Summers in Santa Fe are beautiful. Afternoons cool off with the clouds rolling in from the Sangre de Cristos and the light changes from purple to pink as the sun sets. It can feel—dare I say it?—magical. My son London and I enjoy walking around my neighborhood, stopping to shoot hoops at a neighbor’s, or riding our bikes around the Railyard. During the heart of the summer, we were invited to my friend Janey’s for a barbecue, so London and I grabbed a football and walked past the empty house next door and through the alley behind our own little adobe toward the shindig a few streets away.

When we arrived at the party, a few women had already gathered in the kitchen, engrossed in animated conversation. London and I greeted Janey and then huddled near the stove, wondering what exactly to do next. We shared that awkward feeling you get when you arrive at a gathering too early, even though these folks seemed perfectly friendly.

“We’re all doing transformation,” one woman said to her circle.

“I’m in the workshop, getting my license,” another added.

“Everybody’s transforming,” a third one concurred.

London has an expressive face, and I could tell that he wondered what exactly I had gotten him into. Where were the superheroes, the trampolines, the water balloons? As an antidote to our uneasiness I asked, “Wanna go throw the football?” He nodded eagerly.

Maybe it’s primal, dating back to when cavemen threw spears, or perhaps it’s our limited relationship with speech and abstract thought, but hurling an object back and forth is awfully satisfying for displaced men. I have an older male friend who looks forward to vigorously tossing a baseball with London every time we come over for chicken stew. My son and I have spent countless hours in swimming pools across the country chucking a water-soaked orb back and forth, creating elaborate games with complex scoring systems and simple names.

After some time trying not to ding cars or have the pigskin end up in the cactus patch lining the road, we headed back to the party. More people had arrived, so we filled our plates with the kale salad and quinoa required by Santa Fe law and wandered to the backyard toward the smell of meat smoke. Janey had asked me to bring some sort of animal protein, so I’d marinated a pork tenderloin, and I could see it had found its way onto the charcoal grill, manned by a guy who looked like an Afghani Johnny Depp. He was struggling a bit with the heat and the smoke, so London and I found seats upwind and in the shade of a fruit tree.  I paused for a moment, noticing the distinct lack of children for London to hang with and the arrival of a group of adults balancing paper plates and plastic cups in their hands. Everyone said hello, and just after we learned each other’s names, one of the women froze, pointed and said, “That’s my cat.”

London stopped chewing and located a black and white adult feline near a small casita in the back of the yard. I could see my son trying to process both the content and intonation of the adult’s statement. Then he looked at me, and I felt compelled to try to clarify.

“How can you tell?” I asked the woman.

“I would recognize that cat from a mile away,” she said as if I had asked her the color of the sky.

To me (and I’m guessing to London, too), the mouser looked ordinary: black and white fur, whiskers, slight belly, standard cat fare. But to the woman, the felid was unmistakable—a dear friend from a few years back. Dressed in a sundress that exposed a round tattoo on her shoulder, she rushed over and sprawled on the brick patio with her former companion.

“That was your cat?” I asked, sounding stupid even to myself. I’m sure London had a feeling that most adults were indeed stupid or weird or both.

She told a meandering tale about old boyfriends, old jobs, old friends, leaving town and someone who lived in that casita but was currently travelling. London gave up somewhere in the middle of the story, pulling the brim down on his baseball cap as if to shelter his eyes from the strange scene and confusing narrative. I, on the other hand, was dumbstruck at the joy she was feeling and the rather odd reunion. I’d seen couples reunite at the airport, parents and children reconnect after time away from each other, and long lost siblings put together again to make damn fine reality television. But I’d never witnessed an accidental pet/owner rejoining. People often say, “Only in Santa Fe” about things that could easily happen in Sedona, Portland, or sometimes even Detroit. But watching a massage therapist coo and stroke a long-lost domesticated mammal in the backyard of an adobe under the shade of a fruit tree as the sky turned the color of red coral seemed pretty unique and (almost) magical. As for London, he seemed happy to eat the pork when it was cooked through, take a few bites from a fruit tart, and then go home, tossing a football with his dad along the way.

You could have called me Mr. Sunshine on my last trip. I allowed a family of five to go ahead of me and helped an older woman hoist her bag into the compartment overhead. I’m not choosy about where I sit. I prefer to be near the front of the plane, so when I saw two seats open, I tossed my carry-on up top and asked the man in the aisle seat if I could grab the window.

He wore squarish glasses and still had some of his dirty blonde hair languishing on the top of his head. I repeated my request since he didn’t seem to hear. Sighing audibly, he aimed his eyes at me as if I had just insulted his sister’s new hairstyle. He rose rather slowly, then stepped into the aisle barely enough to let a man half my size through, and I wasn’t half as large as he was.

As I wedged myself in, I saw that he had claimed his territory by stowing objects under all the seats except his. What do you do with a guy like that? Anyone flying in the past decade knows that most flights are full or oversold, and trying to save a whole row for yourself is like attempting to hoard the cake at your cousin’s wedding. The dude said nothing as I slipped his little man purse over to the neutral zone between us. I wanted to continue being Mr. Sunshine, but I felt dark clouds moving in.

I studied him, trying to figure out why he was being such a douchenozzle. He had stains on his shorts but a relatively clean shirt. He was reading a hardback copy of Hotel Pastis—not a terrible novel, but when the flight attendant came by to take drink orders, he demanded a full can of Diet Sprite with a tone of voice usually reserved for misbehaved pets.

I didn’t want to hate him or even dislike him, so I opened my own novel, Tumbledown, and escaped into the plot. The novel centers around a counselor at a psychiatric hospital and the complicated ways he deals with his patients and himself.

I thought my row mate would have to check in to a real hospital when he started coughing. It sounded as if he had a ball of steel wool nestled in his lungs and was desperate to dislodge it. His hacking was deep and liquidy, so I placed my hand over my mouth and nose, pretending I was stifling the longest yawn of my life. He deposited a healthy dose of phlegm into a tissue and threw the sputum ball casually onto the tray in the unoccupied middle seat.

I stared at the dripping bloom, hoping he would somehow register my disgust by proxy. Nothing. We teach our children to be kind and non-judgmental, especially when it comes to strangers. We also teach them to be sanitary. The flight attendants came by twice with their white plastic bags, and he failed to rid my life of the wet ugliness.

When he got up to go to the bathroom, I wanted to yell: “Take your shit with you,” but I was raised in a white, repressed manner where, instead of making a scene in public places, you just stew. So stew I did. My stew was chunky and spicy, full of angry ingredients fighting other angry ingredients over an open flame.

By the time he threw away his foul leavings, I was pretty steamed and ready to exit the aircraft. He clutched his two little bags and one of those metal cane contraptions that unfold into the type of seat overweight people use when they grow tired of walking around a museum or medium-sized hotel lobby. He ambled down the aisle and once we hit the jet way, he demanded a wheelchair.

The female porter obliged, and departing passengers were held up as he got settled for his free ride with his bags perched on his lap like a wealthy woman’s dog. The porter started pushing but couldn’t get the chair over the lip of the ramp. I could hear her labored breath as she strained to roll the dead weight across the hump. I don’t believe in karma, but I believe in irony. What else could I do?

“This is my life,” I thought as I rolled my bag to the side and grabbed the two handles of my temporary nemesis’ delivery device. I pushed as hard as I could, and then I started coughing.

“I always say, ‘My ass,’” my high school friend Rita said when the server moved out of earshot.

“Really?”

“No, not really.” She smiled. “They don’t invent these things, they just deliver them.”

Rita and I had been working on a writing project together at a nearby café called Bricks and Scones close to her surprisingly quiet suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles. Even more surprising were the number of businesses we passed with cutesy names like The Barking Lot, The Petite Retreat and The Merchant of Tennis. Who knew that LA could be so goddamn punny?

Hungry, Rita took me to Café Gratitude, a place I had vaguely heard of from worldly vegan New Age friends in Santa Fe. I’d been to Body, Annapurna, and even tried to manifest a nicer car, but as soon as I read the menu, I realized that I’d arrived at the holy grail of what Café Gratitude calls “Sacred Commerce.” All the items were titled with simple declarative sentences designed to empower. If you feel benevolent, you might choose a breakfast entrée called I Am Open-Hearted, two very kind, gluten-free buckwheat-flax pancakes. Multi-cultural and beautiful? I Am Bonita might be the quinoa black bean taco you’ve been waiting for. But what did a square white guy like me feel like?

“My husband and I always rename the food, you know,” Rita said. “‘I Am Slightly Anxious And Fearful.’ ‘I Feel Fat In These Jeans.’ ‘I Am Scared I’ll Never Work In This Town Again’.”

“I’m starting to feel anxious about this menu,” I said.

“See?”

A threetop walked in that was even more intriguing than the I Am Dazzling Caesar salad. An Asian man in a well-pocketed shirt and a video camera sat down across from a Lindsay Lohan look-alike and a woman you would not see in any of those blasé vegan joints in Fanta Se. She had a sheer blouse over a bikini top, daisy dukes, Doc Martens and a belt made from high-caliber bullet casings. Her exposed flesh was covered in pinup girl tattoos and her hair had been colored and styled à la Flock of Seagulls.

“I am staring,” I said to Rita, nodding over to the new arrivals.

“I am starving,” she said and flagged down our server to order. She was transformed while I was at peace. It was a nice combo. She also ordered a digestive elixir called I Am Fiery, brewed from something called noni in addition to ginger, turmeric, cayenne, and minerals left over from colonial times, or so I guessed from the description.

Each open table brought in more interesting clientele. It was hard for me not to shout, “Look over there,” when a hairless man in a crocheted headband positioned himself next to what I guessed to be his gypsy fortune-teller girlfriend. The couple said nothing the whole time we were there. They simply grimaced at photos on the phone of a nondescript woman seated across from them.

I did say, “I think those two took a vow of silence,” and gestured toward their table.

Rita nodded as if crocheted headbands and vows were everyday fare for her in the city of We Are Lost Angels.

Freshly waxed, the man had this reptilian way of sniffing the air before the sides of his mouth turned down.

“He looks like he’s eating a big bowl of ‘I Am In Pain’,” I said.

The server came back with what appeared to be watery blood in a shot glass. Rita sniffed it.

“And now I will drink my own version of suffering.” She took a sip and her face nearly exploded. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

“For reals?”

“You try.”

She slid the glass to my side. I raised it to my lips and partook. I tasted an opening blast of cleaning products followed by a finish of rancid vinegar. “Sweet I Am Angry Jesus,” I said and had to turn my head to keep from vomiting all over the I Am A Table. I was greeted by the pinup girl seductively chewing her kale salad without using cutlery while the proverbial film rolled.

“Wow.”

“Right?”

Our food was plated on the What Are You Grateful For? dishware, and Rita’s tacos seemed heartier than my gluten-free bagel with seaweed squares and sprouts. For some reason probably having to do with my previous gluten intake, I thought my meal would look more like the bagel and lox you’d get in New York delis.

“I was mistaken,” I said, pointing to my wafer-thin breadish product. Then I scanned the amazing range of humans in the brightly lit café. “But I am grateful.”

My fellow travelers and I were on a flight the airline referred to as “regional.” What that really meant was a tiny pillbox of a plane only four chairs wide with overhead compartments the size of pillows. I was seated next to a man who was a self-proclaimed civil engineer on a military base; he was the kind of nerd who was both overly polite and nervous enough to commiserate about things that didn’t require empathy.

“Oh, you’ll be travelling all day,” he said to an older couple across the aisle who were on their way to Vancouver.

“Sure, but we’ll be on a cruise by this time tomorrow,” the man said, smiling.

“You’ll be exhausted,” the civil engineer said.

“We’re staying in a hotel tonight.”

The couple had to convince him that their holiday was perfectly safe, thank you, and they had nothing really to complain about, so he might want to pull something out of his Game of Thrones messenger bag to occupy himself.

The civil engineer didn’t try to chat me up because as soon as I was settled, my nose was in a book and my ears were otherwise occupied listening to a playlist made by a friend. I saw him look over as if to console me about my unfortunate choice in footwear or hair that was overdue for a cut. I, however, was happy in my antisocial cocoon until I was told to turn off my iPod because the latest Phosphorescent album just might crash the plane.

After unplugging, I heard what sounded like two cartoon voices right behind me. The man had a droopy western drawl while the woman delivered an LA accent straight out of Valley Girl. The tiny plane didn’t allow for any turning around; in fact, I couldn’t really see much besides my bespectacled engineer and the legs of the happy cruisers. The Valley Girl was extremely chatty, talking about her life as a traveling surgeon and her recent dating woes. The Cowboy was sympathetic. He, too, had been dating. In fact, he was on his way to meet a lady friend right this darn-tooting minute.

It’s a stupid habit, but I often hold my palms in the air in a “Can you believe this?” gesture even when I’m alone. Even though we had barely punched a hole in the sky, the conversation was already perplexing. A traveling surgeon? For what, I wondered? The woman sounded no older than 12, with the kind of teenage language peculiarities you rarely associate with someone holding a scalpel. Their conversation was alarmingly intimate even though they had met mere minutes before. Sadly, my engineer didn’t notice. He stared straight ahead even after my awkward hand jive. Then, the two started drinking.

I have no problems with folks imbibing at 30,000 feet, but after a few rounds, the two accelerated their cozy interface.

“Have you ever tried one of these?” the woman asked.

“No, I heard about them though,” the Cowboy said.

“Here, try it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The way they spoke sounded like they were sharing bodily fluids in some lost highway hotel. I tried to peer through the space between my seat and the engineer’s to see what the communal object was, but the sliver of light was too narrow. Then, I smelled something cool and musky at the same time.

“You’re so awesome,” she said, giggling. “How awesome are you, sharing this with me?”

I shot the engineer the hairy eyeball. How could he not notice the full sensory spectrum we were getting. I could hear them inhale and blow tobacco-tainted steam in the cabin air. Channeling the Cowboy, I understood it was one of them there newfangled electric cigarettes. I swore the steam would set off some sensor or alert the air marshal, but no such luck.

“Do you think he’ll like me?” the Valley Girl asked, referring to her blind date in New York the next day. She’d told some crazy story about looking up New Mexican singles on Match.com but randomly ended up arranging a date with a Korean man who lived in Manhattan.

“With your personality,” the Cowboy started, his speech already slurring a bit from the cocktails, “there is no way on God’s green earth that he won’t like a gal like you.”

“Think so?”

“I’ll eat my hat if he don’t.”

How could my seatmate not notice two strangers drinking and smoking and eating hats on a jet? I held my hands up again and double-eyeballed him. Still nothing. I usually enjoy my time on planes; the hours alone allow me to sit and read and listen to music or catch up on a podcast I haven’t had the time to focus on. On this flight, I was too distracted to do any of these things. Instead, I struggled in disbelief as the pair behind me argued whether he played the role of boyfriend or older brother in her past life. Just then, a flight attendant walked by the duo and said, “Excuse me, you can’t do that here.”

“Finally,” I said, in want of an onlooker more than someone to rain on their parade.

“Excuse me?” the engineer said, waking from his coma.

“Too late,” I said, and turned away.

“I bring my books up there and food and just hang out. You can actually breathe,” she said, knowing that for some of us, breathing clearly during March and April in Santa Fe feels like a treat. While I didn’t think I’d set up office under the aspens, I was willing to try anything. The back and forth between sneezing all night and feeling strung-out on meds all day had gotten old.

I’m a light hiker. I brought only a bottle of water and an iPod loaded with podcasts. That morning, I’d chosen one by veteran comedian (and former Albuquerque homeboy) Marc Maron, calledWTF. Maron interviews other comics (and sometimes musicians and actors) from the point of view of a neurotic man in his late 40s; in this one, his interviewee was relatively new comic and former rocker Dean DelRay, who had been in a number of forgettable bands before working with the Rolling Stones on tour. DelRay had a kind of upbeat stoner-storyteller vibe, and I was happy to listen to yarns about life on the road with Mick and Keith.

On the trail, in the dappled light of early morning, my congestion lightened. The deep cloud of a good podcast or book on tape often allows me to experience multi-layered sensory input: I was aware of the sun on my neck, slight pain in my wrist from a recent minor accident and the cool mountain air contouring my face. As I walked in the shade of ponderosa pines, I recalled my allergies every summer in Connecticut. I saw myself in athletic shorts, mowing lawns barefoot with a white handkerchief tucked in the waistband. Instead of aspens and yarrow surrounding me, our thick green lawn was bordered by maple trees and those brutal twin brothers: poison ivy and oak.

Nell was right. About 30 minutes into my hike (or walk, since the gain in elevation is negligible), my allergies had mostly dissipated. My head cleared, and I happily greeted the few hikers I saw. The dogs running ahead of them reminded me of the cats my family kept and my discovery as an adult that, in addition to juniper and grass, I was highly allergic to felines.

My father is the kind of man who believes allergies are “all in your head,” to quote him directly. Every summer, he was convinced that he could talk me out of my red nose and irritated sinuses; every summer, he failed. But on the Borrego, I fell into that deep trance state where everything—running dogs, folks hanging out by the creek, thimbleberry and geranium—seems essential to that moment.

I made my way to where the Borrego meets the Winsor Trail. As DelRay waxed nostalgic about his past, I looked up and saw a large black dog bounding down from the forest. Then my mind registered the size of the animal, its thick fur and the jaunty way it moved. It wasn’t a dog; it was a bear.

My heart tried to punch its way out of my chest as my mind scanned for any knowledge of what to do. As the bear moved across the path, it turned to face me. Should I run? No. Playing dead was just for cartoons. Make noise? Be still?

The bear scampered up the other tree-lined bank, only slower. I started to back away and headed in the other direction. I recalled the documentary Grizzly Man and DelRay’s stories about growing up in Yosemite, where he watched bears tear open cars after visitors left food in the glove box. I quickened my pace, thinking I heard crashing in the woods above me. The bear was tracking me—or so I believed. I grabbed some pebbles and dropped them into my water bottle, which I shook to make a chick-chuck sound. Even though the bear was long gone, I made that noise as I walked back faster than I had come, no longer able to hear anything coming from my iPod or appreciate the spring beauty unfolding before me. When I got home, I called Nell to thank her for her swell advice.

“I saw a bear,” I said. It felt as if I’d been holding my breath for a long time.

“That’s funny,” she said. “I have seen some big tracks up there. I just didn’t know who they belonged to.”

“Super.”

“God, you are so lucky,” she said. “A bear! What good fortune.” She paused, probably imagining her own encounter. “Oh, and how are your allergies?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Where are you?” I asked, having no idea what Nag Champa was or why liquid was the preferable form to purchase it in.

“I’m at Willows, Wands and Whatnot,” he said and hung up.

The last text I’d received from Eddie before this curious exchange about something that sounded like slang for horse feed was a photo of my nephew Nick in oversized sunglasses holding out two peace signs. “Front row of the Chubby Checker concert, baby!” the text read, as if getting up close and personal to a man who should have died during the Ford presidency was something to brag about. But then again, Eddie lives in Orlando, Fla., a place that cherishes its parades and firework displays as well as concerts by the last remaining members of bands that most of us remember from AM radio and fast food commercials on television.

I was in my house, making lists of all the things that would cause me pain when I returned to my duties trying to teach novels to hormonal teenagers in springtime. I tried to imagine where Eddie was trying to “get sorted,” as they say on the street; he could be at Disney World, where he worked, I thought, or Gatorland or SeaWorld, where he held annual passes because Mouseschwitz wasn’t enough to feed his theme-park appetite. Eddie and his family are always attending (or starring in) festivals and fairs of one sort or another.
Their life is a series of the kind of attractions not found in singles bars. His family photo album brims with topiaries, thrill rides and adults dressed in animal costumes waving padded hands.

He called me back a few hours later, happy to talk with the single brother who is most fascinated with his manic Technicolor world. For me, it’s like speaking to one of the human oddities featured in a reality show, only this one shares my childhood memories of parents who smoked over our cribs and brothers who barely escaped jail after fleeing flaming automobiles.

“Dude, it’s really brown and totally uncut,” he said without even a hello.

“The Nag Champa?” By then I’d Googled the stuff and saw that it was an Indian essence favored by balding hippies and Sri Lankans with big-ass afros.

“No, the patchouli,” he corrected me. He’d already bagged the Nag.

“You still buy patchouli? I thought that shit died with Jerry Garcia.”

“Sandy doesn’t like it,” he said, “but I couldn’t pass it up. This is no dollar store watered-down version, bro.
This is pure and uncut, straight-up deadhead.”

Eventually, I got him to slow down enough to explain that he had traveled with his wife Sandy and the kids to attend a Renaissance Faire in Tampa. Eddie and Sandy met and fell in love over turkey legs and horns of beer when they both worked at one of these historical freakfests in the early 1990s. According to Eddie, some of their olde friends were working this particular fayre and offered them free tickets. When I called, Eddie was visiting an apothecary called Willows, Wands and Whatnot, trying to score. His daughter Marcy spotted her father in his blazing tie-dye and dropped a dime by yelling, “Daddy’s buying scents again!” to her disapproving mother.  That’s when he hung up on me.

I wondered what a grown man in his 40s did with those kind of fragrances.

“I like it strong, so I put some drops on my socks, wrist and behind my ears,” he said.

I was about to quote him the “you know how I know that you’re gay” scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin when he said, “I also splash it on the lavender pillows I keep in the freezer. You remember the ones: you loved them when you were here, dude.” This was a sad but true reminder. After opening and closing all three parks at Disney with my fast-walking and faster-talking brother as a guide, it felt great at the end of the day to have him also act as my Moroccan whore with eye pillows, tiger balm and tropical flavored coffees.

“Sounds like you’re having a pretty good time,” I said, recalling how my face tingled.

“It’s pretty great living the Rennie lifestyle again, but things have definitely changed.” He sounded almost solemn.

“What do you mean?” I thought the point of these cross-dressing fests was for modern times not to touch the food, dress, contraception and sanitation habits that originated in the Middle Ages.

“Well, for one thing, all the fairies now have darkened their colors because of Twilight.”

“That’s too bad. Twilight ruined everything,” I said.

“Yeah, and when you speak Olde English to the archers now, they just sneer and say two words.”

“I’m drunk?”

“No.”

“Fondle me?”

“Worse than that.”

I had a million more pairings that included severe loneliness, mild obesity and blinding body odor, but we both had work to do. “I’ll bite,” I said.

“Hunger Games.”

As I grew older, my experiences at carnivals taught me that I needn’t worry about the dangers of the trampoline since I didn’t have the stomach for jumping and twirling anyhow. The cheap, traveling so-called amusement parks and their clunky, portable rides made me feel queasy and injured. I didn’t understand the thrill of throwing up your candy apple on the same girl you wanted to kiss, and I’d been in enough car accidents to resist handing some toothless grease monkey a string of tickets just to experience the same whiplash I got sliding in the backseat driving with my older brother on the Boston Post Road.

So you can imagination my hesitation when my son London and I joined my friend Edie and her two kids on a journey south to Albuquerque to try the new Xtreme Hang Time indoor trampoline park. I’d never heard of this concept, let alone the Duke City’s version. I try to avoid anything labeled “extreme” and, as an English teacher, cute misspellings simply annoy me, especially in a state like ours that already has notorious issues with literacy. During our ride down, I’d made up my mind that London needed a dad who participated in this kind of thing even if it seemed like a bad idea given my history of nausea. For most adults, such a decision would be no big deal. For me, it felt momentous, akin to what Christ must have wrestled with in the wilderness.

“Smells like gasoline,” London said when he stepped out of the car. Don’t ask me why but that’s when I recalled what I stupidly chose to have for breakfast: a salmon sandwich and a Caesar salad. Edie and her kids were already in the parking lot, having arrived early enough to fill out the liability waivers, but the Xtreme door was still extremely locked. While they’d waited, her daughter Tulah had discovered an impressive climbing gym across the street while her son Tate unearthed the place parents went to smoke while their kids got their spaz on inside.

At the Xtreme Hang Time indoor trampoline park, they give you nonslip socks to wear, and there’s a taped off area where parents like me would usually stand, but today I was determined to be another kind of parent, the kind who jumps high and runs around with glee, feverish not with a temperature but with the love of, well, jumping high and running around. London and I immediately went to the Xtreme basketball hoop and looked pathetic trying to sink at least one shot after jumping off a carpeted cube. According to a guy with a whistle whose name was STAFF, some of the counselors could actually dunk. Woo-hoo!

London couldn’t tell, but I felt ill immediately. I hid it well, trying to keep my legs steady as we ran to a series of foam pits, each equipped with its own—you guessed it—trampoline. London went first and did a nifty forward flip into the kiddie pool of blue cubes. I followed suit and landed on my head like a lawn dart. I could feel the fissure in a vertebra I broke in 1987 start to crack open, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Foam pits, at least deep ones, are their own sort of quicksand, and trying to crawl out of that spongy nightmare made me feel both awkward and obese.

“Dad, this place is so awesome,” London said, as I dragged myself from the geometric deep.

“I know, right?” I answered, recalling the neck brace I wore all that spring of ’87. I tried to cover the flesh-colored collar with scarves a friend bought at a Dead concert but that type of decorating drew even more of the kind of attention that rarely ends up in romance.

London led me to the dodge ball area, and I was happy enough throwing balls at small children, but all that tumbling and leaping started my salmon swimming upstream. Feeling queasy, I grabbed London and pulled him to the mat, trying to use him as a shield against all my pint-sized opponents who smelled weakness in the form of my fish-scented breath.

“Please try not to lie down for too long,” STAFF said, approaching us. “We don’t want anyone to step on you.”

I tried to say thanks but what came out was closer to a burp than gratitude.

At this point, I’d had enough, but we still had about twenty paid minutes left. London realized that running on a bed of trampolines made him faster, so he raced from one end of the warehouse-o-fun to the other. There was something beautiful about his motion as he extended his stride so his gait appeared almost gazelle-like.
My head ached and my stomach was not pleased, and London’s form started to blur either from his increasing speed or my first bedspins in years.

“Dad, want to race?” London asked.

“Dude,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, “I might throw up if I do.”

Suddenly, STAFF was right behind us. “Throw up? Who said throw up?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I speak mostly in metaphor.”

The rest of our party arrived, seeing it was close to the end. We walked to the lobby and threw our moist socks in the hamper. Surprisingly, everyone seemed as exhausted as I was.

“A half hour would have been fine,” Tulah said.

“Dad, this place smells like feet,” London added, putting on his shoes.

“I know, buddy. And the gym is still pretty new, and it’s not yet summer.”

Out of the milling crowd, a flushed girl with dirty blonde hair approached me with a knowing smile. “I hit you in the face. A lot,” she said, far too pleased with herself.

“True, my little demon,” I answered nicely, “but I get to leave now and you, my dear, have to stay.”

Larry had invited two fellow grad students to Thanksgiving in what the rest of us dubbed “The Dating Game.” Both 20-something women had the same name—Janey—and dietary designation—vegan—so all the adults and even some of the kids referred to them as Janey No. 1 and Janey No. 2 as if they were curtains on a game show. Standing at barely five feet, Janey No. 1 arrived first, wearing a backless, twirling party dress and a pair of shitkickers purchased in the boy’s section of Salvation Army. And, as if to confuse us even more, Janey No. 1 was scheduled to pick up Janey No. 2 at the airport just after dessert.

When Larry signed up online to return to his alma mater, he was fairly sure he’d get in, so he didn’t take the application form that seriously. Under the heading “Nickname,” he’d jokingly typed “T-Bone.” Little did he know that computer networks had advanced since 1994, so when he’d arrived at NMSU, T-Bone was everywhere: on his nametag, student ID, financial aid paperwork and the lips of his fellow grad students and professors. I mention this because, not long after she arrived, I heard Janey No. 1 yelling to T-Bone that they should do something called an “Irish Car Bomb.”

“Isn’t that in bad taste?” I asked my old friend, seeing that his parents came over from Ireland to escape things like religious wars, British occupation and, well, car bombs.

“Nah,” he said in a rooster-guarding-the-henhouse sort of way.

An Irish Car Bomb is a big drink for a petite firecracker like Janey, and watching her drop a shot of Baileys with a Jameson floater into a full pint of Guinness got my salivary glands going. What was even worse was witnessing so much good booze trickle down her chin and onto her tidy and unmotherly chest. I knew I’d been away from graduate school for a while when I realized it’s now a requirement for students to raise both arms in the air and scream after finishing a drink that should only be served in sports bars. Janey hugged T-Bone, and I watched as the decades between them melted away. I could almost hear Woody Allen whisper in my ear, “The heart wants what it wants.”

“She is so not driving to the airport,” one of my former professors said. We all agreed that no one should drive anywhere that night, so Janey texted another grad student who happens to share my first name, which I share with the owner of the house we were eating and drinking in. Rob No. 2 or No. 3, depending on whether you rank by age or height or history with car bombs, would gladly retrieve Janey No. 2 and deliver her shortly.

“We need a whiteboard to keep track of all these dull-named people,” I said, exhausted. “And I’m one of them.”

“I feel like I’ve already eaten,” T-Bone said, carrying a full plate in from the kitchen.

“Car bomb!” a few other adults yelled, and we all raised our arms and screamed in the air like good current, former or future graduate students.

“I made vegan gravy!” Janey No. 1 added. No one said anything to that.

Like a holy man, I stuck to water and wine that night, but there were plenty of other options I saw mosey their way out of liquor cabinets and various refrigeration units. In the post-dinner exhale—after turkey and its supporting cast, vegan and non-vegan cakes and apple pies baked by a local Christian woman that my son said tasted like “Jesus dipped in caramel”—I saw the effects the car bombs had on T-Bone and our little Janey. The May/December duo was teetering as if they were experiencing a series of minor earthquakes. It almost seemed fun, having a chance to relive two years of your life.

“Oh Jesus,” T-Bone said, pawing at the front of Janey’s dress which was now stained a deep burgundy. In some twisted act of gallantry, he grabbed a plastic bottle and started pouring bubbling water on her neck and chest.
“Wet t-shirt contest,” someone stage-whispered.

“Car bomb!” someone else yelled, and I didn’t need to turn around to know that he was signaling a touchdown.

T-Bone wiped his hands on the front of his jeans. “That’ll do the trick.”

“People usually use club soda, not tonic,” I said.

“Oh jeez,” he groaned, sounding more like a Larry and less like a T-Bone.
Besides helping her smell like a patio bar during spring break, this parade of wardrobe malfunctions exposed Janey’s array of tattoos, so I asked for a primer. “This one I got because I love Dr. Seuss,” she said, pointing to a grove of cotton-candy trees. “Oh, and I have one, well…” She paused.

“In a private place?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “It’s the one I didn’t really think through.”

The back door opened and in walked the other Rob, followed by Janey No. 2, whose youthful face managed to look tired without forming any wrinkles.

“You must be hungry.” I raced to the refrigerator. Who doesn’t love the sight of Thanksgiving leftovers? “Here,” I said, handing her a gallon bag full of sliced turkey breast. “Go to town.”

“Um, I’m a vegan,” she said grimly.

“Car bomb!” I yelled, and reached for the sky.

Dani: Saturday, 4:07 am
We’re huddled together on the futon, trying to stifle another burst of hysterical giggles while watching Bad Lip Reading on Justin’s iPhone, which now wears an intentional case designed by moi. I’m so tired I can hardly see straight, but this is the first day I’ve spent with my best friend in almost two years, and there’s no way I’m wasting our last few hours together sleeping.

Rob: Saturday, 11:00 am
My friend Todd picks me up and we drive by Mr. Bones’ pumpkin patch, a large parking lot filled with hay bales, pumpkins and your garden-variety assortment of inflatable vampires and ghosts. SUVs are backed up into the street waiting to park, and there’s an area cordoned off with caution tape.
“What’s that for?” I ask Todd, pointing to a group of men in jackets huddled together.
“That’s the paparazzi area.”
“For a pumpkin patch?”
“This is the place celebrities come to get photos taken to show what good parents they are.”
I think of all the Halloween-themed celebrity family pics I’ve seen in People and Us magazines. I feel my love for Jennifer Garner and Nicole Richie start to dissipate like mist from a fog machine.
“I stopped going there with the kids when I saw Meg Ryan,” Todd says.

Dani: Saturday, 11:11 am
I stumble deliriously down to the Silver Lake farmers market for more homemade tempeh and pickled daikon. I eat my weight in fresh orange slices.

Dani: Saturday, 12:04 pm
I jaywalk across Sunset to my favorite thrift store, where I find two T-shirts that would look great on my former boyfriend, for whom I probably shouldn’t be buying clothes anymore. But they’re only $2, and I want to support the store, and old habits die hard.

Rob: Saturday, 12:30 pm
My friends Todd and Sarah’s twins, Auggie and Bruno, have both been ill but want me to play ping-pong. When it comes to a game of table tennis, my sense of competition borders on inappropriate. I make quick work of Bruno and then battle a bit with Auggie before dismissing him. The kids try to distract me by using a clipboard as a paddle and substituting brightly painted balls for the usual white ones. Nothing works; I am their master. Todd, exhausted from having been up all night with sick kids, loses in disgrace. I reign supreme.

Dani: Saturday, 2:20 pm
I’m sitting on a Silver Lake sidewalk, sharing a Mexican tempeh scramble with my girlfriend Eve, who’s visiting from Byron Bay. She’s pondering moving back home, but to Joshua Tree, where life will be simpler and more balanced—and hot.

Dani: Saturday, 3:27 pm
Eve and I are heading to my favorite health food store to stock up on superfoods and herbs. She pulls over less than two minutes into our journey, having received “three hits” from “her guides” that taking me to Erewhon is not her highest choice.
“Fair enough,” I say, exiting the car at the corner of Sunset and Hyperion.
“I love you,” she says as she drives away.
“I love you too, mama,” I yell back, turning to walk back towards Bella’s house.

Dani: Saturday, 3:32 pm
Michelle picks me up at the Moroccan café, where I will tomorrow run into her three times, to take me shopping for jeans that aren’t two sizes too big on me and to talk about why boys are behind and why she left the Orgasmic Meditation community.
Crossroads Trading Company’s racks are packed tight with super-fashionable options, and I’m overwhelmed in light of almost two years spent buying whatever’s least hideous at St. Vincent de Paul.

Dani: Saturday, 6:54 pm
We have 7 o’clock reservations at Sage, but Jodi (Bella’s mom) is still OM-ing. I’m face down on the futon, trying not to listen as a man she doesn’t date or kiss rubs her clitoris in an unwavering up and down motion for thirteen minutes in her bedroom eight feet away. An iPhone alarm goes off. The door opens.
“Wanna go next?” asks The Stroker.

Rob: Sunday, Oct. 21, 8:00 am
I am there when Joan’s on Third opens, having fallen in love with their dark coffee and luscious-though-overpriced breakfast sandwich. Besides, it’s far better than the Magnolia Bakery, which is run by bitches and serves anemic coffee. There’s a gaggle of animated LA housewives seated next to me, seemingly inspired by reality television. One starts misusing Spanish by saying “No esta chica,” when the salt shaker goes missing. Another, talking about Tim Robbins’ advancing age, pantomimes circles in front of her face and says she was attracted to Robbins, “before he got old and his face whatever.”

Rob: Sunday, 10:05 am
I’m back at Todd and Sarah’s and enjoy a second breakfast of a chocolate croissant with Auggie and Bruno because I love this family, and I love flaky crusts soaked in butter and chocolate. Pastries taste so much better at sea level near a large body of water. Todd’s haul from their local farmers market is like edible art. Just before they drive me to the airport, I ask Todd if he wants revenge on the ping-pong table. “OK,” he says, and then proceeds to kick the living shit out of me in front of the boys. Trying to save face, I suggest a game where I use a toy guitar and the boys use the clipboard. No one keeps score.

Dani: Sunday, 11:55 am
I walk up the steps to the Sweat Spot for Sweaty Sundays, a “contemporary class for everyone” and my favorite dance class ever. My teacher, Ryan, races in to hug me. And as his heart mashes against my heart, the tears well up and I squeeze even tighter, wishing I didn’t have to let go, or even just go, at all, ever again.