Knickers and shoes, o my

Overlooking the Hudson at O’Hurley’s Hudson Beach for B’s birthday this evening. Location, location, location, my friends. Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, and Harry Chapin were being channeld by the guitar guy; I was ready to kill for some Blondie, Clash, Talking Heads, or Ramones, but you can't have everything. Waters of the heroic river were calm and the sunset was a smooth slip-sliding-away behind the Palisades. In short, a pretty perfect evening, as long as you could tune out the mediocre music. Can summer be like this through September? That is asking for too much, like Cheney and Scalia and Thomas and Fred Thompson all dying (slowly!) of heart attacks to show us that god exists after all and is a wise and just fellow instead of the vindictive little sadist the Xers worship. But enough of garbage: there were fireflies blinking in the twilight. It was B’s 4Xth birthday (seriously, she keeps it a closely guarded secret) and she beseeched us to not gift her. I took her literally, but others, who received the same emails, bought loot: the Israeli shirt and the Pink Slip knickers she received stupefied me into imagining her receiving a good birthday spanking. Forty-something-one, forty-something-two…(steady, old boy, steady). I mean, I think the whole point of birthdays is the loot and I’m a firm believer in registering or wish-listing. So of course I brought tribute, something gleaned from the natural world. There was only one other guy there among the nine or so of us, which was fine by me. I couldn’t help but notice M’s sexy-sexy shoes and C’s amazing bag: I must be turning gay in my dotage.