Take A Picture (It'll Last Longer)

My mother called us around seven, after we had eaten dinner and gone back up to the room. She told me she had wanted to call us when we first got into town to make sure we were alright, but she decided against it because she figured we needed “time to settle in”. I couldn’t very well remind my mother of the conversation she and I had in my kitchen about how Ben and I wouldn’t be getting down and getting funky no matter what she thought because the night before Ben and I had gotten down and gotten very funky, from what I can recall from my fuzzy memory.

My mother seemed a little disappointed that I claimed the highlight of the trip so far was that I managed to snag three shrimps from Ben’s plate without him noticing and that we had managed to catch a Spanish re-run of Gilligan’s Island on the TV. My mother then handed the phone to my dad who told me he would beat up Ben if he stepped out of line and reminded me to tell Ben this whenever Ben did something I didn’t like. Then my dad asked to talk to Ben and the two of them talked about which teams they wanted to win whatever sports tournament is coming up next. Ben then talked to my mother about what type of digital camera she should buy for herself and then he put the phone up.

We hadn’t really talked our drunken escapades the night before and the whole argument culminating into the huge blowup followed by seven hours of Ben aimlessly strolling the beach taking pictures of things then the second argument as a result of that. The furthest we had gotten to dealing with that problem was after dinner when Ben showed me all the pictures he had taken on the beach, including forty-five shots of the exact same seagull using different lighting techniques, angles, and finally the last picture where the seagull pooped on Ben’s lens so he got angry with it and left it alone. Sort of like he did me, minus the pooping part on him part. After that, we found Gilligan’s Island on the Acapulco version of TV Land and got into a sort of Gilligan’s Island marathon. Ben watches a lot of TV Land, mostly because he finds that current American TV shows have no substance.

“Which episode is this?” I ask him, going to the mini-fridge to get out a snack of airline peanuts and soda I had stored there.

“It’s the episode where they almost get off the island then Gilligan ruins it and they don’t,” Ben replied.

“Well, that narrows it down,” I snorted, sitting back on the bed. Ben reached for my peanuts but I held them away. “Get your own.”

“That’s the last bag,” Ben frowned.

“I’m sure they have peanuts somewhere here,” I replied.

Ben bent down and took a sip out of my soda can before I could swat him away. It was weird, sort of reminiscent of when we were in college. I would have been out late at night at a bar or a party or sometimes actually studying at the campus library and would be locked out of the dorm so I would come back to Ben’s house and we would sit on his bed and watch TV on top volume to block out the sounds Kip and his current tryst were making in the next room. It was nostalgic but with a different feeling than it had before. I was used to sitting up with Ben and hanging out with him the same way I would Elle or Cordelia but now I felt self-conscious around him. I had never felt insecure around Ben before but there was something about what he had said earlier that made me suddenly afraid to say the wrong thing or do something stupid. It was almost like I was trying to impress him, which was a crazy thought to me in itself because Ben was impressed by just about anything.

“Is it just me or does that Gilligan bloke look that the bloke from Where’s Waldo?” Ben asked me. I looked at the screen for a minute.

“A little, I guess,” I shrugged.

“Can you tell the difference between Marianne and Ginger?” Ben asked me.

“Ginger is the movie star and Marianne’s some kid,” I replied.

“Um…okay…” Ben said.

“Marianne is the innocent looking slut and Ginger is the all-dolled up looking slut,” I reiterated.

“And who’s the old bag?” Ben asked.

“That’s the millionaires wife,” I replied. “I thought you’d seen this show before.”

“I have, but I usually don’t pay attention,” Ben shrugged. “It’s harder to follow along when you don’t really understand the language. Besides, they all look stupid when they’re voices are dubbed over.”

“I’ll be sure to get you Gilligan’s Island in Spanish on DVD for your next birthday,” I snorted.

“So, what do you wanna do tomorrow?” Ben asked me.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “What is there to do?”

“Well, you haven’t been down to the beach yet. We could go parasailing or take a boat cruise…” Ben suggested.

“Not if we end up on a three hour tour like those bozos,” I snorted.

“Okay, no boat cruises,” Ben said with a furrowed brow. “How about we just hang out on the beach for a while? Does that sound good?”

“I guess,” I shrugged.

“They have baskets down in the front lobby you can buy and collect sea shells in and stuff,” Ben said conversationally.

“We can just use the plastic snack baggies I brought,” I said to him disinterestedly. I was trying to focus more on the fact that Gilligan was just about to screw up whatever the Professor was doing than the fact that Ben seemed to have gotten closer to me on the bed then when we had first sat down.

“There’s also a karaoke bar on the first floor,” Ben added. “It’s one of those seven fabulous resort restaurants they mentioned above the urinals…”

“I am not sitting around with a bunch of drunken idiots while you sing ‘Total Eclipse’ at me until I kill you and leave your body in the bathtub or something,” I shook my head. “Karaoke never ends well for us. Last time we went, Elle got food poisoning, the time before that Kip had that ultra violent break up with What’s-Her-Name Something-Or-Other and I’m sure you didn’t forget the awful Karaoke Fiasco of Senior year…”

“ Where that Business major who was practically stalking you got up and sang you the ‘Unchained Melody’ and then Jon beat him up in the parking lot and we ended up bailing him out of jail at four a.m. after you called your parents to drive up and pay for his bail because you didn’t have any money and Jon’s parents said if he was in jail he probably deserved it?” Ben snorted. “You should have left him there.”

“That isn’t the point,” I shook my head. “The point is bad things always happen when we go out to karaoke bars.”

“Fine,” Ben said sadly, “but if we don’t do karaoke, you have to watch The Matrix trilogy with me tonight.”

“Okay, you big baby,” I growled. Ben excitedly hopped up, grabbed the portable DVD player out of my bag and then popped in the first movie.

The thing about watching The Matrix with Ben is that he ruins the movie by doing his own live DVD commentary on the film while you’re watching it. He tells little anecdotes about when he went to see the movie or interesting things he’s noticed in bits and pieces of it. Halfway through his commentary about how the “White Rabbit” is an allusion that appears in various films, books, songs, and etcetera, Ben suddenly stopped and looked at me very annoyed. I look up at him, confused.

“You aren’t even listening to me!” Ben said.

“Yes I am!” I snorted.

“Then what did I just say?” Ben asked.

“You just said that you personality would never use the White Rabbit reference because you were read Alice in Wonderland as a kid and it frightened the bejeezus out of you,” I said word for word. Ben’s brow furrowed.

“You didn’t look like you were listening to me,” Ben said.

“I was! Can we get back into the movie?” I sighed exasperatedly.

“You usually look at people when you talk to them and you haven’t looked at me once all evening,” Ben said. It was a struggle but I made eye contact with him.

“There,” I said angrily. “I’m looking at you know. Happy?” He didn’t say anything and I looked away, not because I was so furious that I couldn’t stand the sight of him but rather because I was afraid that if I kept looking at him I would do something spontaneous and crazy. Like take all my clothes off.

“Now you aren’t looking at me again,” Ben said pathetically.

“You’re being a real spoiled brat right now,” I frowned, getting up off the bed.

“Hey! Catt, the movie’s not even halfway over!” Ben called after me as I headed into the bathroom.

“You can keep watching it,” I said to him, “but I’m getting ready for bed.”

“We still have two more movies!” Ben yelled at me.

“I’m tired,” I said, “I’m going to sleep.”

“But Catt…” Ben began. I answered him by shutting the bathroom door. Of course, it just made him madder and he shouted at me through the bathroom door, “Fine! I’m not going to watch them either! In fact, I’m going to go sit in the jaccuzi because you’re too much of a scaredy cat, notice the clever pun, to do it!”

I didn’t say anything but I heard him shove the DVD player back where it belongs and the stomp around the room to let me know how angry he was. When I emerged out of the bathroom after getting ready, I noticed that Ben was out in the jaccuzi on the balcony, glaring furiously at the beautiful view of the beach at night. I didn’t say anything to draw any attention to myself but just slipped in between the cold covers of the bed. For some reason, I thought back to when I was nine and Becky Abrahms, who lived down the street from us at the time, told me her parents were getting a divorce because they fought all the time. That night, my parents had gotten in a fight over who left the refrigerator door open and I burst into tears at the dinner table because I thought they were going to get a divorce too. My parents had stopped fighting and calmed me down.

“Couples fight over stupid things sometimes,” my mother had said to me. “Usually they work it out and laugh about it. Just because we fight, doesn’t mean we love each other any less.”

I didn’t know why I suddenly remembered that night. I was drawn out of my thoughts by Ben splashing around in the jaccuzi to let me know that he was still there. I had rarely done so before, but that night, I cried myself to sleep.