When I was 15

John and I skipped school one day in the spring of 1983.  We left Whitman after 1^st period, met up with a red-haired girl we knew and invited her along.  She agreed, and prooved most adept at getting us all picked up while hitch-hiking. 

We got to my house by eleven or so, watched t.v. for a bit, then commenced to raid the liquor cabinet.  We drank shots of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey.  I think we played spin the bottle for drinks rather than kisses and we proceeded to get quite drunk. 

At some point, John – I think it was John – suggested to the drunk girl that we should have sex.  She didn’t think that was a good idea, but John kept pestering.  Finally she said she would, but only if John and I each drank three more shots of whiskey.

(In hindsight, this was clearly a stalling tactic, since there was no way she would’ve.  Also, I don’t think we really believed that she would, but any shot seems worth taking when you’re fifteen and you live in hope of pussy.)

But unfortunately, we’d run out of whiskey.

In the fridge, however, was a full bottle of iced tea.  John and I filled up the whiskey bottle, watered it down a bit and it looked a pretty convincing golden brown.  We took the faked liquor into the other room, poured our shots in her presence and made quite the show of drinking them.

We did our three shots – and one more for good luck.   She seemed quite incredulous that we weren’t puking yet, and when we suggested it was time for her to keep her end of the bargain, begrudgingly, amazingly, she agreed that she would. 

But first, she said, she wanted to take one more shot of Bushmills.

We couldn’t stop her, she insisted, and poured her own shot.  She downed it quick and made a face as she realized that it was iced tea.  She was more amused than anything, and we all agreed that we just been joking around and nothing would’ve happened anyway.  She took a nap in my parents bed, then John woke her up at 3pm, gave her money for a cab home, and later insisted he would’ve had a chance if I’d left them alone, and gave me shit for cockblocking him.

End of the story.

I haven’t thought of that afternoon in a long time, but was over a friend’s barbeque the other day, and the red haired girl’s name came up.  She had died a year or so ago from a brain aneurysm.  She was married, had young children, and from all accounts she was a very sweet person.  Her death was very sudden and very sad. 

In high school, she was always nice to me, and I’d had quite a crush on her.  I once asked her if she wanted to go see “the Outsiders” with me, and she turned me down gently with remarkable grace for a fifteen year old girl.  

It seems crass that my strongest memory of such a nice person is such an obnoxious teenage afternoon.

It seems lonesome and impossible that the red-haired teenager I knew grew up, had a life, had a family, then died.

The memories take on different notes now, like they do with my friend Taylor, like with Bruce who sold us acid in high-school, like the rest of this year’s crop of the “What ever happened to? Oh, they died!” people I knew.

And those notes seem to get a little closer each year.  I realize that my wife is the red-haired girl in somebody’s story, my sister is the girl who used to take acid by the river in high-school, and I am the obnoxious boy who filled whiskey bottles with iced tea.  We are all fifteen forever in somebody’s head, and we are all sitting in a circle, watching the bottle spin.

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Tough Year

Fools Market –

You are a fool to believe that the Fed’s path is sustainable, and that infinite QE will not come with a very dear price.

But you are a fool not to ride the wave of liquidity it provides.

You are a fool not to notice the problems in Europe and Asia, and to think that they will not spread.

But you are a fool not to realize that this will mean money flowing to the U.S.

You are a fool to put money into high-flyers with ridiculous multiples, like AMZN or CMG.

But if you don’t, you will underperform the market badly.’

Oil can’t be this high with abundant supply and slowing worldwide growth…  Unless the middle east heats up, then it will go higher.  Either way, you will be proven a fool.

Precious metals would be prudent, given the monetary shenanigans of the world.  But you have been proven a fool if you still own the miners.

And if you throw up your hands and go to cash or bonds, you are clearly a fool because of their negative real yield.

Curiouser and curiouser.  

And I am sucking at my job.

Bad Day

When I drove across country in 1988, I wound up spending a week or so at my Grandparent’s house in Tacoma.  We had dinner around the kitchen table, did some work in the garage, and listened to stories and such.  It was the kind of visit you have with older people when you won’t have many more chances to spend time with them.  But I didn’t know what that sort of visit felt like when I was 20.  I hadn’t known too many people who got old and died.  At 20, most of the people I knew who were old had been old for my entire life.

My Uncle Brian wasn’t old.  He was middle aged when I was a kid.  He was middle aged in a 1970’s kinda way, like McCloud or even Burt Reynolds.  He had a mustache, and liked dirty jokes.  He would go scuba diving with us.  He liked poker and fishing boats and martinis and Camel cigarettes.  The Cigarettes were what eventually killed him.  But we had lots of visits before he went, usually fishing trips.  One year he was same as he always was, he just went to bed earlier.  The next year he wouldn’t climb up to the flying bridge.  The final year he’d have to rest a few times on the walk down the dock.  Each time we planned the trip, I knew it was the sort of visit you plan in order to spend time with someone who you won’t have too many chances to spend time with.

I had a phone call with my father yesterday.  I told him we’d be in Florida and we made plans to get together in Orlando.  The phone call started to have that familiar feeling.

I’m not expecting his immediate demise. My grandmother was alive for 15 years after that first visit. 

But this phone call, and these plans felt different.  Once you start planning your visits with people with the awareness of their finality, the relationship changes.  So today I felt a little closer to being an orphan.