head.  It’s like being in a play.  All you have to do is say your lines when it’s your turn to speak.) 

With the girl from Bermuda, I didn’t just live inside my own head.  I built a fucking McMansion.

Immediately upon returning home to Connecticut, I began laying plans for how to contact her and profess my true love.  I would call the hotel and get her name and address.  Surely, they would remember her as vividly as I did.  Once I had this information, I would write her a letter, introducing myself.  Perhaps you remember me, dream girl?  I was the 6’2”, 150-pound weakling with really bad acne.  We exchanged knowing glances, or at least you caught me staring at your boobies a few times.  Of course I remember you, she would write back.  I wanted to say something to you, too, but I was shy.  She would invite me to come to the U.K. for a visit.  Or perhaps she would come to America as a foreign exchange student and we would be her host family.  It would be the love story of the century, I was convinced of that.  None of this ever happened, but it took up an inordinately large amount of space in my brain for an inordinately long time.            

This time around, I stayed at 9 Beaches, a relatively new resort on the west end of the island that promises the “unexpected Bermuda.”  For me, the “unexpected” included a room with a busted air conditioning unit; a rooster who cock-a-doodle-doo-ed about 75 times an hour, irrespective of the time of day; a combination key ring/piece-of-shit plastic bottle opener that wasn’t up to the task of opening any of the Coronas in my $50 “bucket of beer;” a working dairy farm within smelling distance of the resort (hint: it did not smell like milk); and an abundance of flies at the complimentary breakfast buffet (not entirely unrelated, one imagines, to the nearby dairy farm). 

Still, all was forgiven every time I set foot on my balcony, which actually extended out over the crystal-clear water and offered a postcard-perfect view of the resort’s stunning surroundings.

I spent a lot of time doing nothing, but did eat at a few excellent restaurants, including the Salt Rock Grill and the Bone Fish Grill.  The Bone Fish Grill is located at the Dockyards, which until the 1950’s served as a major outpost for the British Royal Navy.  Today, it’s been converted to shops and restaurants, frequented largely (and I do mean LARGELY) by cruise ship passengers.  When I visited, there was a Royal Caribbean ship in port — an absolutely monstrous structure that was about ten stories high. 

I love pottery, so whenever I visit someplace interesting, be it for business or pleasure, I try to purchase a locally made bowl or vase.  (I bought a beautiful vase at a local crafts store in Cuzco, Peru, a few years ago.  I lovingly brought it home with me in my carry-on bag only to find the exact same piece (not a knock off) for sale at Marshall’s a few weeks later for $13.99.  It’s a small world after all.)  At the Dockyards, I visited Bermuda Clayworks, where artist Jon Faulkner makes absolutely beautiful stuff.  He was building a kiln right there on the floor of his store, putting each brick in place with such care it looked as though he were defusing a bomb.

I also ventured out to Bermuda’s most famous beach, Horseshoe Bay.  Since that big cruise ship was in town, the beach was covered with tourists, but they congregated within the first 50 yards or so of the entrance, unwilling (and, for many, unable) to stray too far from the snack bar.  A five-minute walk down the beach, though, and the tourist-per-square-foot ratio plummeted.  Ten minutes and I was pretty much by myself. 

The rock formations were incredible, carved out by the pounding surf over millions of years.  I came across three young children frolicking in a tidal pool surrounded by rocks.  Occasionally, a big wave would slam into the rocks and send sea spray flying into the pool, the kids shrieking in delight.  The mom said to them, “I’m going to get your Dad, stay here,” and off she went, leaving them all by themselves for a good ten minutes.  The oldest of the three was maybe nine.  Mother of the Year!

One thing I did NOT do in Bermuda is rent a moped, a popular mode of transportation for tourists, since they do not rent cars on the island.  I’ll always remember that scene in “The Deep” where the bad guys try to force Nick Nolte and Jaqueline Bissett, both on mopeds, into these incredibly jagged walls that run along the side of the road.  (I’ll always remember that OTHER scene in “The Deep,” where Bissett emerges from the ocean wearing bikini bottoms and a very wet t-shirt, but I digress.)  My decision not to rent a moped was validated by a story in the newspaper of a local man who was riding as the passenger on a moped, stuck his head out from behind the driver to have a look around, and was promptly decapitated by a telephone pole.  Ouch.

Bermuda’s slogan is “Feel the love” and it is a lovely island, indeed.  With a flight time from Newark of under two hours, I encourage you to put it on your (pink) short list of places to visit.