A boat trip to Annapolis, Maryland.

(Updated -- 11/13/03)

I woke up to the sun shining on my face; it was 7:45, too early to be waking up, but it would be a good day.

I got dressed; it would be cold out on that water -- four layers of clothes from the waste up: long sleeve shirt, button down shirt, hooded sweatshirt, my maroon, canvas jacket and a nit cap. I wore jeans too, and warm, long socks. Need to stay warm, I thought. The cold of November is out there.

An hour later I found myself and four other students from my class smoking two neatly, hand rolled joints on the front stoop of our dormitory -- medication and preparation for a group of substance abusing, wanna-be journalists that were about to take a class field trip on the Potomac River.

“Hey, look Jason,” Bob says before getting on the yellow school bus for Annapolis; pointing at the gaping hole in the ground that used to be the home of a large tree stump. “Those are T-Rex foot prints,” he whispers, trying not to temp the carnivorous, prehistoric beast he has just conjured in his fried, confused, overactive imagination.

We had both seen Jurassic Park; we knew the consequences of those flesh eating monsters.

“OH, MY GOD BOB! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!” I scream. “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!” Everyone laughed; I smiled. My brain felt like it was disconnected from my skull.

The five of us sat at the back of the bus. All looking at each other; confused smiles on our faces. I wondered if the clean and arrow members of our class could sense our fear, excitement, edginess or at the very least, smell that potent odor that our clothes probably reeked of from their "I'm a straight A student, who doesn't start any trouble" seats towards the front of the bus. I didn’t really care -- the world seemed like such a blurry place.

Sitting there alone, trying to keep from drifting off into a drug induced nap, I kept wondering why I wasn’t making out. Isn’t that what you do with a pretty girl when you are sitting at the back of a bus on a class field trip? I guessed things have changed in these past nine years -- there aren't too many field trips anymore; 15th and 16th graders don’t really make-out anymore -- they worry about sex and STD’s and figuring out what they are doing with the rest of their lives.

As the morning wore into the afternoon, and as the buzz of the pot I had smoked became a lingering memory, we all soaked in the warming sun that floated in the crystal clear, blue sky.

There we were, somewhere off the shores of Maryland, wandering around the Potomac river in a sail boat. The waves and the wind were calm -- a beautiful day to be boating, just not sailboating. Most of the afternoon our boat just sat there, rocking back and fourth, not moving unless the motor was turned into gear.

As our boat docked at around 1, Bob asked the captain of our vessel: “Where are the good bars around here?” We all laughed. The question seemed so typical of Bob -- Bob, always focused on the booze. Bob: a true journalist, a seemingly borderline alcoholic always on the prowl for the medicinal mix of hopps and barley.

Eight journalists sat there, at a bar up the street from the pier, warming their skin with cups of New England clam chowder, and at the same time numbing their veins with $2 drafts of Coors Light.

“The future of the writing world,” I thought to myself, taking a sip from my cold, tall glass of beer. “All huddled together at one small, fishing town restaurant on the eastern shore of America. Soon to be sent off into the real world.”

Ironically, up the street from the bar was an office for the Republicans of Annapolis. I yelled at the secretary who I could see through the window: “I LOVE GEORGE! RE-ELECT GEORGE!” I was pretty well buzzed off the beer.

The irony of the situation I thought. Where was my objectivity? Look at me, a journalist, screaming his political rhetoric.

Chris, Bob and I had talked all day about, what we called, “ripping” some shots before going to our professor’s house after our day in Annapolis. The idea of getting more inebriated than we already were seemed like such a fine idea. The world is a much more beautiful, interesting and funny place when your gut is full of burning, searing, whiskey.

Our feet dangling over the dock, only a few feet above the cold water; the trees with their colorful leaves across the bay. Off in the distance fishing boats were fishing, and behind us there were tourists taking in the scenery just as we were.

Sitting there, Andy and I kept singing that song:

Jason: “Sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away.”

Andy: “Sitting on the dock of the bay, just wasting time.”

Neither one of us could remember the name of the song though.

Chris spoke French as he, myself, Bob and Craig passed a bottle of Jim Beam back and fourth.

“Il fait froid. Au jour’hui,” he said -- the English translation: “It is cold today.” It was probably in the low 40s.

Each swig of that alcoholic, brown liquid made my life feel more loving and warm; like that moment was a moment I was supposed to remember for the rest of my life. I think the other three who were with me felt the same. Everything seemed so fine.

As the sun was beginning to get a little lower in the western sky, as the shadows were beginning to creep a little further eastward, our bright, yellow school bus ascended the hills away from downtown, Annapolis and through the woods and then down a wooded driveway and up to a house. It was huge house, all wood and a big front porch and lots of big windows. It was on a huge hill overlooking the same river we were just navigating by boat -- very Walt Whitman 21st century, I thought.

I leaned over and whispered to Andy, “Now imagine the possibilities if she could write good books.” Andy laughed; I felt clever.

Our professor writes books about surrendering yourself to your dreams and marriage and motherhood, or something like that, I think. She is no Kerouac or Breslin; she writes trite, self-help, best-selling novels. She is no Pulitzer Prize Winner.

Bob, Chris, Andy, Craig, my professor’s nine-year-old son, Jack and myself played football on the large, green lawn on the side of her house -- it was tied 2-2 when dinner arrived. A trick, lateral to Bob with only seconds left before the pizza delivery man arrived allowed my team to force the game into overtime. Quite the last second heroics.

I felt like I was in 4th grade all over again. It felt amazing to forget about everything, and just know how good I felt at that moment.

Chris played a really beautiful song on her big, piano after we ate. I just dazed away, my stomach bloated with three slices of pizza, sitting on her couch, thinking about all the brain cells I had killed so far that day. Would it effect my career in the long run? Did I really care about that anyway?

On the way home on that yellow school bus, I fell asleep listening to “Ghost Tropic” thinking about how sun glasses actually do make some girls look really sexy; thinking about how good I felt; thinking about how I was going to skip my editing class that had begun at 5:30 -- it was almost 6:45.

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