Pontoons, Pumps, and Pontification
“Get down!”
I heard a deep voice utter to my left. It was stern but not loud, yet somehow it cut through the noisy bar. I paid it no mind at all.
“Hey, you—get down!”
I heard it again a few seconds later. I turned my head, and my eyes met those of the security bouncer at the table. He was talking to me. Surprised, I got off my knees and returned to a traditional seated position on my barstool. The man nodded in approval and turned to walk away.
In my defense, the rowdy boys were blocking my view of the TV with their height. I needed just a couple of inches more in order to watch Alvarez score in the 112th minute. It was a glorious strike to the top left corner, and the barroom erupted. Well, at least the small corner I was in. Of all the licentious activity occurring around me, I was the one the security guard felt needed chastising.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows on the dock, the Elvis impersonator was on his third set. The occupants of the chain were dancing on their boat decks, eyes glazed, faces red. The dance floor was full of at least four bachelorette groups: one wearing coordinated turquoise wigs, another clad entirely in red, another in sequins. Inside, the bar was crowded shoulder to shoulder.
Jacob, a man who had generously bought a round for the group I'd come with, was progressively losing coherency and was still with my girls despite the fact that I'd been watching soccer since the 85th minute. Time to intervene. There is no way Switzerland is coming back from this.
I hadn't felt even buzzed since 6 p.m., when I slammed a 12% ABV can on the twenty-minute bus ride to the first of many establishments. These kids all drink bland 4% seltzers. I'd been nursing one of these beverages for the last two hours and hadn't quite reached the middle of the can. I was meant to be one to keep the vibes going and let loose for this girls' night. But the moment we pulled into the driveway of the Airbnb for the weekend, I knew that wasn't going to be the case.
The girls slowly trickled in. I had never met most of them, and those I had, I'd only met in passing. Half the group were nursing. At any given moment, conversation was accentuated by the steady metronome of a Medela pump, while the other half were popping Midol like it was nobody's business.
Going in, I knew I'd be the matron of the group, the eldest by a comfortable margin. It wasn't the age that made me feel out of place so much as the realization that we'd all arrived at adulthood by completely different roads.
Day one, we had booked a pontoon and driver. I was excited for a boat day. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been on a boat as a child. We were lucky enough to have one family friend who owned a boat, but invitations to go tubing or skiing were few and far between.
I've been on a boat only once in the last decade. Inimitable, never to be topped. This was going to be my second time, and I was nervous.
The Boatman, who would be our driver, used the word "debauchery" in anticipation of what the day had in store for us. I was not interested in any such thing. I am not much of a day drinker, and I would soon discover I am not much for the culture of the chain of lakes bar-hopping scene.
Boatman was waiting for us at the end of the pier, arms folded over a faded black graphic tank covered in the words:
I Never Dreamed I'd Grow Up to Be a Super Sexy Boat Captain, But Here I Am, Living the Dream.
A curious WWJD bracelet circled his wrist, and a cocksure smirk radiated that he'd seen every permutation of girls’ trip nonsense. The dock itself ran like a gauntlet between rocking wake boats, and as we paraded our way down, I heard the pounding bass line long before we reached the pontoon. Apparently, "pumping through the speakers" meant the physical air vibrated, making the water in the marina dance in concentric, jittering circles.
Boatman had arranged plastic champagne flutes on a folding table at the stern, and as soon as the last of us plopped onto a bench, he popped the cork with a practiced flick and sloshed a round into our hands. Noon exactly. I raised my cup with the others, my wrist already sticky from stray drops. We toasted to some impossible abstraction like the future, girlhood, escape, while my mind drifted to cats.
Already the energy in the group was surging with the current of expectation. The boat motored into the chain, picking up speed. Every surface vibrated with sound. The two youngest girls, both disrobed, bellowed along to whatever club anthem was cranked through the speakers. Two others, among the many elementary school teachers, were busy documenting the entire event for their audience, phones held at flattering angles, narrating the trip in faux-influencer sing-song. The rest of us, myself included, settled in, bracing our knees against the vinyl as the pontoon hit the wakes of a dozen other party boats.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and leaned in close to shout at strangers over the music, but their eyes kept sliding past me toward each other. These were not people looking to collect anyone new. I would see most of them once more after this weekend, maybe twice, at some future event we'd both been invited to, and we'd smile, say hello, and that would be the whole of it. They were there for the vibes and the photos. I didn't even need to take pictures. There were already eleven documentarians on the beat.
I watched the wake unfurl behind us, a delirious white trail, and felt the kind of giddy, kinetic melting that comes from a combination of sun, speed, and the promise that nothing was expected of me except to keep drinking and keep the party alive.
Suddenly, to my surprise, the playlist took a turn, and I heard Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats' "Need Never Get Old" escape the speakers. Boatman apologized after the chorus and switched back to the next party track. Somehow, the slip-up softened me to him. It also carried my thoughts elsewhere. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was on the wrong lake. We were less than an hour in, and the empties were already piling up in the cup holder. The can in my hand was warm, still full.
As the shoreline blurred by, dotted with houses I could only dream of affording, I lost track of time. Sun pounded off the mirrored water. The rest of the girls (minus one) stripped down to their swimsuits and danced on the slick deck, arms and legs flailing, unconcerned.
Boatman egged them on with a running commentary, some of it PG-13, some of it less so. I let myself be swept along by the forward motion, the music, and the sense that I was both participant and observer in someone else's dream. By the time we approached the first bar dock, everyone was tipsier, tanner, louder, the wind whipping our hair as we tumbled into one another, laughing while the pontoon scraped its way into the slip.
We piled through the door into the cool dark of the bar. The single-stall restroom produced a long, winding line of women in wet swimsuits, some of them already digging through tote bags for their breast pumps, the little portable ones that look like something you'd find in a first-aid kit.
We commandeered a section of the bar and ordered from a sticky laminated menu. On the TV mounted above the rail, Spain and Belgium were locked in a nil-nil stalemate in the 20th minute that nobody was watching. The shotski came out, a long wooden plank with four shot glasses bolted to it at intervals, and the girls lined up and tilted back in unison while someone's phone captured it from three different angles.
I ordered a water and buffalo wings and watched a woman, somewhere north of fifty, with the deep, oxidized tan of someone who does this every summer, sidle up to our group uninvited and produce a credit card. She had the easy confidence of a regular, the kind of person who had long since stopped caring what any of this looked like. She took her shot, winked at no one in particular, and wandered back into the crowd. I chewed and thought about her for longer than I probably should have. People come to the chain for this exact experience—all ages. Maybe I'm not too old for this after all. Maybe I was just being ageist.
I bought lunch and covered a few tabs whose owners had wandered out the door onto the patio. Outside, the group had already arranged itself into a photo formation, and I slipped into the back row just before the phones went up.
A bachelor party had colonized the tables nearby—boys barely old enough to shave, upper lips doing their darnedest, already listing at the rails like buoys in a wake. A few of them peeled off and made their rounds, and two of our girls surrendered their numbers.
Then my girl, to my genuine surprise, walked over and dropped herself into a chair at their table like she owned it, easy and unhurried, and accepted a shot of tequila from a boy who looked like he still had a curfew. I knew what tequila did to her. I folded my arms and stationed myself next to Boatman to wait.
Two of the boys drifted over to us. One grabbed Boatman's arm with both hands, squeezed, and said,
"Bro, what the f*** are you taking for these biceps?"
Boatman looked down at the hands on his arm.
"Training, prayers, and vitamins."
I laughed out loud. When they stumbled off, Boatman raised an eyebrow at me.
"Prayers and vitamins, huh?"
We had a brief discussion about nautical knots before needing to escort my girl back to the boat to part ways with the tequila. We took off "like a prom dress," as Boatman put it, and made for the sandbar.
He walked me through staking the boat and tying it down, then made a production of removing his tank top and sizing up the water before ultimately electing to stay aboard.
Moments before, when I crouched to collect a few cans that had gone rolling, his hands had found the small of my back and settled in. He was crouched beside me, ostensibly helping, though there was nothing for him to do.
I know how I come across. Most of the time I'm easy to talk to, and I'm aware that warmth has a way of getting misread. But most know the difference between being friendly and being interested. And I am only interested in one man. It is not Boatman.
Don't get me wrong, I love being touched. Gentle, but confident. None of this tentative, timid one-fingertip-on-the-elbow business. I get enough of that as it is. I prefer a hand with some conviction behind it. One that knows exactly why it's there. The important distinction, of course, is that conviction and permission are not synonyms. Boatman had plenty of the first and absolutely none of the second.
I turned and gave him the sort of look that makes my children suddenly remember they have homework. He quietly found something else to do. Then, when he announced he'd stay with the boat instead of joining everyone in the water, I took it as a bid for forgiveness. Whether it actually was hardly matters. Sometimes it's nice to let people recover without making them explain themselves.
Perhaps as a continuation of making amends, after we reboarded and headed back through the chain to the dock, he let me drive the boat. I should probably have graciously declined. But I couldn't resist.
He walked me through the throttle and the trim, how to steer into the wake instead of across it when the speed demons came through, and how to read the way the bow lifted or dipped as the girls migrated from stern to bow and back again, dancing and chasing conversation. At some point I stopped correcting and started anticipating. My first time behind the wheel on open water, and I understood the appeal. I don't have $40k to spare on a pontoon like this. But I thought about it the whole way in.
That evening we were all thoroughly cooked. Six consecutive hours alternating between direct sunlight and loud music. Less tired than lightly concussed. We lingered around the Airbnb, drinking water, applying aloe, and slowly assembling ourselves into matching Canadian tuxedos before heading out in search of pizza.
I was emptying the boat cooler onto the deck when a white SUV pulled into the driveway. A woman in hot pink sweatpants climbed out and began walking toward the house with a slow stride and mild reservation on her face.
I didn't recognize her. This wasn't especially remarkable. I barely knew half the women already inside. I simply assumed I'd misunderstood the headcount and we'd expanded from twelve to thirteen. Then I wandered into the kitchen and casually asked where our newest arrival would be sleeping.
"What newest arrival?"
Apparently there wasn't supposed to be one. I stepped outside the front door just in time to intercept her before she reached the porch. She wasn't carrying a suitcase or a cooler. In fact, she wasn't carrying anything at all. She looked every bit as puzzled as I suddenly felt.
"Everything okay?" I asked. "Are you sure you're at the right place?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "Girls' weekend. This is 123 Main Street, right?"
"It is," I said, "but I'm fairly certain we've already rented it."
A look of genuine concern crossed her face.
"Oh no," she said. "I think... I might have the wrong weekend."
We each pulled out our reservation confirmations like two airline passengers discovering they'd been assigned the same seat. Before she could investigate further, I offered her a bottle of water and invited her inside for some air conditioning.
"I can't," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm stoned."
Fair enough.
She climbed back into her SUV, made a phone call, and a minute later disappeared down the driveway. I have no idea whether she'd driven three hours for the wrong weekend, misread the address entirely, or was conducting the least convincing burglary reconnaissance in recorded history. We made sure to lock up on our way out for dinner, just in case.
As the group's resident elder stateswoman, I naturally exercised restraint and ordered the six-inch pizza and a water. Everyone else ordered ten-inch pizzas. Not a single one finished, and over the next two days I would throw away the equivalent of four entire pizzas.
Over dinner, I listened with equal parts fascination and alarm as the girls traded stories about their first boyfriends. Most had grown up in the same small town, or one very much like it. There were tales of dating at thirteen, sneaking out at fifteen, basement parties, gravel roads, and enough underage drinking to keep a small sheriff's department fully employed.
It struck me that I'm not very far from the other side of those conversations. In a few short years, I'll be the parent hoping my own children don't collect stories like these. The funny thing is, I don't really have any equivalent tales of youthful delinquency. Not because I was especially virtuous. I simply never found this type of rebellion gratifying. I had other interests. I did my best to avoid compromising situations, and when one found me anyway, my reflexive indignation usually took care of the rest.
"One more stop?"
The round table answered before I could.
I drove a carload of us to the club. The music announced itself well before the building did. Inside, every available inch of wall space was plastered with Polaroids of previous patrons documenting their excellent decision-making skills. Every table was occupied. The air smelled of beer, body spray, and the faint biological optimism of people hoping not to go home alone.
A staircase in the middle of the room descended to the dance floor, where black lights, strobe lights, fog machines, and whatever remained of everyone's peripheral vision were all working overtime. I followed the girls onto the platform and was surprised to recognize a remarkable number of the songs. Was this an aughts throwback night? Or had the DJ decided that nothing worth dancing to had been released since then?
Whatever the explanation, this particular DJ was committing crimes against transitions. A good transition should pass unnoticed, like a competent anesthesiologist. These arrived with all the subtlety of a transmission falling out of a pickup truck. Every song crashed headlong into the next while the fog cannons belched out clouds that smelled vaguely industrial and briefly reduced the dance floor to a low-budget haunted house.
I escaped periodically under the pretense of refilling my water. On my third trip to the bar, I spotted someone I recognized. From work.
Unfortunately, it was one of our interns from six months earlier. There she was, directly below the stage, enthusiastically making out with her boyfriend. It was, I realized, the universe gently reminding me that I was, in fact, too old to be here. So I found an empty table, drank my water, and waited for the others to be ready to leave, which, mercifully, occurred much closer to midnight than bar close.
The next morning I woke up to the smell of coffee.
The pumping mothers lay haphazardly strewn across the living room, plugged into the walls, with steam curling up from the coffee cups beside them.
Once it seemed the last of them was modestly tucked back into her shirt, I called a friend to give a weekend update. It didn't work out, but it's probably for the best, because another mother emerged, disrobed, and plugging in just as the call ended before it began.
Shopping was the agenda for our long, lazy morning, the sort of slow, unhurried group errand that only happens on girls' weekends. We walked the entire length of Main Street, which was all of three blocks, but managed to draw it out for nearly four hours.
Every storefront seemed designed to lure us in: a stationery shop with gold-embossed greeting cards and tiny notebooks meant for secrets; a gift store filled with vintage-style matchbooks, cedar-scented candles, and the sort of local kitsch that practically begged to be carried home. The boutiques were all run by women with aggressively friendly smiles, and every shop smelled of some proprietary blend of potpourri, lavender, and debt.
Shopping, for me, has always more about inspiration and the potential for reinvention. However, in groups of strangers, it is inevitably more a self-conscious performance of taste than the actual acquisition of things. Still, when I found the purse, I knew it was mine. It was a white leather crossbody bag and clutch, just big enough for my phone, wallet, and the small number of everyday-carry items I keep handy.
"It's perfect! And it'll go with our outfits tonight," said Bea, my newest friend.
We returned to the cabin for a late lunch, a little painting, and a few party games that are probably best left undocumented. Afterward, we changed for the evening and piled onto the small shuttle bus we'd hired so that those of us with seven-passenger vehicles could enjoy the rare luxury of not being responsible adults for a night.
Our driver was incredible.
I suspected immediately that she owned a Subaru. It turned out she did. (I asked.)
The bus was decorated with stickers from local breweries and QR codes linking to menus, live music schedules, and events, suggesting she'd elevated bar-hopping into something approaching municipal service. The sound system was excellent, there wasn't a stripper pole in sight, and I considered all of this a tremendous success. At every stop Subaru would hop off first, disappear inside for thirty seconds, then return with a complete field report.
"Busy."
"Dead."
"Country music."
"Too many college kids."
It was like traveling with a highly specialized wildlife guide.
By about the third bar, I attempted to order a mixed drink. It tasted as though someone had strained it through an old scented candle. I managed a few dutiful sips before discreetly donating the remainder to someone with different standards and returning to lemon water.
Which is how I arrived at the penultimate stop of the evening completely sober, on stage with Elvis serenading an invisible sweetheart with "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You," one of my favorites. Then I slipped away to the television in the back corner of the bar just in time to watch Argentina finish off Switzerland, my rear end fully seated on the barstool.
I rejoined our group (and Jacob) at the indoor stage for some post-Elvis covers performed by a tight and talented trio. I danced hard for two songs, then excused myself for a smoke break, enticing two others to join me. Once we lit up outside, a server stole Peanuts's attention, leaving me to muse with Marin, my secret favorite of the group and a fellow Scorpio.
We hadn't yet had any one-on-one time, barely an exchange beyond "Hello, my name is," but she was magnetic, and I could tell she was curious, too.
She opened our conversation by saying, no joke,
"Do you believe in true love?"
"Yes," I said.
"F*** you. Don't tell me that."
So I asked about her recent engagement.
"I just want to f*** off to Hawaii and never come back."
"Have you ever considered Alaska as an alternative?" I asked.
In all seriousness, I think one of the best things about smoking is the free therapy.
We put out our cigarettes and rejoined the group just in time for more memories. I'll spare you the details of what happened next, as it was unpleasant, but let's just say we cleaned up in the bathroom and then left the establishment to find Subaru.
Entering the bus was a strange mix of people wanting to pass out, people needing to pump, and people feeling a second wind after relieving themselves of bodily toxins. We took our lead from my girl.
"One more."
So we took off for one last stop. After some chit-chat with the bouncer, we walked into the place, and it was larger and cleaner than I expected. Boatman had warned me about this place, telling me to cover our drinks and that the locals didn't arrive until late.
I was surprised to see the entire room filled with groups of tourists instead of locals. Even more surprising, it was mostly men. We wove our way to the dance floor as a group, each with varying levels of enthusiasm. The DJ here was excellent. He read the room perfectly, his transitions were seamless, and he never let any song run longer than three minutes.
The bachelor party from the previous day's patio reappeared like a viral agent we had failed to quarantine. They cut through the crowd, all performative confidence and coordinated button-downs, and tried to annex our territory with the studied bravado of men who had spent years watching other men on television do the same. Two of them attempted a synchronized body roll into our circle, a move that might have worked had it been 2007.
Instead, their collision trajectory was blocked by Marin, who planted her feet wide and delivered a box-out maneuver worthy of a Big Ten highlight reel. One of the bachelors, taken aback, flashed a mock-wounded expression, but Marin's grimace was real. For a second I saw in her face that particular genre of female rage reserved for men who mistake any social gathering for an open audition for their attention. I gave them my meanest glare, which, to my surprise, worked, at least for a few minutes. They regrouped on the margins, recalculating their approach.
But something was off, subtle at first. Maybe it was the way the bachelor party's energy kept rippling through the room, or maybe it was simply the realization that our night had plateaued. Everyone was still moving, but now it felt like exercise, like staying on the treadmill after the music in your headphones has gone flat and you're just counting the seconds until you can stop.
I caught Marin's eye, and with a silent, mutually understood nod, we started migrating toward the exit. Half our group came with us, grateful for the excuse to cool off. Under the parking lot's halogen glare, we caught our breath, the pounding in our chests resolving into something quieter, less performative.
I pulled a cigarette from my purse and offered it up. Marin and Bea accepted. The others huddled in a circle, scrolling their phones and recapping the drama with the bachelor party, already reframing it as comedy. There was a moment of silence, the three of us standing shoulder to shoulder, smoke curling upward.
Bea, the youngest of this group and one who’d arrived by family rather than friendship, gazed up at the sky.
I followed her line of sight, expecting to see a constellation or a shooting star.
Instead, all I saw was the moon, a white waning crescent against the dark sky.
Bea absentmindedly mused,
"Did you know," she said, "that the moon is moving away from us? A little bit every year."
I laughed, thinking it was a setup for a joke.
She was completely serious.
"It's true. Eventually it'll drift so far away you won't be able to see a total eclipse anymore. We’ll only get a shred of shadow."
She took a drag, exhaled, and looked at the moon like she was memorizing it for later.
Marin snorted softly.
"So basically, even if you lock someone into orbit, they're still going to leave you eventually."
"Yeah. Everyone leaves," Bea said, not sadly, just matter-of-factly.
I wanted to tell her something wise or reassuring, but the thought only made me profoundly sad. The idea that something so constant could just... fade away.
"It'll be millions of years before that happens," I said. "Seems wasteful not to appreciate it while it's still here."
We stood like that for a long moment, the three of us facing the moon, the laughter and music bleeding out from the club door behind us. Bea stubbed out her cigarette against the curb.
"This was fun," she said. "I'm glad I got to come."
I didn't say anything.
I simply handed her the purse I'd bought that morning, the one I'd been carrying her lip gloss in all night because her dress had no pockets.
She took it with a grateful smile, reapplied, then drifted back toward the door to round up the others.
Marin lingered, watching her go.
"I think I like her," she said, not expecting a reply.
I realized I liked her, too: her earnestness, her unapologetic melancholy, the way she seemed to live on a slight time delay from everyone else.
When the rest of the group poured out, it was clear the night had finally run its course. The bachelor party was nowhere in sight. Subaru was waiting, idling in the glow of the parking lot.
We climbed back onto the bus, and for the first time all weekend there wasn't music shaking the windows. The girls had finally exhausted themselves. Conversations had shrunk to quiet pairs. A few leaned their heads against the glass. Others stared into space with the thousand-yard look unique to people who have spent twelve consecutive hours socializing.
Subaru steered us through the dark on roads bordered by thick woods, the sort of roads where your eyes instinctively scan the ditches for glowing reflections. Sure enough, two little pairs of beady eyes materialized in the headlights.
Subaru let out the tiniest gasp and gave the wheel one quick, thoughtful twitch before correcting herself and driving straight through the middle.
Nothing happened.
The pair of raccoons vanished harmlessly into the darkness. I admired her decision immediately.
"Excellent restraint," I said.
Peanuts, however, was horrified.
"You almost hit them!"
"Never swerve for road rodents," I said. "They'll be fine."
Subaru looked grateful for the support.
Sensing an opportunity to redirect the conversation, I launched into the story of the time I accidentally decapitated a creature on my morning commute and arrived at work with warm blood on both shins, like I'd spent the morning helping Macbeth with yard work.
By the time I reached the particularly graphic portion of the story, I realized the entire bus had gone silent. I had everyone's rapt attention, and every face wore an expression of disgust. Then…
Subaru stood on the brakes. Every one of us lurched forward. A doe bounded across the road.
Thump.
Not a dreadful thump. More... an administrative thump. Just enough contact to catch a hind leg before the deer disappeared into the woods.
Subaru burst into tears.
Peanuts burst into tears.
The rest of us climbed off the bus expecting catastrophic damage and found...
Nothing.
No doe.
No dent.
No broken headlight.
Not even a tuft of hair in the grille.
Five minutes later we were back at the cabin, collapsed across couches and shared mattresses. We were too tired to do much more than stare at slices of cold pizza until someone finally found the strength to eat one. Then unconsciousness claimed us all.