the truth about tahoe

Other Jenny Columns:

Hating living in the Haight.

Jenny's neighbors. Neighborly attitudes in San Francisco.

Jenny and her roommate have a house guest from Texas.

My fellow grinds are huddled around the coffee machine, emptying two packets of French roast into a filter and labeling the filling pot with a Post-It: "Strong." As on every Monday, I breeze in for tea and ask everyone, "What did you do this weekend?"

"Oh," they say, brightening momentarily, "we went to Tahoe." Tahoe, last snowy step on the stairway to Heaven. Tahoe, patchwork canvas of primary-colored NorthFace jackets lit by the blinding reflections off wrap-around goggles. Or so I imagine. I have never been to Tahoe. I have never been invited. My only images of Tahoe are from photographs tucked into mirror frames across the city, the owner of the camera bathed in brilliant sun and snow, grinning madly with ski goggles suctioned to his or her forehead and wrapped to the chin in goose down. On top of a mountain somewhere. Somewhere in Tahoe.

Or near Tahoe. I don’t honestly know if "Tahoe" is the name of the resort, the area, or even some famous peak, like "Terrible Tahoe," "Tremendous Tahoe," "Take-Me-Now Tahoe," or "Taps-To-You Tahoe." And what does one bring to Tahoe? This is what I would bring, based on what I own, also based on the fact that I have never been downhill skiing:

Then, of course, I would die, because I don’t own anything normal ski-people wear, because I am not a normal ski-person. I am from the Midwest. We detassel corn, slop hogs and build levees with our bare hands, and we cross-country ski on the Westview golf course when it snows over. Nothing like what I imagine Tahoe to be, where all is a breezy downhill, it’s always sunny, people talk about "fresh powder" without giggling at themselves (I can’t do it), the boys are buff and ruddy-faced, and the women are Cher.

But sometimes so many people from my office go to Tahoe for the weekend I imagine it is a code word for something else. Like maybe it means something rude you are not allowed to say in the office, according to the Employee Handbook Section 7ab34t.2, something like "I went to the Garden of Eden and looked at a stranger's private parts," or "I smoked a lot of hash and sat in a corner for two hours and drooled." Something we all do but can’t talk about unless we’re on our smoke breaks outside. Not that I’ve ever been to the Garden of Eden, although there was one night we left the HiBall Lounge really late and got ushered right into the next doorway by a woman completely covered in silver paint and suddenly realized we were watching another girl on a stage six feet up hang from a pole by her ankles. She was not wearing a bra. Maybe this is Tahoe.

Regardless of location, the part I really don’t understand about Tahoe is that it's supposed to be a get-away. But so many people go that it must be either very big or very crowded or both, and on top of the fact that you are exercising, the whole thing does not seem very relaxing at all. Now, I have worn skis before. On the golf course. It was like the time in high school I decided to get long square-tipped acrylic nails for the Beaux Arts Ball, which was held in the basement of a bowling alley (only dance floor in town), and could barely drive myself home and couldn’t type for a week. If you are a woman and you start to itch "down there" and you are wearing skis, you can’t do the fancy cross-your-legs dance because you would sweep the legs out from under everyone in line for the ski-lift. And people tell me they run into each other "on the mountain." On the mountain? How big is this mountain? Is everyone on the same mountain? Is "on the mountain" another code phrase for something fun I’m missing out on? And why doesn’t anyone ever invite me to go "on the mountain?" Because I know you have cabins. Because you tell me about them every Monday.

Jenny Pritchett would not say no if you invited her to Tahoe. And you were driving

Jenny Pritchett

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