My father has the most acceptable addictions, he drinks coffee the way most people breathe air. So last week, on our first day of vacation, I attempted to keep up with him. This is my account.
11am. (Cups 1 & 2) After nearly nine hours of sleep, which is five hours more than I've logged in one go for the last week, my dad wakes me up and grunts at me that I should make coffee while he showers. I do so and slowly sip a cup while I'm getting ready to go. It is exactly the amount of caffeine I need to start my day. But my dad downs a cup and then as he fills his up again he fills mine. It's an instinctive move, he hates to see an empty coffee cup. I shrug off the voice in my head that says I don't need another cup and drink deep. We leave the room and walk towards the front desk of the resort.
We go into a meeting with the PR guy for the resort we are staying at. He is an older very conservative guy and he and my father talk mostly financial issues. I tune them out in favor of the 80s/90s radio station that plays in the background. In my head I am Bonnie Tyler and I am holding out for a mother fucking hero. I am roughly pulled from my day dreams of big hair and nonsensical music videos by the PR guy asking me about my life in LA. He makes it clear he thinks LA is a land of godless heathens and I have to struggle not to lie and tell him I work as a bartender at a drag club that serves only sodomites and people with vaginas. My father is eying me suspiciously, probably because I am talking at about 800 words per minute. The meeting ends and we go to get lunch.
2:00pm (drink 4) We grab lunch at a little cafe on the resort property. I could feel my father try to steer us to the Starbucks again but I insisted it would be rude to carry one of their drinks into the restaurant. In the last hour the temperature has risen to at least 80 degrees and I am feeling it. I drink an iced tea as we eat and catch up. My father drinks tea as well. We decide that after lunch we should try to see the air museum in town that has the fully operational WWII planes. Dad says "as long as we can hit a Starbucks on the way" I smile and try not to think of the slight tremor that is forming in my hand. My notes are starting to look like I wrote them in middle school, or possible while drunk. The words are getting smaller and closer together.
4:00pm (drink 5) Starbucks As luck or Southern California zoning regulations would have it, there is a Starbucks less than three blocks from the museum. We stop and I let my father talk me into a "refresher" when I mention that I'm feeling dried out. "The great thing is, it has just as much kick as two shots of espresso" he tells me as he pays. I have already ordered a large. I sigh, knowing I will not be sleeping for the next year. The tremor in my hand had just started to die down, but I suspect this will make it come back much worse.
We get to the air museum to discover that it is closing in 20 minutes and the guy at the front desk looks affronted when we ask if it will really take longer than that to look at the planes. He swears it takes at least three hours to go through both the hangers of the museum and "fully appreciate the history we have here." He tells us they have a sandwich shop attached to one of the hangers in a tone that implies that we are god damn communists if we don't spend so much time there we have to stop to eat. My father thanks him and smiles (not with his eyes) and we leave. I take the short walk to the door to practice my impression of Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. My father refuses to join in as Boris. He insists we should go to the mall we passed on our way to the air museum. The tremor in my hand is in fact back with a vengeance and I accidentally flash my high beams at two cars as I drive us to the mall.
7:00pm (drink 6) We spend an hour shopping, which is about my limit on a good day. Today has not been a good day. My attention span is that of goldfish on crack and what I find funny in the world has gone up in almost a perfect inverse of my fathers disappearing sense of humor. This only serves to make everything, from the child throwing up blue icee in the food court, to the way the cashier at the Vans store calls my father "pops", fucking hysterical. I have cried off all my eyeliner from laughing so hard. My notes from this period look like there were hastily scrawled by a third grader. I should have switched to crayon.
We stop for dinner. I'm starting to really ride the high. I want a coke, but ask for an iced tea, sensing instinctively that my father is weighing how much trouble he would really get into for slapping me upside the head now that I'm over 18. The waitress brings out what could charitably be called a bucket with iced tea in it. Under the table my legs are bouncing out morse code for "heart palpitation"
9:30pm (drink 7) After dinner my father insists that we should stop at Target. "It's so much nicer than the fucking Walmart we have." He isn't wrong. Right next to the entrance, in case anyone should feel fatigued while shopping, there is a Starbucks. My mind screams "NO" but the thought is replaced quickly as all my thoughts are. My mind is going fast enough that it occurs to me that I could probably solve world hunger if I could focus long enough to stay on a train of thought. I get a pumpkin latte. It's fucking fall, after all, and I think everything should be pumpkin flavored between October 1st and November 30th. My notes are no longer legible in any way, mostly because the writing has gotten so small and there are no spaces between words or punctuation. It is the writing Faulkner might have had if he had lived long enough to gain a ridilin habit. The whole world seems to be shaking slightly. I start to wonder if I am actually seeing sounds. While at target my father buys me an industrial sized coffee pot for the new place I just moved in to, but scoffs at my request for the pumpkin flavored coffee. My disappointment only lasts until I am distracted my the wide variety of gum at the checkout.
10:45pm (drink 8) Back at the hotel room my father turns on the news and pulls two iced teas from the refrigerator. He hands me one and we settle in to the couch to listen to a story about a teenager who claims her school violated her first amendment rights by enforcing a dress code. My father asks why I am twitching spasmodically but I don't answer. As much focus as I can gather has gone into mentally decoding the last episode of season two of Sherlock. I will solve it I tell myself. I will know how he survived the fall if I just...
An hour later I am in bed. The lights in the room are off and I am staring at the ceiling. The dots make a pattern, I know it. In one spot they look like a map, but over there they look like blood splatter and wasn't the finale of Dexter just so disappointing but not as bad as the finale to Lost but at least those two got a finale. Supernatural just keeps marching on years after no one cared and I wonder what ever happened to the Care Bears. They've resurrected every other cartoon from my childhood and I wonder if they really run out of things if they could bring my old dog back, cuz I know Howie wasn't the brightest animal but I really miss him and the world is just so sad sometimes...
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