It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [58]
And certainly, once you get to the viewing platform and see the expanse of the cave before you, it really is breathtaking. That’s especially true when at the moment you get up to the front of the platform, the biggest male sea lion—roughly the size of an Escalade—lifts himself up to show his full, incredible stature, roars the loudest wildlife noise I have ever heard, pounds his flaps on the rocks a couple of times, and then shoots a tunnel of vomit from his cavernous mouth as if it were a fire hose that lasted a good four to six seconds, throwing up all over the other sea lions lying within a twenty-foot spray radius. I don’t know how many stomachs one of those things has, but it’s more than one. And it’s not just vomit but fish vomit, just a Jacuzzi’s worth of sea barf, the smell of which hit us like a pyroclastic flow from the guts table on Deadliest Catch.
The response of revulsion from the crowd hit the mark at the same second; a collective “Ewwwww!” traveled around the cave like rumors of an unplanned pregnancy on a field-trip bus. I can’t speak for the other witnesses, but the sea lion magic was clearly gone. This was particularly true since the other sea lions didn’t appear to realize they had been hurled on, and it seemed a little Tijuana-ish to simply stand and watch mammals roll around in someone else’s puke. It turns out that the way you clear out an underage party is the same way you clear out a sea lion cave, and it’s always the fattest guy who does it. Needless to say, the ride back up in the elevator wasn’t nearly as full of smiles as it was going down; we all had to be very still and focus, because if any one of us gagged, we were all going down. The splash zone in an elevator isn’t very generous, and if one person heaved on another, most of us were far enough up the evolutionary ladder to know it.
After driving for a couple of hours, we found ourselves on the main street of a small mining town and spotted what looked like a cute little diner. We stopped and decided to have lunch, thinking it wise after our recent history concerning fast food.
We ordered hamburgers and fries (we all agreed: no fish and chips) from a middle-aged man who seemed very friendly, and as soon as he took our order, he went behind the counter to the grill and started cooking. While the restaurant wasn’t exactly hopping, several groups of people finished their lunches and paid the man, who was the only one working there, and pretty soon we were the only people in the diner. When we were finished, we got up and together went to the counter to pay.
As soon as we got to the counter and the man came over to ring us up, the door opened, the bells on the door chimed, and three young men who looked to be in their late teens came in. Immediately, the man behind the counter pointed to the tallest of the guys, the one who came in first, and shouted, “Out! Get out! I told you to never come back in here!”
The guy stood there in front of his two huge friends, all of them small-mining-town kids trying to dress like gangsters.
“You’re going to regret it!” the kid yelled at the man. “You think you can fire me and get away with it? You’re going to pay for it, you goddamned wetback!”
My adrenaline surged and I felt my entire body turn cold. I grabbed Nick’s arm and pulled him closer to me. I looked at my husband, and I knew he was feeling the exact same thing I was. Definitely unsettled. We were trapped at the counter; behind us was the only entrance and exit, which was blocked by the three guys, and on the other side of the counter was their target.
“Get out of here!” the man yelled again. “You stole from me! I’ll call the police!”
The guy shouted an expletive and then called the man a “spic.”
“I’ll beat the shit out of you,” the guy warned. “You’d better watch yourself. You’d better watch over your shoulder every minute of every day. You think you can start shit with