Mermaids in Paradise, Lydia Millet [ebook reader 8 inch txt] 📗

who would prefer not to—how our free nation is a carnival of stunted mental growth. “Arrested adolescence? We wish,” she’ll slur loudly, Gina, my wedding helpmeet, when she’s in her cups. “We never made it out of elementary school, buddy.”

It’s not always clear what Gina’s referring to.

Chip’s mother kept trying to shoehorn items into the reception, slip in repulsive elements without me noticing. For instance, party favors such as star-shaped fairy wands with a label on them inviting guests to WISH UPON A STAR. When I said no to that one she left me five messages, each one more indignant. Then she wanted bottles of bubble bath with swans on top, their necks disturbingly entwined; then a white-silk flower with CONSIDER THE LILIES stamped on the stem in gold.

I told her no favors, since Chip and I had passed beyond that phase. We were adults, I told her calmly but firmly: when we attended a party we didn’t expect to go home with sparkle-filled bouncy balls or a handful of Tootsie Pops. We were no longer impressed, like so many gentle natives on the wrong end of a cargo-cult trade, by the magical wonder of the monogram. Black and silver matchbooks, floaty pens, even high-priced cake knives or serving spoons engraved with Jon & Minky or Dick & Billy left us completely unmoved. My personal impulse, upon receiving such items as a guest, was to hurl them into the nearest trash can as soon as I exited the function.

No, we were perfectly pleased to leave a party empty-handed, our blood alcohol content somewhere above .08.

BY THE TIME the various events fell into place, my party was slated for the day after Chip’s race. He’d need some time to recover before the ceremony, with morphine derivatives for pain. Then the rehearsal dinner and then, on a Saturday in late July, our small ceremony and reception.

It wasn’t going to be easy to spectate, at the mud marathon, but I drove with him anyway; the course had been set up at a ski resort in the San Bernardinos. Once we were up there in the pines, checked into our hotel room, I took a shower while Chip listened to rabble-rousing music with his earbuds in. Then we went outside and I watched as runners milled around at the starting line for what seemed like an eternity, stretching, high-fiving, chugging sports drinks and eating astronaut food.

The weather wasn’t sunny, in fact a thunderstorm was threatening, which seemed to please those extreme sportsmen and sportswomen: they sought every encumbrance possible. Many would happily have run the distance on hot coals. A number sported rubber bands around the thick parts of their arms or rings from multiple piercings—rings that, I imagined, could easily get snagged on the barbed- or razor-wire entrapments and rip off a lobe or a nipple. Several participants bore large ink designs from previous years’ events, one on the top of his shaven head; I saw two others comparing mud-race burns and scars, one on the neck, the other across the ribs.

“Chip,” I said—as Chip, standing on one leg like a stork, pointed and flexed the airborne foot repeatedly, writing the alphabet upon thin air with his toes to loosen his ankle—“are you completely sure? I’ve got a great idea. How ’bout you just don’t do this race, and we can tell everyone you did?”

“I’m not going to wuss out,” protested Chip. “Babe. Babe! Are you kidding?”

“It wouldn’t be wussing,” I said. I hated the thought of Chip with a tattoo on his head. Till death do us part, and all, but with the head tattoo I wasn’t sure. It didn’t appeal to me. “Not in the least. This would be more like, you doing me a solid.”

“Now honey,” said Chip, de-storking his muscular legs and coming over to put his arms around my waist, “I know you support me taking this on. It’s going to rock. It’ll totally rock, OK? You’ll see.”

When I first met Chip, on a speed-dating lark that Gina dragged me to as an ironic gesture after I’d gone through a bad breakup, I had the impression he was a handsome guy but seemingly indifferent. It turned out he wasn’t indifferent at all; when Chip gets a far-off look in his eyes it’s not coldness, it’s more like an echoing. He forgets what’s in front of him sometimes, does Chip—goes to a dreaming place, a dreaming environment. In that land flags are flying over tall-grass meadows; men are Vikings, women like ornaments on the prows of ancient ships, their hair long and wavy. Chip’s a dreamer and if he could, he’d make the world a place where questing videogames became reality, where he could wear breastplates and a deep battle horn would sound over the white-peaked mountains and lush green valleys. Stags leaping in the woods; fording of streams by warriors and their warhorses, decked out in glorious regalia; possibly mythological creatures.

But if you can’t make the world into a videogame, and if you’re not a full-on geek but fifty-percent jock too, I guess the next best thing is a mud marathon.

“I do support you, Chip,” I sighed. “Just—would you do something for me? Don’t get a head tattoo. Look at that guy. With the name of the race beneath that stubble on his scalp? He looks like he’s here to kill minorities. Chip, I don’t favor a man with head tattoos.”

“You’ve got my word on it, sweetcheeks,” said Chip. He disentangled himself from my embrace and returned to his warmup/stretching routine.

“Chip,” I went on, as he storked on his second leg and peeled back the wrapper on an energy bar that looked like something dark nestled in cat litter, “you know, while we’re on the advisability subject, I sometimes have a thought. My thought is that, with the planet at seven billion people and counting, hundreds of millions in abject poverty, my concern is that extreme sports are maybe a red herring. If people