Saturday July 1, Part One

Sometimes you do the irresponsible thing and fly to Vegas on a Friday night when it's obvious there's something else to do instead. And sometimes your friends rent a cabana by the pool at your hotel and you spend the afternoon sunning and watching soccer and nursing several beers and one towering hangover. Sometimes, not often but more often than you might think, you fly 2500 miles to sit by a swimming pool only to realize you forgot your fucking bathing suit, and when this happens you put your hands on your hips, bite your lower lip and sigh audibly into your open suitcase, finally deciding to wear a pair of blue madras shorts in hopes that the casual observer might mistake these ridiculous pants for swim trunks. But with alarming frequency, your shorts are too large at the waist because you bought them at an outlet store and frankly you haven't been eating much recently anyway, so you decide to wear a belt, despite what you know the casual observer will think when he sees a tarnished belt buckle where your drawstring should be.