The Tus

On a recent trip to the west, I spent three nights camping on the beach in a little town called Neskowin. This is the kind of place rich people come to be away from each other, only to be surrounded in closer quarters with fewer amenities. One of those rich people was the mother of a friend of a friend, which is how I came to be a beach bum for a few days.

The first two nights were relatively subdued. We had a fire going non-stop, lots of good beer to drink and grilled food for protein and endurance. On the third evening, July 4th, I was introduced to Tuscon, a man most simply referred to as "Tus" (pronounced tooce).

Tus showed up with nothing. No tent. No sleeping bag. No nothing. Just his hot and cranky girlfriend and a serious case of road rage from competing with the rest of the Portlandites in a sprint to the cold riptides along the Pacific coast. I figured we had a huge mooch on our hands, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Tus went to the nearest town, Pacific City, and returned to begin setting up. His tent was the largest I'd ever seen, easily 16 feet wide, 10 feet deep and 7 feet tall. A freaking mansion. After el casa del Tus was erected, he proceeded to inflate a two piece queen sized mattress set that easily stood two feet from the ground. In true luxurious fashion, he added a memory foam pad and new sheets, along with two brand-spankin' full-size pillows.

After much anticipation, Tus and his lady exited their beach residence sporting an iPod boombox blaring gangsta rap and a brand new cooler. What had been a very chill evening turned into a dance party instantly as they set the boombox in the sand and started the Grind.

Moments later, Tus set up his new camping chair and pulled two cylinders from his Sean Jean pockets and set them in the sand on either side behind him, then clicked their buttons revealing that they were lumination devices designed to send pillars of light into the sky. He then proceeded to bust out what looked to be an ounce and rolled 5 blunts to pass around to those that were into that sort of thing. At that point his lady came over and proceeded to grind and make out with him on his illuminated throne. All of this happened over the course of about 15 minutes. All I could say over and over again was, "wow."