They're heeere

I was reading today on the internet about alien abductions. Not a very well-known fact, but I used to date the daughter of possibly the top UFOlogist in the world, swear to god, back at Hampshire. This girl, her dad specialized in helping abductees cope with . . . you know, with being abductees and stuff. She used to say, with an eerie seriousness, that her dad knew so much about the aliens that the aliens definitely knew all about her dad, and that they probably knew about her, too. I asked her if that meant that the aliens knew about me as well because, you know, with her being my girlfriend and everything, but she didn't answer.

But I didn't start out meaning to read about alien abductions on the internet, honest. I was on Wikipedia, just sort of browsing amongst the shelves, when all of a sudden I found myself accidentally reading about aliens. Or alien abductions, really.

So if I were to tell you that I saw a UFO, would you hold it against me? Would I lose what meager measure of credibility I have with you? I ask because whenever I find myself telling people that I've seen a UFO (which, thankfully, is not frequently), they all, almost to a person, look at me like what I really said was that I'd seen the WMDs. What. Ever.

So I wrote a short play about it. I've even given you a part. Not the leading role, but I don't think you should be complaining about that right now. If you do a good job, maybe I'll write you a better part next time. Anyway, here's how it goes, with you playing the interrogator . . .

Sabitathica: I saw a UFO once.
You: That's ridiculous. Don't say that again.
Sabitathica: Okay. But which part of 'I saw a UFO' are you having difficulty with? That what I saw was unidentified, that it was flying, or that it was an object?
You: Oh.

See, wasn't that fun? And now that we've had this little chat, and I've dazzled you with my unassailable logic, and we've been in a play together and stuff, I feel like we're closer, like I can open up to you more. So in this exciting newfound spirit of forthcomingness, transparency and trust, I've decided to tell you a little more about the UFO I saw.

It was on Martha's Vineyard in 1988, on the coast, as you look north or north-east across Nantucket Sound. It was dark out, well after sunset, maybe 11 or 11:30 PM and I was standing on the beach. I was living on the Vineyard that summer. I looked up into the sky and saw a bright white-blue light, about the same shape and size as the average streetlight appears to be from maybe 100 feet away.

It was moving, not terribly fast, downward, earthward, and tacking north. And then the strange thing happened. Without decelerating, it completely changed direction and moved, still northward, but now suddenly and with great velocity up, away from the ground. It was gone from my sight very quickly, in less than two seconds, maybe less than one.


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Anyway, segueing gracelessly into other things that're out of this world, I'm listening to Paul's piano on Drive My Car right now.

My last serious girlfriend didn't know all that much about the Beatles. In fact, there was one time when we were talking about them, and the phrase 'All Five Beatles' came out of her mouth. And no, she wasn't counting any of the people that you sometimes hear referred to as the Fifth Beatle, like George Martin or Billy Preston or, inappropriately, Pete Best. No. She really thought, and granted it may have only been for a moment, but still, that there were five boys in the band. It was all I could do to remain civil. I think I made her sleep on the couch that night.