Guantanamo Bay is for Sissies and Other Tales of MAYhem

The first time I heard that water boarding was considered torture I was sitting on a couch with Pete Rush.

“Obviously those p*ssies aren’t from Marshvegas,” he said. Then he shouted at the television. “Grow a set, ya Marys!”
If anyone can speak thusly, it’s Petie.

We have a tradition in Green Harbor, Greater Marshvegas, and Duxbury. It’s called MAYhem. The end of May marks the launch of summer, graduation, Memorial Day (which is when every asshat with a summer house arrives in town to mow their lawn for the first time in seven months), and a slight alteration of another tradition: The Birthday Beating.

Beach Rats—a rare breed of somewhat humanoid nature, identified by its habitat and mating rituals… that is to say, a group of beach dwelling Green Harbor/Duxbury residents raised on beer buried in sand and hidden under a blanket, dune sex, and crappy teen band forays—beat the crap out of people on their birthdays. There is spanking, jeering, noogies, with a concluding dunk in the harbor or surf off Powder Point, Green Harbor, or Red Rose. This is particularly traumatic for those born in the winter months.

In 1982 the first attempt to BIRTHDAY BEAT me, a founding Rat, was met with… well, let’s call it emphatic resistance. Yeah. That will do.

Something you should know about me… I’m scrappy. Yeah… we’ll say scrappy. I’m rather resistant to beating. My resistance has failed a time or two, but failings were the direct result of a HUGE disparity in size, numbers, or sobriety. So the tradition of Birthday Beatings was in danger on that late May day in 1982.

But I’m a team player. I’m all about tradition. So YET ANOTHER tradition was born. It is known as the COLLATERAL-DAMAGE-MEMORIAL DAY SIDE-LOADING-BIRTHDAY-BEATING.

In short: Since Pete Rush’s birthday is next week, and trying to beat me up and throw me in the water never went down very well, our friends beat the crap out of Petie twice: once for me, and once for him.

Petie, you can imagine, is resistant to this practice. And yet, in 30 years he has never managed to escape his beat-down and dunking. Tradition wins every time. Pete could break any interrogator at Guantanamo in about ten minutes. They’d stand over his dunk tank and sob in frustration. Petie is THE MAN. It’s just dumb luck that he was the man standing closest to me, with an approaching birthday of his own, 30 years ago… but we’ve been best friends since NURSERY school, and there aren’t a lot of people who stay this close for 43 years. That’s just a bitch, right there. You’d think he’d have moved on by 3rd grade or something, but my awesome has an astonishing power of gravity. People stick and can’t get out of my orbit. I’m planetary.

My birthday isn’t till Monday, but in recent years we have found it easier to nail Petie either a bit before, or a little after.

So anyway, Petie is, as I type this, hiding by the Fairview. He shut off his phone, computer, and any connection to social media. Stupid, really, he should have gone silent but kept them open for warnings. Roxanne and Bill (two other Beach Rat besties) have him in sight. He’s eating clams from Haddad’s.  Gazing out at the Atlantic from the lovely seawall, he is JUST thick enough to be secure in his little hidey-hole, unaware that Timmy (my ex-bf and bestie, and Petie’s roomie and bestie and business partner) is approaching him with a towel.

Enjoy the view, sweetheart… it’s about to get closer.  Happy MAYhem and we’ll see you on the 6th.

UPDATE: Rush escaped capture at Fairview, was apprehended on the Esplenade, and dunked in the harbor in retaliation for resisting dunkage.