A vacation at the beach can be no vacation at all if you are me.

I love beach towns. There isn't much pressure to accomplish anything. For vacationers this is certainly true, but for residents it is doubly true. Outside of ritzy beach communities, the people who actually live by the beach are usually – and I mean this in a charitable way – beaten-down crazy people with half a toe in reality and the other foot in Chronic-ville.

Most permanent beach dwellers are all leathery and smoky, with cracked white lips and phlegmy laughs who drink way too much and mutter to themselves in a language God strains to understand. They don't worry about 401(k)s or basic health care. Their teeth are the stuff of junkyards, and they opt for residence in barely running Yugos over anything that requires a monthly commitment. I am strangely attracted to their lack of self-consciousness. They are like human lava lamps from which I can't turn away.

I ran into one of them last week, a Beach Guy known as Kevin, who looked like a vaguely mutant Gary Busey, if that isn't too redundant. I met Kevin in that way you meet most beach people – he asked to bum a cigarette or change for a fish taco, whichever I could muster first.

"I don't smoke and I don't have money on me because I'm going to the beach," I tell him.

"Cool, I'll go with you!" Kevin says. Next thing I know, I'm hosting a guy who can't string a paragraph together without laughing at unmade jokes.

Down on the beach, I've barely cracked open my book when Kevin grows impatient and shouts, "Dude, let's go snorkeling!"

"You go ahead, Kevin."

"Whoo hooo!" Kevin yells as he runs into the waves with no snorkeling gear. Moments later, he bursts the surface with a 4-pound grouper wiggling between his hands. "Dude!"

"Good God, I'm camping with Mowgli," I think.

Kevin then cajoles me into a game of beach volleyball. I tell you, 10 minutes of beach volleyball will leave your calves screaming louder than the chicks who saw Kevin's scrotum fall out after a particularly adventurous dive.

Finally, as the sun is setting, I shake Kevin's leather paw, and leave the beach covered in sand. Sand is one of those substances that stay with you long after its usefulness. Like LSD or pancake syrup. You can't get rid of it. Kinda like Kevin. And like the sand in my suitcase, Kevin is still with me.

He's crashing on my couch until he finds out where his cousin lives in Dallas ...

Hear Gordon on "The Ticket" KTCK-AM (1310) weekdays from 5:30 to 10 a.m. E-mail him at gordon@gordonkeith.com.

Print