Brighton Bombs

i had a "day" recently, where some series of miscellaneous events occurred in relative succession, such that not one of them is notorious or even very interesting, but all together they gave me a bit of vertigo and i had to lie down and sleep for about 12 hours.

Saturday i got up to go to my friend Ainsley's birthday party. Ainsley is one half of the Canadian Super-Couple Adam&Ainsley, from Toronto and Alberta, respectively, the city-mouse/country-mouse duo you can't resist. Of course, i am a lazy bastard, and i hardly got out of bed, early on a Saturday, so i could share my praise.

Ainsley decided she wanted to go to Brighton, the beachside community about an hour from London that is the denizen of the kind of 20-year-olds that wear clear sunglasses and spend more money on hair product than food. There is a collective thump-thump beat that's pumped into the seaside clubs and bars at the same monthly rate as electricity or water. But i am able to rise because we're making a DAY-trip, not some nightclubbing ecstacy flush. Despite my trip to San Francisco and LA in March, i haven't seen the sea in about 10 months, and this feels like a bit of a natural defect, like i'm some Dracula who needs a coffin of sand to replenish. (I keep a small dish of St. Augustine sand in my cupboard, but it's just not enough)

*Tangential But Necessary Aside: last summer i went to Burning Man; i'm not really going to recount the experience here (some would argue it is impossible to do so), suffice it to say that i am constantly finding events which in some way pale in comparison to BM. Also, suffice it to say i'll never go back to that flaming hellhole. But my favorite story (and personal sensory experience) of BM was Critical Tits. Your are likely familiar with the activist collective known as Critical Mass, which overtakes city streets on the first Friday of the month to proclaim our possible independence from the automobile. Critical Tits, however, is the yearly parade of about 5,000 women around the lake bed to proclaim independence from bras. I got back from the exhibition and collapsed when i told Davina (Rhodes, class of '01, wife of Jake Byrnes) that i'd collapse if i saw another pair of tits and then she flashed me.

So Brighton basically turned into the British version of that event. Which is to say, older, pastier, and better accents. The weather was actually fantastic. The sun was shining, and getting out of the train station actually gave me a feeling that there is such a thing as 'cool ocean breeze.' The seagulls make me think about being home. The rampant plastic makes me think about Ocean City Maryland. The leathery old men make me think about used wallets.

Walking to the beach Adam gets shat on by a seagull. In Etruscan Rome this was seen as a sign of good luck, but Adam just got upset and stopped our Sherman march to the sea. I told him about the tradition, but he just kept saying, 'damn bird.' When we finally did make it to the sea, i was surprised by two things: the beach was entirely covered in both small to large round pebbles of varying colors and shapes, and small to large round boobs of roughly equally variations.

It's not really fair for me to paint a picture of some ocean of boobs without end (save that for my BM acid flashbacks). There were plenty of runts, geezers and blokes messing about, but i tend not to notice these. I'm no fag. And there are plenty of dazzling things about Brighton Beach. There are 2 giant piers in Brighton: The Palace Pier and The West Pier. The Palace Pier has bumper cars, a roller coaster, a log ride, and plenty of hot dogs. Even an exhibit based on the new Doctor Who television series. The other pier, the The West Pier, had the same sort of thing going for it until it closed down in 1975, laid dormant for 25 years, and then was burned down to pilings and steel framework a couple years ago. It's widely acknowledged that the owner of The Palace Pier had The West Pier burned, but no arrests were made. The beautiful terrible structure is actually a lot more fun to look at than the carnival monstrosity to the east, but kids aren't allowed to play on The West Pier, at least not without a tetnus suit.

But the BOOBS! I hadn't really expected British women to be so forthcoming with their nipples. The pleasant weather probably drew out the pups, as if every resident in the greater London area wanted to save money on holiday by getting a £10 ticket to Brighton instead of a £300 weekend to Oz. The generalizations about English weather are pretty spot on, so it was no surprise to see the pebble beach fully stocked with raw, pale London flesh. And i might corrupt the fantasy a bit further by mentioning that the age of the boobs laid out before me reflected the normal age distribution of England, many of them hanging lower than the fold of their bellybutton. Saggage abound. Once i was in an Eckerd and my friend Julie taught me what the toilet seat extension is for. I imagine women have the same fears.

A couple of the girls in our party took off their tops and then we all preceeded to have a conversation about the shapes of breasts. It's a conversation i soon find myself dominating, which doesn't really bother anyone except the two girls with their tops off, who seem to think themselves the experts for the fact we can all look at their nips. We ended on some vague disagreement on the uniqueness of each set of breasts; not something i'm exactly sure of, given me research in the public and private sector. It's a cute idea, but i'm too much of a generalist not to see things in certain categories.

The rest of the day is lost in a haze of lager, sunsets, and bead shops, though you've lived in cheap seaside towns so you know. I'm the only one that didn't get burned or eat fried foods during the trip, so i don't have any particular scars from the adventure. I got off the train a couple stops too early, and so i had to walk across greater london to get home. I was pretty exhausted, given the sun and the booze, until i get a few blocks from home and see my road blocked off by police cars. Usually this means the Queen's on her way home, but sometimes it happens for fancy (once i was woken up by a police van playing the A-Team theme out of their loudspeaker and driving in circles on Brompton Road).

And then again, i am confronted with The Other. A vast pink parade of women strutting out of Hyde Park wearing nothing but bras and spandex leggings. The Playtex Moonwalk is, ostensibly, a midnight parade of 15,000 bra-clad women powerwalking to raise awareness and money for charity, but for me it was just a punctuation mark on The Day of The Breast. Granted, the mean age rose significantly, but i think i was somewhat vindicated, as the bras these women were wearing were built for comfort, as well as speed, and there was no attempt to push-up to the round ideal. There were no gravity-defying porno globes, just lots of sweaty swelled chests, and more giggle than i am prepared to describe. Sizes, complextions, and sagginess varied, but overwhelming was the mundanity of it all, the averageness of the unprepared tit, and the uncomfort at my at standing for 5 minuntes to watch it. Pert breasts are few and rare and unhappy breasts hang all the same.