[Note: it's been a long time. Read the first installment of the story here.]
My first few days working with Terry, I was confused as hell. He'd supposedly brought me onto his hopper because he liked my skill, but I couldn't seem to do anything right.
"Don't put the drill bit in that way, you'll snap it off. Come on, dummy.
"No, not there. No no no no nononono. Are you looking at the rocks right now? Get over here!
"If you crack it that way one more time, I'm going to have you sent back to those two punks you were working with before. Come on. Act like you've got some sense now.
"What the hell are you doing? Jesus! You know better than that. You're going to lose half of it into space. If I see you come up underneath it like that one more time, I'm taking you back to NRX for another lesson.
"No, no! You're killing me, Jack! I'm going to have a heart attack and die right here on this asteroid. Pay attention!
"What are you, still asleep today? Get your head into it! You have a brain, you idiot, use it!"
It was the most incompetent I'd ever felt in my life. Of course I was pulling out more ore every week... it was hard not to, with him there watching my every move... but the comments never ended. So in the space of a couple months I went from being miserable and terrified of death to miserable and terrified of Terry. And it was laughable. Because he wasn't at all imposing, either, in stature or in volume. He stood maybe 5'8" and looked like somebody's unmarried brother (which he was) and talked with a sort of high boy's voice.
I can't say whether I preferred working with Terry to working with Caleb and Jason because I didn't give it any thought. I was so busy. We put in extra hours almost every day, and I came in and ate my supper and went to bed. But if I was still miserable, I was miserable in a different way. I was working so damn hard. Partly because I was afraid not to, but partly because every once in a while, Terry would say something less insulting.
"Good," he said once, when I sunk in the drill. I was so shocked I nearly jerked the bit in two right there. We'd been working together for weeks and it was the first time he'd liked anything I'd done.
"You're getting better at finding the edges of the ore pockets," he said a few days later. I didn't say a thing. I was afraid to break the spell.
After a few months, one day he told me he liked the way I scoped out an asteroid. "You've got more pure rock smarts than all the other rock jockeys put together. I decided I'm taking you out to the Hatch Patch next month."
I had an appointment with Harold Slawski, V.P. of Mobile Extraction, that one afternoon and I wasn't thinking. I remember waiting outside his office with my suit half off, the arms tied around my waist and the legs dirty and baggy over my sweaty long underwear. I'd come back early from the asteroids and didn't even think about cleaning up. So I was waiting there in the two-foot-wide hallway outside his office and this group of bigwigs came past me, all clean-shaven and dressed up, and talking about some expansion, and I didn't even look at them. I suddenly wanted to get out. But then the door opened and they let me into the office.
Harold Slawski was well-fed. He had big teeth and a slightly crooked nose, and a big gold thing on his desk with his name on it. He stood up when I came in and leaned over his desk. I jerked my sweaty hands out of where I'd stuck them in the tied-off arms of my suit and shook his hand, and then I sat down before he could offer me the chair.
"So you're Jack Lipstein! They tell me you're the next Danny Engall." He sat back down and beamed at me.
"Uh... that's what they tell me."
"I wanted to meet you. We've been hearing a lot about you up in the office. You know, you bring in about seven thousand kilos a month? Of platium?"
I had no idea I was bringing in that much. "No sir," I said.
"Well, it's very impressive. We've had maybe three, four people in my time here who were able to locate that much in a month. All of them, I would have said, they had the eye for it." He tapped under his puffy eyelid. "Or maybe you can smell it."
I laughed. "That's what Terry says."
"Terrence Spratt... yeah, he worked with Danny too. Funny guy. He's been here a long time. Never worked outside of piloting. Back in 84 they wanted him to be a manager, fought for it, but he wouldn't. That was before my time."
A side door opened and a young guy came in and told Harold that he had some report from Shipping and they needed a reply. Harold said to give him two seconds to look it over, so the young guy brought in the report and I looked around the office. It was very clean. Lots of wood, which we don't see a lot in space. Carpet. Lots of gold and platinum touches. There was some kind of award with a platinum hammer on the wall.
"So, how long have you been with us now?" Harold was asking me. We were alone again.
"Two years."
"What'd you do before this?"
"I worked a lot of jobs on Earth," I said.
"One of those, huh? We see a lot like you up here, you know. You know how many new people I hired this week? Maybe fourteen. And that's not so unusual. We have a lot of people go through here. So you know I'm not lying when I tell you that your gift is really something special. Let me break it down this way. You've got the bottom ten percent, they're here to get away from something, you can tell right away. They don't necessarily want to be here, but they don't want to be on Earth either. I won't lie, some of those folks are our best workers. Whatever's driving them. But they're usually rotten. We terminate a lot of them early.
"Then maybe... the next fifty percent who come through here, it's just another job. They're working for the paycheck. That's our backbone, really. Some of the rest, say twenty-five percent, they're real frontier men, they just love it up here, some of them stay for life. They're part of that backbone too, really. And... what's that leave?"
"I don't know."
"Say, about fifteen percent, the remainder, they have some actual talent for what they do. They're good pilots or they're good at finding ore, or they're leaders, that sort of thing. It's the sad truth but we have a hard time holding onto that fifteen percent. The truth is, smart folks, talented folks, they don't want to be stuck at some menial job in the middle of nowhere all their lives. Am I right?"
"I guess not."
"With most of them, we try to offer them incentives to stay with us once their first contract is up, but a lot of them leave anyway. But for the really exceptional folks, we really try to make arrangements. OMC has a lot to offer for those kinds of skills. And you know you're up there, in that area, right?"
I wiped my palms on my dirty suit legs. The sweat on my back was getting cold. "Well, people tell me I'm all right at finding ore."
He laughed at that. "Don't be modest, now, Jack, that's not going to get you anywhere in life. Don't be cocky, but don't be modest. Let me tell you, you have a lot of people in this department with their eye on you. But not everybody knows or cares how important a good orehound is, and sometimes you have to tell them yourself."
The side door opened again and Harold stood up. "Just let me finish up with Jack here..." he said to his assistant, already taking the offered sheaf from his hands. I stood up too. "Jack, we want a real good relationship with you. You understand why. If you keep up this kind of performance, there's no reason even to wait until your contract's up in three years. We understand that other companies might offer you enough to make you think about breaking your contract with us. I just don't want you to do anything rash without seeing what we have to offer, all right? We'd like to keep you."
I nodded, quickly, taking a step toward the door. Harold came around the desk, leaving his assistant holding his stylus in the air. He leaned in close and looked me right in the eye. "Just so you know... you might have heard what Dynacorp put out for Danny Engall. Most of it's not rumors; eleven million a year is a lot of money, but like I said, a good orehound is... worth a lot, to a company in this business. Just think about it. We didn't want to lose him and we don't intend to make the same mistake twice. Okay?" He clapped me hard on the shoulder, hard enough to make me lose my balance, and stuck out his hand again. "Great to meet you, Jack. I'm glad we could talk. Say hello to old Terry for me!"
And then the door behind me was open and I was out in the little hallway again, more bigwigs rushing through on their way to some high-level meeting. Some of them were younger than me. I sagged against the wall. I was making seventy thousand a year on this contract I'd signed in this smelly recruitment office in downtown Chicago when I was half-drunk and hated myself. And that was more than I'd made for dog handling, but it wasn't exactly a fortune.
I got lost trying to find the mess hall and by the time I got there I was pissed at myself. How hard could it be to find my way around a station I'd already spent two years on? They had that tofu meatloaf that was usually all right, but I got sick of it halfway through and went back to my bunk and went to bed early. I didn't want to be awake. For some reason I just wanted off this hunk of metal I was on. I thought about Mojo, in the ring, at the training course, and got myself good and miserable, and then I went to sleep.
I woke up early the next morning and actually had enough time to get dressed and have a real breakfast. I felt a little better. I started thinking about how I might be able to get a new contract, maybe fewer hours... maybe I might even like to go back to Earth. It was too much to think about yet. I just liked having that hope there, a big new house I could explore when I wanted.
Terry showed up when I was finishing my toast. "Ready for another day of misery, rockmuncher?" he said, grinning. I stopped chewing. My mouth was real dry all of a sudden.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Saturday, November 17, 2007
The legend of Danny Engall, part 1
Terry always waits until the last second to put the thrusters on and it drives me nuts. I understand why he does it, because a lot of people do it, but I feel invisible in the cockpit here with him and I might as well be just another chunk of rock like we've got strapped to the back.
He's trying to find that sweet spot, the place somewhere between the dock and the station where our inertia runs out just enough to make it just barely energy-efficient to start using the thrusters. He can feel it. Heck, I can feel it, I've been doing this long enough. Where we slow down just enough. Then he eases the throttle forward light as a breath and the hopper picks up speed without any jerks. Very smooth. He's been doing this for ten years.
Terry is a very, very good pilot. There are a lot of very good pilots here. I'm a good pilot myself, but I'm never going to have that genius feel for the controls like they do. This place attracts people who like to be very, very good at things. Because there's a lot that can go wrong up here, and sometimes if you give yourself a millimeter too much on either side you're toast. Situations like that don't happen all the time, but they happen enough that mining has once again become the system's Most Dangerous Job.
Terry Spratt doesn't look at all like the kind of person you'd expect to be a hot-shot pilot. He's short and thick-lipped and curly-haired and has a boy's high voice, and cares more about getting home and watching the World Series of Poker than about bragging how that last run went. He doesn't look like a hero and he doesn't look like the kind of guy I'd have expected to change my life.
I came up here five years ago because I didn't know what the hell to do with my life. I had been working as a handler for a huge border collie breeding and showing operation, I lived and slept and practically breathed dogs, and then Mojo--the guy who started it all, the champion, the number one sire, and probably my best friend--died, and the owners expected me to carry on with the new generations and I just couldn't. It was the oddest thing but as I tried working with the pups and tried working by myself as a groomer for a few months, I came to this realization that I wasn't sure if liked dogs at all. I just liked Mojo. I had since I first met him at my cousin's wedding. He was why I ended up working with the McHones for fifteen years. And I had no clue where to go from there. All I knew was dog handling.
So I came up here. I signed up as a miner and got my suit and my tools and got to work on the asteroid and I hated it more than I could ever have thought it was possible to hate anything. I remember hearing the alarm in the morning and waking up in my dark bunk and wanting more than anything else in the world to pull the covers over my head and lie there while my roommates shook me and shouted at me and eventually gave up and went off to breakfast... the only reason I didn't was that I knew I'd signed a contract and I knew if the company had to pay to ship me back home I wouldn't dig myself out of that hole for years. And I went through that for literally the first year and a half here. Almost every morning. I would finally get up and jam my legs into the legs of the suit and tie the arms around my waist and get to the mess room just as they were putting breakfast away, and have some cold cereal and just make it onto the hopper I was sharing with two kids from Canada who were happy as hell to be here.
Through the entire day I'd have a running commentary in my head on the outrage and stupidity of everything I saw and did. "God, Caleb is an asshole. Is that the fifth time he's walked off without anchoring the hopper? If I fucking get killed because of him... Christ, do you think they could afford to spend more than five dollars on the joints on these suits? I can't even touch my toes, let alone pick up anything I drop. What the hell is Jason doing? Why is he using the #5 drill? If he breaks that thing and we have to go back..." all day long. It's funny but some days I think about half of it was about dying.
I was scared of dying, all the time. I would say there's death all around you up here, and there is, if you think of it that way... the vacuum and all... but somebody really only dies every few months, and with thousands of miners crawling over these rocks that's a pretty good rate of survival, all things considered. But I kept thinking about it and thinking about it and I was convinced it would be me next. Because of something Caleb or Jason did, or just some random asteroid collision, or a tear in my suit. I couldn't keep my mind off it. And I was angry and scared all the time.
That didn't really start to change until the day Caleb crashed the hopper into the side of GR8290 or something and broke his leg, and we had Terry flying us for a few days until some other guy took over. I was really out of it that first day Terry was with us. I remember being really mechanical, sealing my suit up and getting in the hopper and sitting there across from Terry not caring who he was, and looking out at the stars like all the sky was just black paper with holes poled in it. Nothing felt real. My system was fried with adrenaline by then, cortisol, just so exhausted all the time that I was only half there. I felt like a robot. I was totally resigned to the fact that I couldn't get out of the job and I was just going to keep going like this for another three and a half years until my contract was up. I remember talking with Terry and Jason as if I were there. But there was a buzzing in my ears and nothing was real.
I climbed out of the hopper door and felt my boots stick to the rock, and I shouldered one of the drills and went right off to a "corner" of the rock where I knew there was some platinum. And I worked at it all day, thinking about how I was going to be in the next crash, and that'd be it. And about how to worm out of that fate. I wanted really badly to transfer to another team but I knew I was at the bottom of the totem pole and anyway, what if I got stuck with someone worse? Some of these young kids were really crazy. I could deliberately injure myself and end up back in hospital with Caleb, but that'd only last for a little while. I ground miserably at the rock holding the platinum in place. It was very long and very quiet and eventually we got back in the hopper and went home and I stayed in my bunk the rest of the night.
It wasn't until the next day that I really talked to Terry. We landed on another asteroid and again I got out and went over to where I knew there was some platinum, and he came over and looked at what I was doing.
"How long you been up here?" he said.
I was irritated. "A year and a half," I said.
He nodded in his helmet, toeing the dust that was kicking up into nowhere. "And they still got you stuck with that kid?"
I wanted him to stand a little further off so he didn't endanger me, didn't get in the way of what I was doing. It's hard for me to split my attention. I didn't know what to say to him. "Well, yeah."
He watched me drill for another minute without saying anything, which really irritated me. I noticed his squinty eyes then and his slow-looking lips. "We had a guy up here a year ago... maybe before you came... named Danny Engall. He's with Dynacorps now. He had the same kind of feel for ore that you do."
I didn't know Terry from Adam then, and I'd certainly never heard of Danny Engall. "I don't think I have any kind of a feel for ore," I said, leaning hard into the drill.
I could tell when Terry shrugged in his suit. "I could believe that you think you don't. If you've only been here a year and a half and haven't worked with anyone other than Boy Wonder over there. But I've been up here almost a decade and believe me, you do."
So what was I supposed to say to that? "What good is that going to do me?"
Terry chuckled.
He eventually wandered back to the hopper and spent the rest of the day catching transmissions and playing with the settings. I thought he was being a lazy bum and maybe he was, but I didn't know then how much of a right to that he'd earned. We talked a little bit the next day too, about my supposed feel for ore, where it was and how to get at it, and then I didn't see him. Some guy with red hair and freckles took over as pilot until Caleb got back and I don't even remember his name.
But it was only a couple weeks more of dead misery until I got transferred to Terry's hopper, and then I was too busy to think about dying for a long time.
He's trying to find that sweet spot, the place somewhere between the dock and the station where our inertia runs out just enough to make it just barely energy-efficient to start using the thrusters. He can feel it. Heck, I can feel it, I've been doing this long enough. Where we slow down just enough. Then he eases the throttle forward light as a breath and the hopper picks up speed without any jerks. Very smooth. He's been doing this for ten years.
Terry is a very, very good pilot. There are a lot of very good pilots here. I'm a good pilot myself, but I'm never going to have that genius feel for the controls like they do. This place attracts people who like to be very, very good at things. Because there's a lot that can go wrong up here, and sometimes if you give yourself a millimeter too much on either side you're toast. Situations like that don't happen all the time, but they happen enough that mining has once again become the system's Most Dangerous Job.
Terry Spratt doesn't look at all like the kind of person you'd expect to be a hot-shot pilot. He's short and thick-lipped and curly-haired and has a boy's high voice, and cares more about getting home and watching the World Series of Poker than about bragging how that last run went. He doesn't look like a hero and he doesn't look like the kind of guy I'd have expected to change my life.
I came up here five years ago because I didn't know what the hell to do with my life. I had been working as a handler for a huge border collie breeding and showing operation, I lived and slept and practically breathed dogs, and then Mojo--the guy who started it all, the champion, the number one sire, and probably my best friend--died, and the owners expected me to carry on with the new generations and I just couldn't. It was the oddest thing but as I tried working with the pups and tried working by myself as a groomer for a few months, I came to this realization that I wasn't sure if liked dogs at all. I just liked Mojo. I had since I first met him at my cousin's wedding. He was why I ended up working with the McHones for fifteen years. And I had no clue where to go from there. All I knew was dog handling.
So I came up here. I signed up as a miner and got my suit and my tools and got to work on the asteroid and I hated it more than I could ever have thought it was possible to hate anything. I remember hearing the alarm in the morning and waking up in my dark bunk and wanting more than anything else in the world to pull the covers over my head and lie there while my roommates shook me and shouted at me and eventually gave up and went off to breakfast... the only reason I didn't was that I knew I'd signed a contract and I knew if the company had to pay to ship me back home I wouldn't dig myself out of that hole for years. And I went through that for literally the first year and a half here. Almost every morning. I would finally get up and jam my legs into the legs of the suit and tie the arms around my waist and get to the mess room just as they were putting breakfast away, and have some cold cereal and just make it onto the hopper I was sharing with two kids from Canada who were happy as hell to be here.
Through the entire day I'd have a running commentary in my head on the outrage and stupidity of everything I saw and did. "God, Caleb is an asshole. Is that the fifth time he's walked off without anchoring the hopper? If I fucking get killed because of him... Christ, do you think they could afford to spend more than five dollars on the joints on these suits? I can't even touch my toes, let alone pick up anything I drop. What the hell is Jason doing? Why is he using the #5 drill? If he breaks that thing and we have to go back..." all day long. It's funny but some days I think about half of it was about dying.
I was scared of dying, all the time. I would say there's death all around you up here, and there is, if you think of it that way... the vacuum and all... but somebody really only dies every few months, and with thousands of miners crawling over these rocks that's a pretty good rate of survival, all things considered. But I kept thinking about it and thinking about it and I was convinced it would be me next. Because of something Caleb or Jason did, or just some random asteroid collision, or a tear in my suit. I couldn't keep my mind off it. And I was angry and scared all the time.
That didn't really start to change until the day Caleb crashed the hopper into the side of GR8290 or something and broke his leg, and we had Terry flying us for a few days until some other guy took over. I was really out of it that first day Terry was with us. I remember being really mechanical, sealing my suit up and getting in the hopper and sitting there across from Terry not caring who he was, and looking out at the stars like all the sky was just black paper with holes poled in it. Nothing felt real. My system was fried with adrenaline by then, cortisol, just so exhausted all the time that I was only half there. I felt like a robot. I was totally resigned to the fact that I couldn't get out of the job and I was just going to keep going like this for another three and a half years until my contract was up. I remember talking with Terry and Jason as if I were there. But there was a buzzing in my ears and nothing was real.
I climbed out of the hopper door and felt my boots stick to the rock, and I shouldered one of the drills and went right off to a "corner" of the rock where I knew there was some platinum. And I worked at it all day, thinking about how I was going to be in the next crash, and that'd be it. And about how to worm out of that fate. I wanted really badly to transfer to another team but I knew I was at the bottom of the totem pole and anyway, what if I got stuck with someone worse? Some of these young kids were really crazy. I could deliberately injure myself and end up back in hospital with Caleb, but that'd only last for a little while. I ground miserably at the rock holding the platinum in place. It was very long and very quiet and eventually we got back in the hopper and went home and I stayed in my bunk the rest of the night.
It wasn't until the next day that I really talked to Terry. We landed on another asteroid and again I got out and went over to where I knew there was some platinum, and he came over and looked at what I was doing.
"How long you been up here?" he said.
I was irritated. "A year and a half," I said.
He nodded in his helmet, toeing the dust that was kicking up into nowhere. "And they still got you stuck with that kid?"
I wanted him to stand a little further off so he didn't endanger me, didn't get in the way of what I was doing. It's hard for me to split my attention. I didn't know what to say to him. "Well, yeah."
He watched me drill for another minute without saying anything, which really irritated me. I noticed his squinty eyes then and his slow-looking lips. "We had a guy up here a year ago... maybe before you came... named Danny Engall. He's with Dynacorps now. He had the same kind of feel for ore that you do."
I didn't know Terry from Adam then, and I'd certainly never heard of Danny Engall. "I don't think I have any kind of a feel for ore," I said, leaning hard into the drill.
I could tell when Terry shrugged in his suit. "I could believe that you think you don't. If you've only been here a year and a half and haven't worked with anyone other than Boy Wonder over there. But I've been up here almost a decade and believe me, you do."
So what was I supposed to say to that? "What good is that going to do me?"
Terry chuckled.
He eventually wandered back to the hopper and spent the rest of the day catching transmissions and playing with the settings. I thought he was being a lazy bum and maybe he was, but I didn't know then how much of a right to that he'd earned. We talked a little bit the next day too, about my supposed feel for ore, where it was and how to get at it, and then I didn't see him. Some guy with red hair and freckles took over as pilot until Caleb got back and I don't even remember his name.
But it was only a couple weeks more of dead misery until I got transferred to Terry's hopper, and then I was too busy to think about dying for a long time.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I know what you want, part 3
In the morning I get ready for our excursion into the jungle. My pad is pretty small, but it's all I need. I'm looking in the mirror now. I still look so young... no wrinkles to speak of... no grey hairs. But sometimes I feel like I've been here forever. I haven't always been a tour guide, but it was my first job, and I've been doing it on and off ever since. Sometimes I think about quitting it and going somewhere else, getting a job working with animals or something. But heck, people are animals.
I can't just wear shorts to go into the jungle. No... actually... I could just wear shorts to go into the jungle. I've done it before. But the mosquitos, man. I pick out a terrible Hawaiian shirt and grab my boots from the bottom of the closet. They're still dirty from the last time I went. I always forget to clean them.
This shirt is really something. It's got pictures of women surfing in grass skirts on it. It's usually good for a laugh. And I want him to laugh. I don't think I'm all that good at making people laugh, but it's so great if you can get them to.
It's really early still, like six o'clock. It used to be really easy for me to get up after a night of partying. Then as I got a little older it started to get really hard. And then as I kept doing it some kind of hangover expertise replaced the original energy and it got easy again. I know I'm going to be tired. It just doesn't bother me anymore.
I get on the bike and zip down the streets to his hotel. I do like it when it's this quiet. The air is very foggy, the birds are chirping, and it's neither too hot or too cold. He's outside the hotel already, all dressed... still in black... no guitar. He has his hands in his pockets. He climbs on the back of the bike without saying anything. We've already discussed the outing.
My surfing friends get to see me being a tour guide when I take clients to the beach, but I'm being a surfer there... once, Kit was with me when I picked up a client at the docks. The French teacher. Afterward he actually sounded angry with me. "You act that way with every dude, man?" he asked. I think he was upset I was so solicitous. Or maybe just so different from how I am when I'm surfing, using. He doesn't see the solicitation as using too, like I do.
Or maybe he was just alarmed at the physical contact. We're physical, we hug each other, but we don't, for instance, touch each other on the arm when we talk. Not like you'd want to do to put a potential client off his or her guard.
So I'm glad it's just me and Rafe, motoring through the fog, down to where the road turns to dirt, then up over the hills and into the scrubby land before the jungle. The sun is starting to show through the fog, but it hasn't got much definition yet. The jungle starts pretty abruptly in front of us: where I hide the bike in the bushes, it's not a forest at all, and then it is, a few feet on. I walk in first and it's dark.
"Ooh," says Rafe.
I am totally at home. "When you planned your vacation, did you think you'd be doing this?" I ask.
"Yeah," he says.
Well damn. "Did you think you'd be doing this?" I bolt from him then, down the path at a run, and of course he follows. It's just a few more seconds to the river, and the pool that's deep enough to belly-flop into, which I do. And damn if he isn't just standing there on the bank when I come up, looking at me. In his clean black clothes. So I just kneel there on the bottom of the pool. I have to get him vulnerable. I've got a monster craving for some genuine soul and while the shock of the water was a pretty good thrill, it's nothing compared to seeing another human being let down their guard for just a few seconds.
Rafe is looking at me.
I laugh out loud at my own floundering. Come on, Nate, I tell myself. You're a pro. Just watch him. He'll reveal something. They always do.
He takes his eyes off me to look at the plants we've stumbled into. Their leaves are huge, I could wear them, just one would cover my chest and crotch besides. There are orchids on the trees. There are ferns up to my elbow. It's like being in a coloring book about dinosaurs, except without the dinosaurs.
And he's just looking at it all... I want him to be here, be with me, connect... God knows I need it. Don't I need it? I can't go into space, I can't take those little metal tubes, and I'm stuck here. Doesn't that deserve some compensation? This is all there is for me. The least they can do is visit and make some kind of effort to bring me something when they visit... I want a little high, a little contact, a little soul... I want to put my arms around him... I can barely stand to admit it. I don't care what it means, and I'd never do it, after all... my job is to give the tourists what they want, not send them screaming back to the ship.
Rafe is just lost looking around. He's captivated by the silly plants. "Hey," I say. "What's the matter, never done a belly flop into a leech-infested river with a raving lunatic before?"
He turns to me and smiles.
"Uh," he says. "I'm not really sure how to do a belly flop."
This makes me laugh. "Neither am I," I say. I watch his face for a sign. He does want something. I just don't know what yet. It's hard to tell sometimes... people... it could be anything. You never know. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of desire and find out what they really want is to find a restroom.
A fish darts by me in the pool. I am so wet.
I am even wetter when he jumps in suddenly, in a terrible, skilless flop that almost dashes his brains out on a rock. But I can't stop laughing. I like being surprised. After almost a hundred years, you get to appreciate being surprised.
I'm curious now and I remember I can just ask him. I don't need to tease things out of people all the time... "How old are you?" I ask.
"Twenty-two," he says.
"No, how old in real years?"
"Twenty-two," he says.
Christ in a caboose. I am a dirty old man.
It's getting lighter, light enough that the reflections off the water are playing on the undersides of the leaves all around us. The water's just this side of cool and my boots are trying to float up to the surface in front of me. Well. I am so grateful. That he is here. That he is new. New to me and new to the universe. And here in a blue pool with me in the middle of the jungle, sharing his company with me, this alive bright spot on my consciousness, a real person, fresh and new and achingly young and sweet. That is the old man part. These are old man feelings. To feel grateful just to have a pretty young thing beside me, sinking down so that only his hazel eyes are above the water.
And the dirty part... well. I'm young too. And not so bad looking, after all, and not what they call swishy, but I still love the way his innocence pokes out everywhere, in the way he hesitates before trying to swim a few feet, the way he knows I'm interested in him but has no idea how. Because I want him... his everything... I want to feel it with more than my eyes and ears. I want to grab him right now and tickle him, or tear his shirt off and run a finger down to his navel, just to feel. I want my arms around him, I want to hear his voice... I want to slip my fingers in his dark hair and pull him close to me. And let him feel my breath on his cheek. And just taste the tip of his ear.
And see what he does.
And for a moment, thinking these things, I think I've already done them. But no, he's on the other side of the pool, singing to himself. The songwriter. Before him there was the botanist, the mechanic, the retired naval captain, the cook, the pothead, the French teacher, the twin sisters, the counselor... eighty years is a long time to be stuck on one planet. Most of it in San Francisco. The weather doesn't change, anymore. The land doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the people. I just wish he would stay for a while. I don't want to possess him. I'd just like someone to stay for a while.
"Do you make all the tourists jump in a river?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "It makes the money fall out of their pockets."
"I didn't pay you for today!" he says, sitting upright in consternation.
"You can pay me after," I say, and "I'll make sure you catch your flight. I just wanted to loosen you up a bit. Spacefolk are so serious, you know."
"I know," he says. "I wish I could be more like you."
"No you don't," I blurt out, before realizing that I should have said something else. "I mean... what I mean is that I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?"
I don't know how the hell to phrase this. "I'm just a junkie, you know. I'm just a user. Practically everything I do is just manipulation to try to get a high." He is looking at me totally blank and I'm getting hot with frustration. "All right, it's impossible to explain. Just take my word for it, everything I do is just to get something I want."
He's silent for a moment. "What do you want?" he says with confusion.
"What do I want??" it explodes out of my lips before I have time to flip the emergency self-control switch. "I want somebody to stay more than a goddamn week! I want somebody who lets me get to know them. I mean really know them. I want somebody who actually cares who I am, who Nate is, besides the best tour guide in San Francisco, besides a doped-up surfer, I want somebody to at least just be a little bit curious for once and be more interested in me than in the orchids and to stay for more than a few days, and to just be here."
And he has the strangest expression on his face. He's staring at me with this intense fascination like the answer to the secret of life is written on my face, and I am feeling really exposed all of a sudden. I really want to get out of here.
"Okay," he says quietly, still staring at me. And I have no idea what he means.
I am rolling onto my stomach and paddling around the pool like a dog, just bobbing at the surface, so light. This pool is really not very deep but it is exceedingly charming. I feel fond even of the slime on some of the rocks. I don't know what I'm doing. Just splashing around. This is all very silly. I am thinking that I hope he likes me. I am thinking about what I might like to do tomorrow, and the rest of my life.
I can't just wear shorts to go into the jungle. No... actually... I could just wear shorts to go into the jungle. I've done it before. But the mosquitos, man. I pick out a terrible Hawaiian shirt and grab my boots from the bottom of the closet. They're still dirty from the last time I went. I always forget to clean them.
This shirt is really something. It's got pictures of women surfing in grass skirts on it. It's usually good for a laugh. And I want him to laugh. I don't think I'm all that good at making people laugh, but it's so great if you can get them to.
It's really early still, like six o'clock. It used to be really easy for me to get up after a night of partying. Then as I got a little older it started to get really hard. And then as I kept doing it some kind of hangover expertise replaced the original energy and it got easy again. I know I'm going to be tired. It just doesn't bother me anymore.
I get on the bike and zip down the streets to his hotel. I do like it when it's this quiet. The air is very foggy, the birds are chirping, and it's neither too hot or too cold. He's outside the hotel already, all dressed... still in black... no guitar. He has his hands in his pockets. He climbs on the back of the bike without saying anything. We've already discussed the outing.
My surfing friends get to see me being a tour guide when I take clients to the beach, but I'm being a surfer there... once, Kit was with me when I picked up a client at the docks. The French teacher. Afterward he actually sounded angry with me. "You act that way with every dude, man?" he asked. I think he was upset I was so solicitous. Or maybe just so different from how I am when I'm surfing, using. He doesn't see the solicitation as using too, like I do.
Or maybe he was just alarmed at the physical contact. We're physical, we hug each other, but we don't, for instance, touch each other on the arm when we talk. Not like you'd want to do to put a potential client off his or her guard.
So I'm glad it's just me and Rafe, motoring through the fog, down to where the road turns to dirt, then up over the hills and into the scrubby land before the jungle. The sun is starting to show through the fog, but it hasn't got much definition yet. The jungle starts pretty abruptly in front of us: where I hide the bike in the bushes, it's not a forest at all, and then it is, a few feet on. I walk in first and it's dark.
"Ooh," says Rafe.
I am totally at home. "When you planned your vacation, did you think you'd be doing this?" I ask.
"Yeah," he says.
Well damn. "Did you think you'd be doing this?" I bolt from him then, down the path at a run, and of course he follows. It's just a few more seconds to the river, and the pool that's deep enough to belly-flop into, which I do. And damn if he isn't just standing there on the bank when I come up, looking at me. In his clean black clothes. So I just kneel there on the bottom of the pool. I have to get him vulnerable. I've got a monster craving for some genuine soul and while the shock of the water was a pretty good thrill, it's nothing compared to seeing another human being let down their guard for just a few seconds.
Rafe is looking at me.
I laugh out loud at my own floundering. Come on, Nate, I tell myself. You're a pro. Just watch him. He'll reveal something. They always do.
He takes his eyes off me to look at the plants we've stumbled into. Their leaves are huge, I could wear them, just one would cover my chest and crotch besides. There are orchids on the trees. There are ferns up to my elbow. It's like being in a coloring book about dinosaurs, except without the dinosaurs.
And he's just looking at it all... I want him to be here, be with me, connect... God knows I need it. Don't I need it? I can't go into space, I can't take those little metal tubes, and I'm stuck here. Doesn't that deserve some compensation? This is all there is for me. The least they can do is visit and make some kind of effort to bring me something when they visit... I want a little high, a little contact, a little soul... I want to put my arms around him... I can barely stand to admit it. I don't care what it means, and I'd never do it, after all... my job is to give the tourists what they want, not send them screaming back to the ship.
Rafe is just lost looking around. He's captivated by the silly plants. "Hey," I say. "What's the matter, never done a belly flop into a leech-infested river with a raving lunatic before?"
He turns to me and smiles.
"Uh," he says. "I'm not really sure how to do a belly flop."
This makes me laugh. "Neither am I," I say. I watch his face for a sign. He does want something. I just don't know what yet. It's hard to tell sometimes... people... it could be anything. You never know. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of desire and find out what they really want is to find a restroom.
A fish darts by me in the pool. I am so wet.
I am even wetter when he jumps in suddenly, in a terrible, skilless flop that almost dashes his brains out on a rock. But I can't stop laughing. I like being surprised. After almost a hundred years, you get to appreciate being surprised.
I'm curious now and I remember I can just ask him. I don't need to tease things out of people all the time... "How old are you?" I ask.
"Twenty-two," he says.
"No, how old in real years?"
"Twenty-two," he says.
Christ in a caboose. I am a dirty old man.
It's getting lighter, light enough that the reflections off the water are playing on the undersides of the leaves all around us. The water's just this side of cool and my boots are trying to float up to the surface in front of me. Well. I am so grateful. That he is here. That he is new. New to me and new to the universe. And here in a blue pool with me in the middle of the jungle, sharing his company with me, this alive bright spot on my consciousness, a real person, fresh and new and achingly young and sweet. That is the old man part. These are old man feelings. To feel grateful just to have a pretty young thing beside me, sinking down so that only his hazel eyes are above the water.
And the dirty part... well. I'm young too. And not so bad looking, after all, and not what they call swishy, but I still love the way his innocence pokes out everywhere, in the way he hesitates before trying to swim a few feet, the way he knows I'm interested in him but has no idea how. Because I want him... his everything... I want to feel it with more than my eyes and ears. I want to grab him right now and tickle him, or tear his shirt off and run a finger down to his navel, just to feel. I want my arms around him, I want to hear his voice... I want to slip my fingers in his dark hair and pull him close to me. And let him feel my breath on his cheek. And just taste the tip of his ear.
And see what he does.
And for a moment, thinking these things, I think I've already done them. But no, he's on the other side of the pool, singing to himself. The songwriter. Before him there was the botanist, the mechanic, the retired naval captain, the cook, the pothead, the French teacher, the twin sisters, the counselor... eighty years is a long time to be stuck on one planet. Most of it in San Francisco. The weather doesn't change, anymore. The land doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the people. I just wish he would stay for a while. I don't want to possess him. I'd just like someone to stay for a while.
"Do you make all the tourists jump in a river?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "It makes the money fall out of their pockets."
"I didn't pay you for today!" he says, sitting upright in consternation.
"You can pay me after," I say, and "I'll make sure you catch your flight. I just wanted to loosen you up a bit. Spacefolk are so serious, you know."
"I know," he says. "I wish I could be more like you."
"No you don't," I blurt out, before realizing that I should have said something else. "I mean... what I mean is that I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?"
I don't know how the hell to phrase this. "I'm just a junkie, you know. I'm just a user. Practically everything I do is just manipulation to try to get a high." He is looking at me totally blank and I'm getting hot with frustration. "All right, it's impossible to explain. Just take my word for it, everything I do is just to get something I want."
He's silent for a moment. "What do you want?" he says with confusion.
"What do I want??" it explodes out of my lips before I have time to flip the emergency self-control switch. "I want somebody to stay more than a goddamn week! I want somebody who lets me get to know them. I mean really know them. I want somebody who actually cares who I am, who Nate is, besides the best tour guide in San Francisco, besides a doped-up surfer, I want somebody to at least just be a little bit curious for once and be more interested in me than in the orchids and to stay for more than a few days, and to just be here."
And he has the strangest expression on his face. He's staring at me with this intense fascination like the answer to the secret of life is written on my face, and I am feeling really exposed all of a sudden. I really want to get out of here.
"Okay," he says quietly, still staring at me. And I have no idea what he means.
I am rolling onto my stomach and paddling around the pool like a dog, just bobbing at the surface, so light. This pool is really not very deep but it is exceedingly charming. I feel fond even of the slime on some of the rocks. I don't know what I'm doing. Just splashing around. This is all very silly. I am thinking that I hope he likes me. I am thinking about what I might like to do tomorrow, and the rest of my life.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
I must also say this
Sorry I haven't gotten around to finishing the latest story! I hope to do that over the weekend.
I was sitting in the park the other day and a woman came in, wheeling a 2-year-old in a stroller. The 2-year-old dropped her package of animal crackers and the woman said, "Oh, f--- me." I glanced at her and she smiled sheepishly and said, "Sorry, didn't realize there was anyone else here."
I was sitting in the park the other day and a woman came in, wheeling a 2-year-old in a stroller. The 2-year-old dropped her package of animal crackers and the woman said, "Oh, f--- me." I glanced at her and she smiled sheepishly and said, "Sorry, didn't realize there was anyone else here."
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
I did not feel a thing
When I sing, I feel no pain. This is really remarkable, almost like magic. I remember reading about some old master painter whose fingers were locked up with arthritis, but who became young again and pain-free and energetic when he picked up the brush again. But I'm certainly not a master, and I'm not old either. It's just that singing requires so much concentration there's no room for anything else.
There are lengths of notes, and pitches of notes, and those are hard enough to get straight. There is dynamic (or loudness), and so many other symbols to pay attention to both above and below the staff... there are crescendos... and of course the words you are singing, which have to be memorized eventually, you can't read them and read the notes and everything else at the same time. I am not a music prodigy. Just trying to keep track of one or two of these elements at once--say, the words I'm supposed to be singing and the lengths of the notes, at the tempo we're singing them--requires so much concentration that the rest of the world might as well not exist.
I had terrible cramps the day we were rehearsing the Brahms Requiem. I have cramps that could fell a horse, although that's not special among women. And I thought, good. Better to have them today. I was in so much pain I was nauseous and shaking and sweating on the risers, afraid I was going to faint. We would sing a movement and there would be nothing but focusing on singing, which is wonderful, and of course the piece itself, and it was beautiful and electrifying and fun and everything it always is. I would feel nothing physically, unless the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like they do when you sing in a chorus and you hit a particular chord. And then the piece would end and Mr. Kent would drop his hands and the pain would come back all at once and I would try not to fall over. Sweating. I was so glad we were rehearsing because otherwise I would have been at home alone in my apartment trying to deal with it, with no distraction.
I have somehow backed myself into a corner this year with my bad habits, mostly worrying and perfectionism and denying my feelings. I've had these problems all my life, but somehow this year they've bred until I've gotten to a place where literally every move I make hurts. I can't ponder a decision without being stabbed by fear or cut down by self-criticism... but I don't even see what I'm doing and I react to it without thinking, like an animal. I feel like I've dressed myself in a straightjacket. Every move hurts. I am blessed to be able to write this now... it has become so much a part of the background that I'd begun thinking this was just the way life was. It is painful all the time, and if I have a problem with it it's because I'm weak or lazy.
It was funny to watch myself singing tonight. I felt no pain while singing. And then when we quit for the evening I felt it all roll back in. But it was the thoughts that were odd. Half-formed things resembling "Oh, now I have to feel this again... this is real life... I'd forgotten about this..." as blankets of queasy fear and pain settled on top of my brain, smothering the clarity I'd had a minute earlier.
But they give themselves away. Those thoughts. There is something of a chicken-and-egg question here. Which came first, the heavy misery or the thought that I had to experience it? That--oh--I have forgotten what real life is? What odd thoughts to have. It seemed to me that they were a bit over-eager, rushing in in the desperate hope that I wouldn't forget about them. Well I was afraid and I set myself in opposition to them, and they overcame me and I became straightjacketed again. Until I sat down to write this. Writing is a little like singing.
I'm sitting here watching the words appear on the screen as my fingers move. I want to make a resolution, I want to say, I will not be in opposition to my fears. I would say that I will feel them when they come and when they go away I will feel that. It is a new thing to me to be at this loose end. To give up trying to control tomorrow. I must remember that I am already in a corner and there is, in fact, no where else to go. To learn a new thing is difficult sometimes but if that's all that's keeping me from it... there are far worse things than difficulty. Like, oh, TERRIBLE TERRIBLE PAIN.
There are lengths of notes, and pitches of notes, and those are hard enough to get straight. There is dynamic (or loudness), and so many other symbols to pay attention to both above and below the staff... there are crescendos... and of course the words you are singing, which have to be memorized eventually, you can't read them and read the notes and everything else at the same time. I am not a music prodigy. Just trying to keep track of one or two of these elements at once--say, the words I'm supposed to be singing and the lengths of the notes, at the tempo we're singing them--requires so much concentration that the rest of the world might as well not exist.
I had terrible cramps the day we were rehearsing the Brahms Requiem. I have cramps that could fell a horse, although that's not special among women. And I thought, good. Better to have them today. I was in so much pain I was nauseous and shaking and sweating on the risers, afraid I was going to faint. We would sing a movement and there would be nothing but focusing on singing, which is wonderful, and of course the piece itself, and it was beautiful and electrifying and fun and everything it always is. I would feel nothing physically, unless the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like they do when you sing in a chorus and you hit a particular chord. And then the piece would end and Mr. Kent would drop his hands and the pain would come back all at once and I would try not to fall over. Sweating. I was so glad we were rehearsing because otherwise I would have been at home alone in my apartment trying to deal with it, with no distraction.
I have somehow backed myself into a corner this year with my bad habits, mostly worrying and perfectionism and denying my feelings. I've had these problems all my life, but somehow this year they've bred until I've gotten to a place where literally every move I make hurts. I can't ponder a decision without being stabbed by fear or cut down by self-criticism... but I don't even see what I'm doing and I react to it without thinking, like an animal. I feel like I've dressed myself in a straightjacket. Every move hurts. I am blessed to be able to write this now... it has become so much a part of the background that I'd begun thinking this was just the way life was. It is painful all the time, and if I have a problem with it it's because I'm weak or lazy.
It was funny to watch myself singing tonight. I felt no pain while singing. And then when we quit for the evening I felt it all roll back in. But it was the thoughts that were odd. Half-formed things resembling "Oh, now I have to feel this again... this is real life... I'd forgotten about this..." as blankets of queasy fear and pain settled on top of my brain, smothering the clarity I'd had a minute earlier.
But they give themselves away. Those thoughts. There is something of a chicken-and-egg question here. Which came first, the heavy misery or the thought that I had to experience it? That--oh--I have forgotten what real life is? What odd thoughts to have. It seemed to me that they were a bit over-eager, rushing in in the desperate hope that I wouldn't forget about them. Well I was afraid and I set myself in opposition to them, and they overcame me and I became straightjacketed again. Until I sat down to write this. Writing is a little like singing.
I'm sitting here watching the words appear on the screen as my fingers move. I want to make a resolution, I want to say, I will not be in opposition to my fears. I would say that I will feel them when they come and when they go away I will feel that. It is a new thing to me to be at this loose end. To give up trying to control tomorrow. I must remember that I am already in a corner and there is, in fact, no where else to go. To learn a new thing is difficult sometimes but if that's all that's keeping me from it... there are far worse things than difficulty. Like, oh, TERRIBLE TERRIBLE PAIN.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
I must say this
In Wal-Mart tonight in front of me a little boy, I mean a really little boy, asked his father, "Daddy, does smoking feel good?"
"No," said his father, who had tattoos on every visible body part.
"Then why don't you stop doing it?" asked the little boy, who was apparently at the age of four already turning into his mother. (Either that, or he was really just being a little kid.)
"No," said his father, who had tattoos on every visible body part.
"Then why don't you stop doing it?" asked the little boy, who was apparently at the age of four already turning into his mother. (Either that, or he was really just being a little kid.)
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)