Oscoda Review
Shall I start with the good stuff?
This weekend, Ben and I headed up to Oscoda to meet Rik and Katy at Rik’s cabin, across the street from a lovely little beach-park-thing. As we headed off, he put in his new mix CDs, the corniest set of 8080s music you’ve ever heard, mixed in with healthy doses of the Halo Soundtrack and Michael Jackson. I jammed along with it, of course, until we got to the Zilwaukee Bridge, where years and years of tradition bade us turn off the music and belt out The Star-Spangled Banner in our usual spirited but talentless voices. Replete with sound effects.
The trip, as a whole, was fun. We had a few bonfires, cooked some great dogs, and I got video of one of my now-infamous firebursts, jetting off and setting fire to the ground. Whee! We swam in ultra-cold Lake Huron, and spent some time looking up at the stars, the sliver of moon, and the intense red aura of the sun on the horizon at 4:30 in the morning. It was certainly a trick of the clouds, but it was unbelievable. If you’ve already started out with a realistic idea of the scope of our planet, it could and did make you conceive of the magnitude of the sun itself.
So, that was great. As Rik drinks, however, he slides more and more into his default personality, where he couldn’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t involve his own amusement. This varies from his sober personality, where he knows better than to -say- that he couldn’t give a shit. Insults that were entertaining would become serious as he became bored. Katy finally went to bed after his misogynistic jokes and beliefs got to her. They should, considering they were or used to be dating (who knows). This left only Ben and myself for Rik to skewer, which he continued on long after our laughter became stilted and quiet.
There came a point, when he’d moved from Ben’s total inability to say something funny and how boring our analytical conversations were to my incapacity for understanding or viewing movies that I stopped joking back. It wasn’t that I was angry – he had just given me an insight into his behavior, and where he was going with it. He was trying to find things to say to push our buttons. With film, he had made a mistake, because A) it doesn’t matter to me what he thinks my capacities are for film, and B) we’ve had countless discussions together about movies, and he’s already admitted to the contrary. I stop at this moment for a second because I find it fascinating, that point where you cease to react to someone else’s manipulation because you’ve seen deeply inside them, when they didn’t intend to reveal it.
Eventually, I decided that in order to end this painfully annoying rant of his, I would have to spread some truth around. I don’t go around telling people what is wrong with them unbidden, but he asked me my opinion; I laid on him his self-destructive nature and his way of shoving people where he thinks they’ll react (IE hurt) because he finds it amusing that they care at all, and how he alienates his friends and will eventually find himself alone.
Amazingly, this more or less worked. He became a little more serious, and apologized for the impression he gave that I am a lesser person. I made sure he understood that this was simply my factual response – people have gotten under my skin before, but he wasn’t one of them.
Ben, however…. I think, considering what he said afterward, that this was probably our last trip to Oscoda.
Rik sounds a lot like someone I’ve known my whole life. I don’t like that…when people do that. I can’t ever pretend to think its okay, it slides under my skin and just makes me feel bad..not always for myself, sometimes for him for feeling like he has to make people feel that way. Anyway…Oscoda Schmoscoda. You and this Ben you speak of (and whomever else you want to bring along) should come to NY *dangles carrot in front of your face* and visit me!!! I’ll toss a bonfire for you. Right over my shoulder!