I AM IRRESISTIBLE TO WOMEN

I feel very much like Saturday began on a moral high note, though I can't pinpoint the exact moment at which all good deeds were erased.

Maybe it was the moment I sat down next to the mechanical bull with whiskey in both fists. But who knows, really?

One of my old chums flew out to visit me (and those Westward Ho's) for the weekend. He'd never seen the Left Coast up close, so I took us the long way back from the airport, stopping for the Divine deepfried halibut and beerbeerbeerbeerbeer at the Halfmoon Bay Brewing Co. (go there before you die, pilgrim). After lunch I felt the need to let my liver work it's magic alchemy with my blood before jumping back behind the wheel (referred to as "sightseeing" from now on), so we climbed down one of the steeper cliffs to the ocean just north of the restaurant.

As I was about to take my last and gigantic step into the sand, my companion pointed out the harbor seal staring at me from below. She had been tossed into a nasty garden of sharp rocks by the gusting winds and abnormally rough sea that day. One side of her head showed signs of blunt trauma, and her right eye had hemorrhaged badly. While I'm not a seal expert, the good people at the Marine Mammal Rescue and Rehabilitation Center are. Luckily, I keep their Hotline in my phone for just such an emergency.

I'd like to think I saved that seal from a slow, painful death on the beach that day. As she looked up into my eyes between labored breaths, she seemed to say, "Thank you friend, I will always remember your kindness."

I walked away from that beach feeling as if I had gained just the tiniest insight into God's spiritual opus; that maybe we were all born without sin and malace in our hearts. The purity of our exchange, the unsolicited kindess... I can't help but feel as if this is how we were meant to live in this universe.

Of course, later that day there was the whiskey and the hot (eerily flexible) phillipino girls and the mechanical bull and the raging erection. Maybe God and I should just shake hands and call it a draw.