Friction

Last weekend, I went camping with B and J-Lo. Amidst the fun and nonsense was enough tension to last me the rest of the year. Unfortunately, most of it came towards the end. The words 'duck' and 'mountain' together will forever ring slightly off-key to me.

The first two days of canoeing, swimming, hiking, Frisbee - all these were great. The sun shone, spirits were up... then B and I got into an argument over the dinner while J-Lo was taking a nap. Even though I think of it as a separate space, a tent doesn't have the thickest of walls. J-Lo dealt with the awkwardness commendably. Dinner became a joint effort, however, embarrassment lurked in the shadows a little too long.

The next, and final, morning, B decided we had to get out of there as soon as possible, no discussion; not even J-Lo's drying tent was to stand in the way of the taking down of the tarp. His reasons for immediate exodus remain unclear to me and J-Lo was left clearly, and duly, offended by B's dismissive way. Shortly afterwards, we got in the car and headed home, accompanied by the kind of atmosphere that forms when something weird happens between people but they ignore it because they've never gone there before so they don't know what else to do. So the air grows thick. Six sweet hours cramped together, us and that atmosphere.

Before The Dinner Fight, I had read my first Alice Munro short story. It was mildly creepy. She can really capture a mood, and for that reason, I would have liked for her to have been with us on the way home so she could finish this entry for me because it would probably be bang-on.

Do you ever get the sense that it is up to you to take affirmative action to improve an awkward situation? Only you are in a position to make things better? Whenever I start to think those thoughts, I feel like I'm not positive enough or funny enough or upbeat enough to be up for it, otherwise I would have just done it without thinking twice. This was another thing I was thinking about.

Alice Munro is not guest-posting here unfortunately, but in my preoccupation with her, the mood, my role in it all, and how I'd write about it, I had neglected to notice that we were approximately two millilitres away from an empty tank. Long, straight, gravel road, dreary sky, pouring rain, and let's not forget that atmosphere! The next town was 31 km away.

Cue: another argument.

We made it to the gas station in time, thank god, and things began to actually improve. That was mainly because we stopped for lunch at Shitty's for some bad food, which is not always funny, but that day it was.