A Serious Party

So, I stayed home tonight, cooked dinner (soft-shell tacos with freshly made salsa) and clicked the evening away on the Net. As you might know, I'm fascinated with Justin TV, so -- in the background as I did other things -- I watched a very young, very cute Marine get drunk. He was with two buddies (down from six the night before) in a penthouse at Myrtle Beach ($16 a day each for seven guys), downing beer and booze most of the night. A few minutes ago -- he's now talking to buddies at another party that HE'S watching on the Web -- Stephen told a friend that he'll be spending the next month on the boat he's attached to. Then he'll be stateside for two weeks, presumably at his base in Jacksonville, N.C., before going back to sea for a while. After some time off, he said, his unit will be "deployed" in May. He didn't say where it was being sent, but I'm guessing Iraq or Afghanistan. When I heard him say that, the partying suddenly didn't seem so frivolous. It seemed more like a defensive mechanism, a last chance for normalcy. I wanted to hug him. And thank him.