In the nest of girls

Dock spiders rule the otherwise beautiful and multi-decked waterfront just by being freakishly huge and ugly and able to swim underwater by trapping air in their hair. Days begin with bong hits and Baileys® coffee. Us girlies change bikinis frequently to suit sunbathing, swimming, shade, spider monitoring, or 'shroom trips. The only guy up here this weekend is massive, tattooed, bald, occasionally hilarious but, in the final analysis, far too full of himself. He's in the nest of girls. He needs to mind that.

I find a spot to lounge on the poop deck—a few feet higher and a good ways back from the dock and its hideous occupants. My most arduous task is to get rid of my flip-flop tan lines. The sky is extra-blue, the clouds super-puffy, and the water ultra-sparkly because I'm high on my friend's homegrown. A card carrying medical user, she hits the bong every hour and you'd never know it.

I close my eyes and open them again. The cottage door squeaks open and closes softly. This sun is hot on my tummy and I push my Muskoka chair further into the shade so as to get optimum colour on my legs but avoid looking like one of those over-tanned women. The ones whose chests look leathery. Plus I don't want to spin out by mid-afternoon all sick and dizzy from the sizzling July sun. It happens. It'll happen tomorrow. Big man will eat his 'shrooms really fast and bake in the sun without a hat or something gay like that and then drink a bottle and a half of homemade red wine all by himself to impress us ladies and pass out on the verandah then sway off to bed before 6pm, down for the count, while us chicks make and eat KD® and salad, watch a documentary about wild horses and giggle at the descriptive video function, play round after round of Crazy Eights between bong hits and stargaze out back until midnight. We'll laugh about him on the drive back to the city.

Sun is creeping up my belly again and someone has put on a Cat Stevens CD at a volume respectable for cottage country. My girlfriend wanders down with an ashtray and a bottle of water. She's wearing a different bikini than before. She heads to the dock to check up on the spiders—their size, whereabouts, activities. It's very important. She's armed with a camera. The breeze dries my bikini bottoms that got wet in the rainbow coloured kayak. It makes no difference if I'm awake or asleep.