This is from winter of last year, the first week of January.
“Edible panties,” Maria’s friend Leslie told her, “are good in theory, but they’re very impractical for everyday use. Maybe not all of them, but at least the ones I’ve been able to find. They’re like fruit roll-up material except not as good-tasting, and they get all sticky and gross really really fast. Also, the likelihood of getting bitten is very high, unless you wear them too big and baggy, and then they look stupid.”
Maria was relating Leslie’s plight to me over the phone. “What Leslie wanted,” said Maria, “was to make clothing you could eat that she could wear out to the clubs, and dance in and everything.”
First Leslie experimented with weaving together strings of the really long, really thin red licorice ropes, but even the longest, thinnest kind were too thick and bulky and only long enough to make a square about the size of a pot-holder, which you’d have to weave onto the other licorice pot-holders and it wasn’t looking right. Also you’d get the same stickiness problem when you started to sweat. Anything involving chocolate or nuts was pretty much out of the question, which left hard candy as the most likely candidate.
Leslie tried tying individual Life Savers together with string, chain-mail style, but as the sheet of candy started to get big enough to shape, it proved disappointingly rigid, and when held up to the skin, was also too bulky. And the holes of the candy showed a little more skin than desired, and once again, even a little sweat would make the candy sticky and stain the skin. The colors also looked kind of like an ugly patchwork quilt. Switching solely to Wint-O-Green cut way back on the color problem, and the stickiness problem. But by the time Leslie had finished about a tank-top’s worth of a dress, and tried it on, she looked, as she told Maria, “like a bird’s-eye view of a toilet-paper factory.”
Seeing a girl at a club in a dress covered all over with flashing discs like snake scales, Leslie dallied briefly with trying to poke tiny holes in the tops of Necco Wafers, resulting only in frustration and a lot of broken pieces of Necco Wafers and many tubes of leftover Necco Wafers. Then one day her eight-year-old niece came over sporting around her neck what would prove the final, successful source of inspiration.
“Candy necklaces!” Leslie crowed to Maria. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it right away. They’re totally cheap and they aren’t sticky, and you just cut them off the string and then tie them together like chain mail with the elastic. And from around the room, across the room, you can’t even tell it’s candy, and it’s this really pretty color, all sort of pinky-pastel. I’m getting totally fast at it but it still takes forever. As long as I have the dress done by Valentine’s Day I’ll be happy.”
This was all just a month or two ago, and since then, Leslie has been working non-stop on her candy dress, hauling it out on train commutes and waiting for buses, or in movies before the preview starts, seeming, unless you look closely, like somebody doing some kind of needle-free knitting. Most recently, she had been taking the ever-growing sheet of hard-candy fabric to the beach, sitting on a lawn chair nudged up against the side of a cement outdoor toilet building to be partially out of the wind, tying candy piece after candy piece together with elastic until her fingers got too freezing and red and stiff to work anymore. She was not there to be insane, but to support her boyfriend Eric, who was bound and determined that the 2001-2002 winter was the season he would become a Polar Bear.
The Polar Bears are a group of people who jump into the ocean when it’s really cold out, and they shout, and do different things and they run out of the water, and go into the Polar Bear clubhouse, which is, in fact, the big cement public restroom, which they commandeer as their own during jump season.
“Is it fixed up all nice inside?” Maria asked Leslie.
“I don’t know,” said Leslie, “because if you’re not a Polar Bear you can’t get in.”
“But it’s a public bathroom,” said Maria.
“That’s right,” said Leslie.
“Well ... what if you’re the public and you have to pee?” asked Maria.
“Look, a lot about it doesn’t make sense,” said Leslie. “The rules and the history of the organization vary a whole lot from season to season, with the last word coming from whoever cares enough to shout it out the loudest. All I know is that Eric did ten jumps last year, and they told him he had to do fifteen jumps to be a Polar Bear. So he thought that meant five more this year, but then this year they told him no, it has to be fifteen jumps within one season. And, there has to be at least five other Polar Bears present as witnesses, and all five of them also have to jump, or your jump doesn’t count. Plus about half the time, Eric had an inner tube, and about half the Polar Bears say, ‘Well, it doesn’t count as a jump with an inner tube.’ And the other half says, ‘It does too count,’ and the second half usually all use inner tubes themselves, all the time. And then the first half says, ‘You have to do the first fifteen without inner tube. Then after that, you may or may not use an inner tube as a Polar Bear.’ They’re letting Eric go into the clubhouse this year, though. Well, some of them are. They had a big argument last week over whether he should be given his membership badge after his fifteenth jump or before his fifteenth jump this season. That’s the fifteenth jump with no inner tube.”
“What does the badge look like?” asked Maria.
“It’s a polar bear standing on an ice floe,” shrugged Leslie. “He actually did end up getting it, the badge, because of what happened with J.D. Shartier. J.D was stripped of his badge, so they gave it to Eric. I guess because it had the shame of J.D Shartier on it, it wasn’t as good as a new, official one, and then they’ll give him a new, official one when he makes fifteen jumps in one season without an inner tube. Look, it doesn’t make any sense to me either. I just go there and wait with a blanket for when Eric comes running out, or I hold the inner tube.”
“J.D. Shartier,” said Maria. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“He was on the news the other night,” said Leslie. “Remember, I pointed him out to you and said ‘Remind me to tell you the story about that guy,’ and then we went back to Peanuckle and I never did because you never reminded me—God dammit! Another candy broke. They make the yellow ones weaker than the rest, I’m not even kidding you.”
The story of J.D. Shartier, who was stripped of his Polar Bear badge, was this. After jumping with the group for several years, J.D. decided he needed a shtick, a gimmick, like a pro-wrestler. So he started doing his jumps by running in knee-high fashion—high-knee fashion—towards the water, holding a huge American flag over his head. But J.D was not the most athletic of men, and when you’re submerged in water far, far colder than man was ever meant to be submerged in, your arms and legs aren’t as reliable as you’d like them to be. So having the one arm holding the flag greatly impeded J.D.’s ability to get himself back to shore, so he started wearing the American flag as sort of a loincloth over his swimsuit.
Now, maybe 99% of the Polar Bear group at any given time were men. And 80% of those men were men over 60, and 75% of those men over 60 were veterans. And one hundred percent of those were very adamantly opposed to the usage of Old Glory in any manner than was less than dignified, and rubbing up against the rapidly-shrinking fleshy leg-nest of J.D. Shartier constituted misuse to a T. Post-jump, the cement public toilet clubhouse reverberated with many old dudes shouting patriotically-fueled four-letter words at J.D., who was an old dude himself, and who in fact had lost three fingers in combat, a fact he screamed back at the protesters, using the five-fingered hand for gesturing emphasis.
“After this happened a few more times,” explained Leslie, “I guess there was one jump morning where Timmy, this old Chinese guy, was getting ready to jump with his buddy, who’s this old white guy who thinks he’s Chinese, and they both do tai chi once they’re in the water and they wear those white karate robes. And there was a symbol on the back of one of them and J.D started screaming, that that was the Chinese flag! That was the Chinese flag, and they could jump wearing the Chinese flag so he could jump in wearing the American flag. And Timmy shouted that it was different from the flag, only he has a really heavy Asian accent, and it didn’t sound exactly like ‘flag.’ And all these old guys are bellowing at each other in various stages of nakedness and people are starting to form a big crowd on the boardwalk, and the main Polar Bear was trying to construct some sort of lawn-chair podium, so that he could get on top and make a big speech and restore order. But they couldn’t make it sturdy enough so it kept falling in a pile of lawn chairs. So okay. There ends up being no jump at all and they all go back into the toilet clubhouse to figure out what to do, and that was the first time Eric went in and saw the inside, because everyone was so worked up they weren’t paying attention to who came in and who was a Polar Bear and who wasn’t. And they all took a vote and they put J.D. on probation. And that would have been that, except that night, J.D. Shartier went out with his non-Polar Bear buddies, and got wasted and started telling the story, and the more he told it, and his buddies encouraged him, the more indignant he got about how he’d been wronged. And finally, he went to the clubhouse toilet and trashed it.”
“How did they figure out who—that it was him that did it?” Maria wondered.
“Okay, well, first up, he, uh, graffitied the walls and wrote in spray paint things like ‘J.D. is king,’” said Leslie. “And he also painted a huge American flag and also a stick figure, I guess supposed to be himself, wearing a flag and giving the finger. About five Polar Bears showed up very early that morning to do a jump and found the place all ashambles, and went to J.D.’s house and rifled through his trash, and found not only empty paint cans but a pair of tennis shoes that had gotten all covered in paint. So I don’t really know what happened then, ‘cause Eric didn’t know, but I do know they got the badge back.”
“Aren’t they afraid of J.D. Shartier showing up and making trouble?” asked Maria.
“No, no, see, he does keep showing up. That’s the thing,” said Leslie. “He’s trying to form his own jumping group now. They call themselves the Ice Breakers. That’s why he was on the news the other day. He has a spy on the inside tell him when the jumps are—that’s always a secret—and then he shows up with three or four friends and they jump a few yards farther up the beach. And if any media shows up, J.D. goes running, running to be the first one over to the cameras, and the reporter says ‘Hi. So you’re a Polar Bear. Tell us about your organization,’ or whatever. And J.D. Shartier says, ‘No, this is not a Polar Bear jump. We’re all Ice Breakers.’ And he makes up these fake Ice Breaker stories, like the group has been around since the 30’s, they’re five thousand members strong, and they have chapters all over the word, etc. Then the Polar Bears go home and see this on TV that night and it just kills them! It kills them!”
“So it isn’t really an honor to have J.D.’s old patch,” observed Maria.
“No,” agreed Leslie. “But now they want to have as many patch-wearing Polar Bears as they can, now that J.D.’s started this Ice Breakers thing. Hey, did I tell you how Eric first started going to the Polar Bear jumps? He was in the Yellow Pages looking for podiatry.” Then Maria and Leslie talked about Eric’s foot problems for a while.
A week or two after the explanation of Ice Breaker J.D.’s loss of badge and honor, Maria got another phone call from Leslie, who was hysterical. Maria initially couldn’t understand a word.
“It’s—it’s Eric, it’s Eric,” Leslie gasped out finally. “He-h—I drove him over to Coney Island this morning. He was gonna do jump n-number 12...”
“Oh my god,” said Maria. “Is he okay? What happened to him?”
“My friend Rusty was with me,” Leslie panted, trying to catch her breath, “The Bears were all in the toilet having some kind of meeting before they all ran for the water. And Rusty and I figured we’d have time to run down and see if the boardwalk Taco Bell was open, but it wasn’t, and when we got back, Eric—Eric...”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Maria. “What happened to him?”
“He dumped all his clothes on my bag,” Leslie sobbed, “and then as all the Polar Bears came out of the toilet they saw that J.D. and his Ice Breaker friends had arrived, and were running for the water first. So Eric told his buddy Chuck he was gonna dump all of J.D.’s clothes in the water. And he did, and then Eric ran to the water to tell all the other Polar Bears what he’d done, and J.D. came out and then he dumped all Eric’s stuff in the water. And a bunch of Polar Bears came out onto the beach and wanted to start a fight, but then Eric got it into his head, ‘Well, how did J.D. know it was me who dumped his stuff? Chuck must have told him. Therefore, Chuck must be the rat who cues J.D. in on when the secret jumps are gonna happen,’ only Chuck of course denies it, but while they’re screaming it out someone else goes and gets Chuck’s stuff and dumps that in the water. And Polar Bears and Ice Breakers are trying to whoop on each other with inner tubes, and some Polar Bears are yelling at other Polar Bears for even having the inner tubes with them, and then the cops come.”
“So... Eric’s in jail?” surmised Maria.
“Nooo!” Leslie screamed.
“Then—I don’t get it,” said Maria. “Why are you so upset?”
“Because!” Leslie screamed. “My candy-necklace dress was in the friggin’ bag with Eric’s stuff that got dumped!” And she burst into a fresh round of sobs.
So the moral of the story is, don’t go jumping into freezing water in the middle of the winter. It will all end in chaos and it’s just far too freakin’ cold. Take your inner tube and go up to Mount Hood and slide down it instead. Actually, most places where you can ride a tube down will provide the inner tube for you, so all you need to worry about is getting up there. Not all places will tow you and your tube back up the mountain though, and the walking-all-the-way-back-up factor, combined with the fun-of-going-down factor means far fewer rides for you. Skibowl East, however, will tow you up. The tow, plus the inner tube to rent is fifteen bucks. For more detail, directions, then go on 26 east to that one road, it’s not Multnomah, but it’s almost Multnomah. You can go to skibowl.com or call 272-3206. Wear something considerably more substantial than candy or an American flag toga, please.
Leslie has, by the way, meanwhile begun assembling a new candy-necklace dress. She doesn’t think, unfortunately, at the rate that she’s going, she’ll have it done by her originally projected date of Valentine’s Day. But sometimes, that’s just the way the ice breaks. This was your local entertainment guide on 94.7 NRK, the new rock alternative.