Ocean, Faking, & an Axe

A few years back when I lived close to the beach, my roommate-slash-best friend and I would often walk down there and lay around if the weather was half decent. Usually it was a lazy time of reading and smoking cigarettes and laughing our arses off about nothing.

The problem with San Francisco's beaches on half-decent days is that they are public, and our un-beloved homeless people consider them a nice place to "freshen up."

Minding our own business and hiding behind sunglasses, we were approached by such a character. He was in his mid-50's, had grey scraggly hair and a scraggly beard to match. He came up to us with his backpack on and started talking:

"Would you gals watch my bag while I go in the water?"

Immediately Best Friend and I spoke in French. "No English. Francais. French..." and we began chatting bull to each other and went back to our reading.

But he was unphazed; still there. "Hola. Watch-o my bag-o por favor. I swim." And then he pointed to the ocean, did the breast stroke, and pointed to himself.

"French." That should do it!

It didn't. He started to take off his shoes and said "I swim. Bag-o," pointing at us, then pointed to his eyes, then pointed to the bag. I looked at the bag: it had an axe tied to it. I shook my head "no." He walked toward the water and started taking off his pants.

"DUDE! He has a fucking AXE! What should we do?"

Best friend: "Move?"

Me: "But what if he gets pissed and comes after us?"

Best friend: "Move, but not so far that he gets pissed?"

We tried that. Obviously, since I'm alive to tell the story, it worked.