Besides, the quest for "understanding" is what has exhausted you; our need for "understanding" is our disease of faithlessness. "Understanding" is our defense against being and knowing. "Understanding" is an intellectual purgatory prior to immersion in the fires of experience. - Cary Tennis

Sunday, September 2, 2007

I know what you want, part 2

I've been wearing my hair long now for years for one reason: the way it feels when I've been in and out of the water from sunup to sundown, wet and dry and wet and dry, without the time or inclination for a shower. It gets dreadlocked with salt, stringy and sticky, until I can't run my fingers through it at all, I can only whip my head back to get it all out of my face. It's breathtakingly gross and breathtakingly freeing at the same time. My body's so far gone it isn't worth even a thought about getting clean, let alone an effort. Salt is crumbly on my arms and thighs. My fingers are pale and wrinkled and everything has a faint blue haze from the sun pill I took this morning. The Pacific Ocean goes on right to the sky where little clouds dribble like white droppings on the horizon, unimportant and very far away. You know, even my eyebrows have salt in them.

I love the Earth. It's been said to me that you can't truly appreciate Earth unless you've spent time in space, but I've known for a long time that I can't go into space, that this is all there is for me, and it only makes things all the more precious. This is all there is. And it's heaven.

For instance, there's nothing like the beach. And even if you've been to the beach--even if you came down from Quasaw or rode the rail from Missouri and spent an afternoon sunning and swimming, you wouldn't know what we know.

It's Rafe's second day on Earth and I was right. He likes the surfing all right but he loves the surfers. Because my friends are the opposite of spacefolk. They're laid-back friendly San Francisco Earthsters with all their rough edges smoothed over by drugs and sun. They like everybody. They're a lot like me.

"So you play that thing?" Marcus is asking him, pointing at the guitar.

Rafe shrugs. "I play it every day. I've played it every day of my life since I was 12." He picks it up and sits it on his thigh like I used to do with my niece when she was a little sack of potatoes.

"Do you sing?" asks Tony, crowding in in his eagerness.

Rafe grins, that smile, that smile, that makes me so grateful he's here. Because it's not a stunning smile. Or a beaming smile, or a polite or a self-conscious one. It is a simple smile, so shy and honest I think I could go without talking for the rest of the year. In fact it doesn't bear describing at all, so I take it all back.

"Uh, I try not to," he says.

I am sitting on my favorite piece of driftwood watching him like a hawk. The orange sun is behind him and there's a skin of orange light wrapping around his features, sifting through his hair. Hair that's too short for him to feel what I feel now, tickling my shoulders and back. He has a light, deft jaw, I'm noticing, his mouth moves so easily--despite his persistent silence--like English is weightless, like he lives in some alternate universe from mine where impulse is hefty but expression light, instead of the other way around. I want to know what he wants.

I do know what he wants. He wants to sing. For these new friends, people whose attention he craves, blond dudes like the characters in the movies, who've been showering him with warmth and questions since the moment I brought him to this beach when the sun was still in the east.

"Come on," I say. "Do you write songs?"

He nods, his Adam's apple bobbing in a swallow. The faintest likeness of his smile, the understudy of his smile, just a little movement of the lips, flickers on his face. Yes. You want this, I think, and it's intoxicating to me. I see it! that hint of your spaceboy soul, and it's better than drugs. You've come thousands of miles, leaving behind intellectual friends who match your smarts but not your sincerity, to be here on this one beach where you can share this one song with the one group of people who'll take it just like it is.

Or something.

"Yeah?" I ask. I make myself pause. It's hard, but I'm not totally lacking in self-discipline. "You know, this beach, I mean, it's beautiful and all, and it's easy to come here and use it and go back to town, but it's harder to try to give something back."

Now Kit and Marcus are looking at me too. I better think up something good.

"It's not... I mean it's not... I mean it is for the beach, for Mother Nature, but it's more for us, actually. Like the Indians, to try to give something to the spirit of the place, to show we can be humble. To leave something of ours behind."

Rafe, bless him, actually glances up the beach to his bag for a second, but then he looks back at his guitar. He's not even thinking to question this spiritual mumbo jumbo, the rascal. He plain wants to sing for us. I am suddenly so absurdly touched.

"I wrote this song about this one night a couple years ago on the station," he says easily. The first chord is perfect, each string ringing out, in tune and everything. I would know; my brother played guitar for years. Badly. The guys lean forward in the sand, so pleased, I know, to have something new tonight, something other than Tony telling us what he did with his girlfriend. I look away before he begins, because the evening is coming on, and the air is just right, exactly 75 degrees, with a breathlike breeze, and the sun is that soft color that makes it impossible to take bad pictures, or memories. The ocean is a dark blue with waves standing out jagged in the exaggerated relief of sunset. My muscles are warm and ache and I can feel the warmth of the sand on the tops of my burrowing feet and even on the pale skin between my toes.

And Rafe opens his mouth and sings low and perfectly on key, and I don't hear a word of it. It gets to verse three or something and I'm kicking myself because I'm noticing for the fifth time in the past forty-five seconds that I'm not paying attention to his song. I'm paying attention to him. The angle his back takes as he leans over the instrument. The years of practice I see in how his fingers move. The preciseness with which he's trimmed his nails. The freckles on his shamelessly pale arms. The lack of tattoos. The ring I didn't notice until now, a silver ring. His lips... how the curve of his upper lip leaves his white teeth exposed when he opens his mouth to take a breath. How long his eyelashes are. The pointiness of his active, human, insignificant elbows. His elbows!

Pay attention, man!

It's only one night
Tomorrow comes quickly
For sleepers and lovers
And slowly for me
It's only one night
But it's only three-thirty
And I had this same thought
At a quarter to three
It's only one night
And I know tomorrow
Will find me as foolish
As the guilty can be
And it's only one night
And it's only one night
And it hurts and it's still only three-thirty-three.

Well damn it, he's good... And I'm a fool for not being able to listen to the whole song. I don't know what's wrong with me, sometimes. But I let this slip away and there's no way to get it back and I'm chagrined. I clap with the others and gaze at his smile. Somewhere in my self-castigation I know he's the one who's important, that it's what he's feeling that matters. He's happy. That's all.

And the guys are definitely happy. They whoop it up. "Dude, you're good!" says Marcus in awe. "You're good," echoes Kit. He's such a gusher. "You could be, like, on RayRay. You're better than half the singers on RayRay. You should apply."

Rafe is shaking his head, still smiling. The guys can't stop talking. They're all over him with praise. Okay, I am too. "You have perfect pitch, man," I say. "And you know emotion. You're a songwriter. I don't know what you get paid to do back on station, but you're a songwriter."

The sun's going down... we have a delicious evening of food and alcohol and the town and partying ahead of us... tomorrow it's the jungle, and it's just you and me. Your last day. Then you get on a ship and streak away to Tokyo. Tokyo! As if anyone cared about Tokyo...

"So what are you going to leave?" Rafe the songwriter is asking me, and Kit laughs, and I'm so surprised I think it shows on my face. Shit.

"Yeah, Nate, what's your offering to the beach? I gave it my blood, obviously." Kit is talking about his wipeout earlier.

I'm scrambling. What do I know about sacrifice? Being a surfer and a junkie and a tour guide is about take, take, take! Take the sun, take the evening, take the dope, take the money, take the delight, I take it all. Silly. I can't do this. I can't think of anything.

"Dude, all he's got is his shorts," says Tony, guffawing.

"Nooooo!" says Marcus.

Imbeciles. I'm an imbecile too. "I'm leaving something... intangible," I say, not knowing what. Rafe nods at me so I think it's all right. I think I can leave it at that and not be taken for a liar or a cheat. I just don't know how to play this game, all of a sudden.

I don't even know what I'm leaving when we actually leave an hour after the sun goes down. It doesn't matter, I don't think. Tomorrow I'll be doing what I do best.

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