This is an excerpt from my diary. Click here for more information on this series.
August 19th, 2022
FREMONT, NEBRASKA. It might just be the very center of these great United States. Woodcliff Lake, Fremont, Nebraska. It might just be the most all-American abode out there. We trek through cornfields and ill-lit country roads to get to it. We cross a train track. A large brown plastic bear waving one arm up greets us. The gravel road pushes up dust on the side of the car. Every ten seconds or so we hear what sounds like a tendon being stretched out to its max, then flung like a rubber band. It’s just stray rocks that the tires catapulted up into its host’s undercarriage, setting off a sort of pinball ricochet effect. “Damnit Mr. Rubber, you woke up poor Valvey!”
We drop our luggage, those overpriced containers that contain way more clothes than we needed to pack. Then we hit the bar – an outdoor oasis for the sunburnt, the burnt-out, the holders-on, and the salt-of-the-earthers. On The Fritz is playing. They’re good for a cover band. Bare-foot frat-looking man-boys sing along to “Jesse’s Girl” and “Sweet Caroline.” As do a family of what seems like bottomless man-boys, all in their thirties, holding their wives (the family they chose, but at times—like this time—would rather trade for their own blood) at the waist and basking in alcohol-fueled nostalgia. The gang is back together at The Lake. Like good ol’ times.
I must admit, there’s something so fun and refreshing about how humble this place is. It doesn’t pretend to be posh or uppity or exclusive. It’s not. But that’s what people love about it. That’s where the magic lies.
We make our way to the bar: a makeshift island set on a makeshift peninsula set on a makeshift lake. The cabinetry is made of plywood. The drinks are weak. I order a Rum and Diet. It’s mostly Diet. But I’m not complaining. Tastes better than the ‘House Rum,’ which is surely Bacardi®. Plus, unlike the hammered guy who came up to me on the pretense that he liked my “flow” (your author’s hair as of this writing rests roughly 5 inches above his nips) then proceeded to deliver what I suspect is well-rehearsed recitation on how he was “born and bred Woodcliff” but his mom sold the home thinking the world was handing her an easy win, only to find out that had she waited 6 more months to put it on the market, she could have turned a 40% higher profit, I’m not sipping in search of an artificial dopamine hit. I’m getting hits of the real deal—dopamine au naturale—just by observing.
We smile, nod, fake laugh. Then when this loopy old boy turns his head and waves at a group of just-as-loopy old boys who don’t acknowledge his wave, we slither away in the direction of the makeshift stage at the makeshift bar on the makeshift peninsula on the makeshift lake. On the Fritz is murdering. Their lead singer is pooling sweat.
Our dance moves are suboptimal. Then again, everyone’s are.
Usually a dance floor would require me to throw a few back to feel comfortable. Party tricks—the belly dance, the Stanky Leg®, that move I stole from some movie I can’t remember where I frame my face with my hands—typically flow from there. Laughs from onlookers follow, which is great because that soothes my discomfort, which subsides entirely as the alcohol courses through me and the laughs become louder and the movements more assured. Usually by the end of the night it’s me who’s pooled sweat, smiling ear to ear, feeling accomplished as if I was the night’s main act. Never mind that the euphoria was hollow since it blossomed out of a defense mechanism and copious amounts of liquid courage.
Tonight was different though. No need to employ defense mechanisms because I feel perfectly at ease.
Every second of the night was sublime.
WE WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING to revs of motors and rays of light penetrating the twenty-year-old shades at the three-bed cottage my in-laws creatively nicknamed “The Lake House.” I look out the window and see a twelve-year-old girl shredding the glistening water like it’s her job (child labor laws aren’t enforced on The Lake). She takes flight, crossing over a double wake. I’m intimidated.
Last time I was out here—some four years ago (I was working for that consulting firm in D.C. at the time)—I couldn’t get it up. By that I mean the wake board you pervs; my valve— “Valvey”— was working just fine, thank you very much. Twenty tries and I had to call a quits, swimming back to the boat with my tail between my buckled-in legs, my body feeling so beaten that I thought something was structurally wrong with me.
I’m committed, though, to get up this time. I know once I get up, I will stay up. Don’t overthink it, Jack.
Boats out. I’m out. The water is much clearer when there’s traffic. Everyone and their mother’s boat is out on the water – except, of course, the loopy old boy and his mother who cashed out too soon (GOT ‘EM). It’s a Saturday, after all. The last Saturday before the kids go back to school.
Six tries. Got nowhere. Getting a bit deflated. I’m keeping my board horizontal like everyone is telling me; like every YouTube video I watched earlier in the morning on the toilet was telling me.
CRASH. FACEPLANT. LOST GRIP ON HANDLE. “Is my father-in-law revving this thing to be a dick?”
“Stop overthinking it, Jack,” I tell myself.
“You can surf for crying out loud. You can do this. Fucking twelve-year-old could do this. You got it!”
Fucking finally. I’m up! Hunched over like Stephen King, though I’m too blacked out at this moment to even notice (I’ll learn later that they call this common malfeasance the “Outhouse Crouch”).
Adrenaline and a childlike glee kick in. Holy fuck this is fun. Can’t help but crack a smile.
CRASH. SMACK.
Sarah and the in-laws are stunned. Beyond it being a sigh of relief that I finally got vertical, they’re flabbergasted at how I quickly I was able to carve in and out of wakes. I tell them I knew I would feel relatively comfortable once I managed to get up.
(Note of wisdom for the reader: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You know this. We all know this. Is there a more quoted quote out there than this one? The minute I just “felt it out” and shifted my board under my feet when it felt right—instead of robotically remaining horizontal with the board for the prescribed five seconds—was the moment I got up. Coulda saved myself a whole heap of effort, embarrassment, and other negative feelings had I just tried something new.)
We make it to the “fill up” station adjacent to the makeshift bar on the makeshift peninsula on the makeshift lake. The mood on the boat is jubilant. I feel like a weight has been lifted. Everyone is proud of me. My father-in-law is ecstatic – something I don’t see from him often. We go into the little convenient store adjacent to the fill up station, which is adjacent to the makeshift bar on the makeshift peninsula on the makeshift lake. We’re after some Diets. Pure Diets. Diets unsullied by ‘House Rum.’
Mike and Lisa, the “runners” of the marina, are manning the register. Mike has only three fingers on both hands. He’s a sweet man. I can notice and appreciate his sweetness because my emotional state is one of happiness and relief. What a shame that there are preconditions that must be met before you can even notice the sweetness in your common man. In the alternate universe where I didn’t get up on that board, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate his sweetness. How selfish. We’re all walking zombies dictated by emotions that are surely in our control, but which we allow to overtake every synapse of our consciousness. I think they call this “living in the matrix.”
I get back to the boat and ask my mother-in-law what happened to Mike’s fingers.
“He was born that way,” she replies.
“Must have been difficult,” I claim in an asking fashion.
“Well, he seems to have done okay,” she replies. “He’s such a nice man.”
That he is.
MY LEGS ARE JELLO. My lower back is tighter—and sorer—than it’s ever been. I can’t even bend over to grab my dropped phone. That night I won’t even be able to wash my ass in the shower. Striking the requisite pose to bidet the unmentionable that I’ve already mentioned will prove a bridge too far. Lake ass it is for the night. But I feel accomplished. So accomplished.
Double the soreness the next day. Triple it the next next day – no doubt aggravated by a four-mile ‘walk’ with my in-laws. Their pace is insane.
But I was dreaming about that wake. I needed that wake.
It was like that famous R. Kelly lyric, just flipped:
“My minds telling me YEAH!
But my body—my BOOODDYYYSSSSSS tellin’ me NOOOOOOO!”
So when we were on the boat the next evening and my father-in-law asked “who’s up?” there was an awkward pause. Every ounce of me was conflicted. But I couldn’t resist.
“I’ll go!” I exclaimed.
So happy I did. The water was reflecting the golden-houred sun, and glimmering beads were passing by under my board. I was shredding everything. A bump. A wake. An almost-wave. Catching air too.
The water was as glossy as Lake Tahoe. Or at least as glossy as the pictures I’ve seen of Tahoe. I’d only visited once as a little boy and can’t really recall anything about it. “Did you even grow up in California?!” the superficial voice in my head who ties one’s entire identity to a place asks.
Glossy doesn’t mean clear, and The Lake wasn’t. That didn’t matter. It was tranquil. And it was ours for the evening.
And the biggest conundrum ever is that I felt no soreness when I got back on that dock. I still don’t, two days later, as I write this, hunched over my tray table. It’s like I was supposed to be out there.
Not much else to say other than that I like The Lake. There’s a sliver of the divine there if you can get over yourself and take off the mask.
JUST LANDED ON THE TARMAC at Santa Barbara Airport, a place, I suspect, where masks are plentiful both in the behavioral sense—Montecito is the new Beverly Hills—and the literal one. Some places in this vast country of ours just can’t seem to quit COVID yet. That’s okay. Live and let live. I happen to find comfort in our diversity in all its manifestations: political views, gradients of melanin, spiritual beliefs, risk tolerances, types of humor. Who wants to live in an echo chamber? Red flag for people that raise their hand, though I still love ya.
It’s time for me to wrap it up. I will, I’m sure, debrief you on our ten-day trip and all of its idiosyncrasies.
Stay curious, my friends.