I live so much in the moment that sometimes it is difficult for me to remember what I was thinking when I make a decision. Like, for example, the trip to Maine for Memorial Day weekend. Maybe I was thinking that it would be nice to see the Marmit. Maybe I was thinking of all those wonderful summers I spent on Moosehead Lake with my parents and their friends, the Mandrakes, two professors and their daughter. Maybe I was thinking it would be nice to get out of the city and just veg in the country and not think about the job I was leaving or the writing I was trying to get done. Maybe I was thinking it would be nice to finally take a group trip instead of travelling alone. Maybe I was thinking it would be nice to get drunk in a different setting.

The odds are that whatever was going through my head when I agreed to go to Maine for Memorial day, the word thought can only be loosely applied.

It was only a week before I was scheduled to go that I actually began to think about what I had agreed to. I was going to travel with two couples, both of whom had just started cohabitating, and a closeted homosexual for an idyllic weekend in Maine.

As Steve Martin once wrote in Wasps, " You will stand in the grass with your palms upturned. You will be saying something over and over again. 'What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?'"

I told both the Amazon and the Model my concerns. That I would be left out while they enjoyed couple-y things. Canoe rides.Long walks. Dancing. Which wouldn't be so bad. I had things to keep me entertained, or I could entertain myself. But I didn't really need my continued single state to be pushed into my face...again...on vacation. Or worse, I would become the "date" of the closeted homosexual (from here on out he will be referred to as CQ).

To make things worse the night before I left, my non-boyfriend, B Negative, sent me a particularly unfortunate email. I'm not going to go into details. Not because they aren't important, not because I know it would piss him off, but because I really don't have the strength to relive it. Let's just put it like this; it isn't what you want to get right before spending a weekend with two happy cohabitating couples. Imagine an email like that and you probably will come pretty close to what I'm hinting at. About as close to a break up email as one could get without doing it, which he can't since we aren't dating.

He called to talk about the email. He had been in a bad place when he wrote it. He didn't feel that way now. Well, great. "I hope it won't ruin your weekend."

Now I teach argumentation for a living. And I was pissed. Not just at him. At myself for agreeing to this trip. At every happy couple of think of, which really wasn't that long of a list, but was long enough. At Maine for being there. But he was the one at whom I could direct my rage. A designated victim. More importantly a justifiable victim. I could have torn him apart and put him back together again without even thinking about it, and no one would have faulted me about it. But I managed to hold my forked tongue.

"You don't have that kind of power" I told him. "Of course, I'm going to enjoy this weekend."

And then I made myself a promise to prove it was true.
About two months ago, I was asked to submit questions for an interview of Saw director James Wan. The interview is now up on Icons of Fright. The gory pictures will prepare you for my upcoming posts about my trip to Maine.