The island is small, and people know you here. The bartenders call you by name. A friend has been here for many years, and they already have her drink cracked open and ready the moment you all walk into the joint. A trip to the grocery store often turns into a discussion about another friend's toddler and his ridiculous antics, while she sells you your twelfth PBR 40 oz of the week. You'll probably be waiting awhile in line, so you initiate an impromptu dance party with the Jamaican bartender standing behind you. The barista at your coffee shop sings your name as you walk into the room, and knowingly slips you the Wifi password, as this is where you will probably be spending the next five hours on your single, precious day off. On another inebriated Monday night at your regular drinking place, you'll stumble into the back of the house and run into your best friend counting her tips, and settle down for a hearty bitch session about the perils of the service industry. You share cigarettes with the night taxi driver, make friends with the street sweeper on Grand Hill, and stand on the corner eating a salad while singing along to Fleetwood Mac, making eye contact with horrified tourists as they toddle by, full of fudge and greasy with the shine of post-bike ride sunscreen.
You'll see things you might find strange anyplace else in the world, but here, it's commonplace. A buggy full of orange-clad Buddhist monks, enduring a long and pun-filled Carriage Tour. A horde of bagpipers in the park, surrounded by Midwesterners in cutoff shirts drinking tall boys. A cop pulling over a couple on a tandem bike and pressing tickets for biking under the influence into their sweaty palms. A woman in a billowing black cape, holding a lantern aloft as she leads a small crowd of glowstick-wearing youths down Market Street. A boat, weighed down by a full UPS truck, pulling into the harbor. The little person in the UPS uniform who comes to deliver the packages. A post office that never delivers mail. Women in Victorian dress, smoking cigarettes and tapping away on their iPhones. The horses on Mackinac have always been here, they are the same ones that have been here since the beginning of time, you're pretty sure. They like to work, you're told, and they have minds of their own.
Work is fast, intense, fraught with drama and a jittering anxiety that never really leaves. "May I offer you a cocktail or a glass of wine?" is something that you've caught yourself saying in your dreams, and folding napkins never ends. You've become an expert at performing wine service for intoxicated yachters, and you don't even flinch when picking up a searing hot plate anymore. "Absolutely, my pleasure" becomes a euphemism for "I'm thinking about smacking your face right off" but you calmly make your way back to the kitchen during the lunch rush to grab the extra crostinis, not allowing your Guest Service expression to fall into one of uncontrollable rage until you've made your way back through the swinging door. Despite the constant tension headaches that come from dealing with the public on a daily basis, you're addicted to the rush you get from hotfooting it back and forth from a kitchen, popping bottles of expensive champagne, seeing your tips pile up, spending day after day at one of the coolest jobs you've ever had, in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
After work, if you're not shuffling into the VI for some $1.50 Oberons, you venture up a gradual hill past a palatial white monstrosity of a hotel, listening to Mazzy Star and dreaming of a warm cup of tea and some time curled up in a blanket with a new Netflix series, but eventually, you end up on the stoop instead, receiving embrace after drunken embrace from your friends and coworkers, and strap in for a night of Canada House and pool. Someone might suggest a trip to Fort Holmes, but you know you'll probably all stay down in the courtyard, mainlining boxed wine and whining about hockey or boys, or both. Later, a wise Puerto Rican girl will hold your hand and tell you her life story, which you'll listen to, because you really do want to know. She'll tell you to breathe, and you'll tell her you'll be okay, at least for tonight. You might get into a fight with a guy named Tyler about his parents' single-engine Cessna, or you might cultivate a new friendship with a beautiful drunken blonde who loves EDM and dreams of Electric Forest. You might find your way through the dark to a quiet horse pasture on the West Bluff, and pet the huge beasts on the snout, looking into their tired eyes, listening to the air in their giant lungs move in and out as though it were wind blowing through caves. You might kiss someone new every evening, or you might find someone nice to spend night after night with. You might fall in love a little, or your might not. You can blame it on the alcohol, and in the morning, you'll wake up to the sound of a freighter's fog horn that sounds exactly like your old alarm clock. You'll coast down the hill again, feeling a crisp Michigan breeze through your hair while your broken kickstand clicks against your aging bike spokes, and you understand then that this is where you belong. You're not sure if it's truly real, but you know there's nowhere else you'd rather be.
