Naturally Disasterous
Sunday, November 11th, 2007
This week’s question:
Floods, fires, tornadoes—ever have a run-in with a natural disaster?
Next week’s question:
Giving thanks can give you an ulcer. What was your worst experience at the family holiday table?
The last few years that I lived in Los Angeles it seemed like one disaster after another. The riots, the fires, the floods, the earthquake: they came one after another, like aftershocks from some giant event beyond my memory, or—even worse—precursors to an apocalyptic meltdown that would bring all of earth’s fearful forces (including the LAPD) down on our sunshine-addled heads. Listening to the radio, I would wait hopefully to hear “This is only a test” after the Emergency Broadcast Signal, but it was always the real thing. I finally fled for the East Coast, but when the Santa Anas blow and the canyons burn, I’m still an Angeleno, cowering under the blankets, hoping it’s only a test and knowing it isn’t.
When I was 10, Hurricane Bob—great, epic name, huh?—came to my grandmother’s place near New Bedford, Mass. My crazy second-cousin-once-removed, an older, “alternative” defense lawyer, decided to completely ignore the hurricane and go on his morning jog. He left his house and started running down the road just fine until the rain caught his back. Then he couldn’t stop! So he had to bank it and fall into a gravel ditch.
Pisco, Peru: an oft-overlooked oceanside town with an eponymous alcoholic beverage. The boyfriend and I were finishing our drinks on the patio of our almost-vacant hotel when the table started to shake. “Don’t worry,” said the waiter, but we worried. My beau hit the deck, while I ran to the doorway, the only earthquake haven I knew of. I froze. It took all my courage to finally join him on the ground. What followed was a long, electricity-less night to sit outside and ponder the doorway lesson, the non-stop tremors, and the freakishly large waves crashing into shore.
Sex had grown rather pedestrian between us so, in an effort to ignite a fire, we’d taken to screwing on the Esplanade. There was always the risk of getting caught by a jogger, biker, or cop. The sex was fast and furious. It had to be. Still, it was injected with more passion than we’d grown accustomed to. That’s how we got caught in the storm when Hurricane Floyd hit Boston. I was balls deep inside her, the wind was howling, and the rain washed away our sweat. We finished simultaneously before seeking shelter. Orgasms went downhill after that.
My first earthquake was in Portland in February of 2001. I had just spray varnished three paintings in a semi enclosed space (it had been raining.) A couple of hours later, I felt an odd unsteady rocking sensation and thought that finally years of working with hazardous art supplies had lead to permanent neurological damage. I was relieved to hear it had been an earthquake.