vituperation

July 10, 2004

Grooming tips for my male readers:

Suppose for a moment that you let your wife cut your hair with the clippers, because it’s July, summer, and just plain hot as fuck outside. You get your wife to do it because you’re planning to cut it pretty short (1-inch all over), and "free" is always better than "17 bucks" when it comes to a haircut.

When she’s done, and you’re admiring yourself in the mirror, you might notice that your hair looks a little longish around the ears. That’s okay, the trimmers come with a special "ear attachment" just for dealing with these situations. The attachment trims short on one edge and longer toward the other, so that when you run it around your earline it cuts it short and blends your hair length for you. It says so, right on the clipper box.

Grooming tip #1: if your wife says she has no skills that would make her able to use such an attachment, listen to her and heed her warnings.

Grooming tip #2: if you’re the ornery sort, and don’t listen to her, she may very well shave a big triangular wedge of bald onto the side of your head just over your ear.

Grooming tip #3: if she does, and you have dark hair, you can dab a little bit of her mascara on the bald wedge each morning and rub it in, and make the wedge disappear until you shower. It even holds up if you swim in a place like, oh, I don’t know, a quarry. It’s just like Ron Popeil’s spray-on hair, only cheaper and much less manly.

Not, of course, that I would do any of these things. I’m just saying.

If you happen to swim in a place that causes swimmer’s itch, I’ve found that drying off and immediately changing clothes when you get out of the water works wonders at prevention. You’d probably want to buy one of these, if you start changing.

I’ve found that trying to change while wrapped in a towel can lead to embarrassing dong-floppage-in-front-of-people incidents. These incidents are especially bad if you’ve been swimming in a place like oh, I don’t know, a quarry, which has really cold water.

If you’re gonna dong-flop the strangers, aim for a time not right after cold water submersion. Trust me on this.

I handed the spud a copy of the quarry’s liability form (aka the "I won’t sue you if I drown, crack my skull on a rock, or get dragged to a watery grave by some creature from the deep" form), already filled out by Robyn.

"Sign and date this," I said.

"Where?"

"Right there. Where it says ’signature’ and ‘date’."

She signed and dated the form.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A liability form, so we won’t sue them if something happens while we swim."

I launched into a short diatribe on perpetual victims who do things like swim in a quarry, then file a lawsuit when they disobey the "no diving" signs and injure themselves by diving.

"So basically," I concluded, "this form at least gives the quarry people a little bit of protection, because it says that you understand you’re swimming at your own risk. Of course, something like this form won’t stop a money-grubbing ambulance-chasing trial lawyer."

Another short diatribe ensued. When I finished, I looked expectantly at the spud.

"Do we give the form to the quarry people?" she asked.

I blinked.

"No," I said, "we just wad it up and throw it in the trash right before we dive off the rocks."

Here’s your sign, I thought.

Later, while we were drying off, I told the spud about a run-in I had with rattlesnake a few weeks ago.

"Are rattlesnakes poisonous?" she asked.

"They’re one of the deadliest snakes around here."

"Is the poison how they kill you?"

I blinked.

"No," I said, "they jump out from behind a rock and yell ‘boo!’ in hopes that you’ll have a heart attack."

Here’s your sign, I thought.

Ah, the scintillating conversation of having the spud back home.

At either end of the quarry (yes, I am aware that I write about the quarry a lot. Shut up.), underwater, there are wooden platforms. On the close end, the platform is fifteen feet down, and is used as a safety stop by SCUBA divers. The platform at the other end is deeper, about twenty-three feet below the surface, and only dimly visible when the sun is shining brightly.

The far platform is deep enough to be marked by a buoy, so that divers will know it’s there:

Since I first discovered that platform, it’s been my driving goal to swim down and touch it, and I make one or two tries every time we go swimming. Yesterday, I tried again.

I hovered in the water, one leg twisted into the buoy’s rope so I could float without having to tread water, and took a few deep breaths. Not many, mind you, because I just read a news story about someone drowning in a pool because he’d hyperventilated in preparation for an underwater swim. Just a few breaths, to stretch my lungs.

Taking one final breath, I pulled my leg out of the rope, flipped over, and dove. For speed, I grabbed the rope and pulled myself, hand over hand, down into the water. The platform grew in my sight, and became more and more clear the deeper I went. My ears started to hurt, but still I pulled myself down. Before long, I could make out the slick green algae coating the wooden planks.

My ears sang from the pressure, and my lungs reminded me that man wasn’t made to live underwater. Closer and closer, until finally, I stretched out one hand and touched the slippery two-by-four. I thought my head might crush like an empty Coke can, the pressure was so much. A fight brewed between the pain in my head and the screaming from my chest. I flipped over again and looked up.

I was so deep in the water I couldn’t see the surface, just the thin bouy rope stretching out above me to invisibility.

That instance was probably the closest I’ve come to having a true moment of panic since I started writing this journal.

I kicked off the platform as hard as I could and swam for the surface. Slowly — eternally slow, it seemed — the surface and the bouy came into sight above me. As the pressure in my head decreased, the pressure in my chest increased. I pulled on the rope so hard to get to the surface that I pulled the buoy underwater. At the last instant before I thought I might actually drown, I broke the surface.

But I touched the fucking platform, and it was worth it.

Stories like this sure do make me feel dorky for my melodramatic platform dive.