It was an unending sea of skinny prepubescent kids in basketball jerseys; fat hairy men lugging boomboxes with broken handles, men with so much back hair I thought I was watching an outtake from Braveheart. Anorexic young women walked with their hips pushed forward and their flat bellies exposed; shirtless twenty-somethings with bitch nipples and shorts so long they didn't look any different from pants, letting them ride low off their hips, showing a scrub of hair beneath the navel.

I sat on a wooden bench for four hours in the food area reading the last few chapters of the Diane Arbus biography. I'm strange in that I love the sun, but hate sitting in it.

It was my kid's birthday party. Just a couple of friends with him; I took them to the water slide park. In theory, if there were one-tenth of one percent the total number of people, and if it had been overcast, I'd have been all over those rides. But I sat this one out, read my book, and bought junk food on the sly.

Everyone but me, it seems, has a tattoo on his calf. Woman seem to favor the patch of skin right above the ass, but guys can't seem to get enough of calf tattoos. I don't see the appeal.

Sitting there in the shade of the food area, reading how Diane Arbus' last years were a fast downward spiral into mental illness, smelling cocoa butter and pizza sauce, hearing mothers scream at children, watching very young kids slip accidentally out of their bathing suits, watching young flesh slowly change turnip red I thought summer has really arrived. This is summer. This is the summer I somewhat overlooked as a youth. This is the summer I could connect with now, if I wanted to, but choose not to. My time for these kinds of diversions has long past. I think.

The boys ordered a pizza with two kinds of meat. When they left to go in the water, I sat guard over the remains and put my feet up to read. Two hours later a teen walked up and offered me three dollars for a slice of our now cold pizza. I refused and explained it was my kid's birthday pizza, and he laughed and said he just didn't want to wait in the line.

Two hours later, and after a fly had climbed every sausage peak, the same teen returned and asked, again, but this time for the entire remaining pizza. I cautioned that a fly had already made off with the choicer bits, and asked if he was sure he wanted it.

It looks great! he said. To which I said You're more than welcome to it, free of charge. He carried it off to his waiting friends who laughed when he rejoined them.