Beauty and the Beat

Have you ever dated an NCAA Division 1 athlete (let alone captain) despite barely making the varsity squad for your high school tennis team? No way! Me too! In that case, add this to your arsenal of daytime dates to not attempt.

     It was the dead of winter in Los Angeles, the sun was blazing, the birds were singing, and both of our day jobs were on hiatus. Staycation had officially begun and the burden was on me to come up with something fresh to do on that Tuesday morning. I know… a daytime hike in Griffith Park! What could be more “L.A.” than that? Perfect. Only I’m not exactly the athletic outdoorsy kind of guy I like to daydream that I am. Let’s just say I don’t relate to the band Weezer solely because of their music. 

     So on we went from her Fairfax apartment north towards the forsaken valley. Traffic. Shocker. Thirty-five minutes later we arrived at our dusty destination. It’s on. Daytime fun here we come.

I’m starting to get the hang of this, I think. So you just walk and talk and gawk? Ok I can handle that for sure. During a conversational lull I thought back to last night when we were high and she told me how she loves to run up the hilly parts of her hikes, and that way the hard stuff is over so much quicker, and its downhill thereafter, literally. Sounded like a swell idea to me. So right then and there I decide to spontaneously book it up what seemed to be an appropriate hill.

I feel her smiling eyes behind me and look forward to her praise for my refreshingly adventurous spirit, and she followed my lead. Just shy of 30 seconds later, as my pace rapidly dwindles to a halt and hers remains steady, I’m doubled over with hands on shaky knees and beyond winded. More like gusted.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“Yea I’m great,” I try to convince us both.

“You sure?”

“Yea why?”

“Because your face is bright red, and people can hear you breathing down in the parking lot.” An artery was bulging out of my neck in unison with every audibly wheezy gasp for oxygen. Fantastic.

     At this point I’ve crawled my way over to a random bench in the middle of all this nature and I’m lying on it as you would a stretcher. I’m trying not to die from equal parts shame and exhaustion (celebrity style). At first I used last night’s smoke sesh as a potential culprit, and of course tried the ‘I’m weedzing’ joke, but clearly that didn’t make me feel any better. Nor did talking, or sunshine, or even breathing at that point. I much rather would’ve preferred to squeeze into a gopher hole and just hibernate/die peacefully but obviously didn’t have the energy to squeeze then either.

     She quickly picks up on my request for silence and self-disdain, and wound up lying beside me on my scenic hospice bench until life returned to me. Needless to say we never hiked again, nor did she have to give me a ride home (on her back).