Shortchanged for the Tough Sell
Primer
The night before was filled with nervous joy. 9 days of worry-free nonchalance is a mighty dish to eye once it’s been put before you. One knows that you can’t overdo it, you can’t go all out from the beginning, yet the overwhelming upside of such a feast is thoroughly appetizing to the body and mind. The rational path is the second in sequence, following the notion of indulging to impulse. We all knew that it was going to be a long trip the next day, and it was better to be prepared for the best yet to come than to bet all the chips on night one.
We were headed to Yosemite the next day. More importantly, it was spring break. It was the four of my group’s solution for the quagmire of a full nine days of freedom and maybe three days worth of cash flow for the normal, collegiate wild spree of booze and failed/shameful hookups. We took the splendors of life that do not age, and picked the national parks as a destination. An yet, even as we had forsaken wild inhibitions, we were going to be as far away from any notion of conformity possible. There would be no television, no internet, no… bathrooms. It was the vacation the grandparent in all of us wanted to take.
Chuck and I wandered the aisles of the supermarket with a sense of purpose, yet constantly sidetracked by anticipation. We were going to go to Yosemite National Park, by all accounts one of the most beautiful parks in the world, and when we got there, we were to hike the wilderness during the day and scream, drunkenly, at the moon at night, only to get up and do it again. We had bough the booze, we had the food, yet we spent another 60 minutes wandering the aisles, looking for items we may have overlooked or not planned for.
Coffee? Would we want to make coffee in the morning? Was it easy to make; and then how much would it cost to have coffee available in the mornings? We looked over items with persistent curiosity, wondering if one more item could elevate the trip to the legendary status we dreamed it could be.
After bringing in the haul from the last trip to a store and packing them away, we all retired to bed, preparing for the early morning trip. It’s a classic state of higher education, you prepare yourself for something important, but when the time comes, you realize there is no rush at all when it comes to getting started, and you don’t just hit the snooze, you set the alarm back an hour or so.
We left about two hours after our original start date. Of course, this being college, the gas stop was not pre-planned, and so we sat at a gas station waiting for Chuck to pay for the gas. We sat very still in our seats, not so much out of anticipation, but because the car was packed to the brim with utilities and supplies that moving the seat could result in damaging supplies. Rather than confine ourselves for an extra ten minutes, Walt, Jesse, and I decided to look around the shop inside, and after steering through a couple packages of ramen and the sleeping bag doubling as a foot rest, purchases were road trip variety, beef jerky, soda, sunflower seeds or corn nuts, etc. We had finally realized that the journey was upon us.
First it was onto the Adams on-ramp, and then off to the 405 and finally to the interstate 5 itself. When the 405 of Los Angeles cedes into the 5 in the Northern reaches of the Valley, it becomes just another interstate, the single transit way to the northern and inland parts of the state, and for all measures where the bubble of LA’s highway nonsense and the culture comes to an end. Five, then 10, then 30 miles out, we were free of the imposed boundaries of our school. As we all discussed possible scenarios and plans, the actuality of the trip finally sunk in, and it was a calm and euphoric sentiment: we were finally on vacation.
As we headed past Fresno and the acres of pre-harvest grape racks, a new feeling started to overcome me. Instead of being a beautiful and cognitive sensation, it was a slow dawning of misery. My back was aching, the bumps along the grapevine were becoming aggravating, the music of the mix CD’s we had made was getting too loud.
The road into the park is naturally scenic; the path was carved from the granite for autos, and next to the sheer faces of the stone and with trees overhanging the pavement some hundred feet above, the car feels less like a work of engineering, but a transport into a world that cared little about our progress. The atmosphere is enchanting; the road is winding, narrow, and a mere single, confining lane. It’s a place where images of America’s homeland are bore out of; the kind of place Rockwell collectors hyperbolize with their fifties upbringing. And I felt helpless and overwhelmed to it all, unable to appreciate the beauty, because I had maddeningly just become ill with the flu. Looking along the entryway to the park and saw snow in spots on the ground, I thought not of warm images, but of Frost; the road divulged felt like death.
RV’s lined the campsite where we were set up. The slip our car was assigned was made for a vehicle nearly 3 times the size of Chuck’s Outback. The only item that was singularly ours was a box to store our foods in and out of the range of raccoons and bears. The only room not on wheels was the public bathroom, and it was hidden from our camp’s sight by a pair of giant Motor Homes.
As we unloaded the goods from the car and set up the tents, we mulled our options. The very hallmark of Yosemite lay to the rear of our slit. The area has endless hours of trails, sights, and destinations all of which can be highlights of a lifetime. As a group the biggest oversight was not planning for any specifics. It’s an act that was due to the culture we were all a part of; even with it’s endless freedom, college still has structure which guides students. Without planning, we had just traveled 400 miles to find a new place to booze. Walt mentioned a hiking trip, Jesse mentioned a different path for a hiking trip, and Chuck stressed we should set up the tents so we didn’t have to do so in the moonlight. I was partial to Chuck’s assessment, above all, I wanted to lie down and let my body wage battle against the flu.
Night came, and as we moved around the fire to settle, the wildlife joined us. What would double as a metaphor for debauchery in Rosarito was now a literal interpretation as the first wave of rodents approached. Humans are smarter than raccoons but this gave little advantage; they had home court. Their strategy honed over years of surviving off tourists, it was a simple script they followed to unsettle, survey, and then invade en mass in an attempt to free the confines of thelockbox. For them it was a basic need for food; to us it was a rodent shock and awe campaign.
The weather was another planning folly; living in LA for more than a year creates a sort of brain damage when it comes to weather. A factor only when less than optimal, one learns to adjust instead of anticipating. Walt, Jesse, and I were not from California, and linked the weather of LA to that of the state as a whole. Chuck was from Nor Cal, but also reasoned his outback had more space than my Pathfinder. As the mercury dropped below 30, blankets wrapped our fully clothed bodies inside sleeping bags.
Falling ill on vacation measures somewhere around incensing irony and mounting proof of a cruel god. As the hours of the first day pass, I wonder about the beauty of the surroundings. Is it only beautiful because one isn’t privy to it everyday, or because one has to place themselves externally to even grasp the idea. Cast with the flu, images do nothing to appease, and serenity becomes a forgone conclusion of a short path to the light at the end of the tunnel. Knowing I would beat the virus helped little, as it merely meant waiting it out, and the path involved bundling up in view of Half Dome rock and covering my face to stay warm.
We sit around the fire for a second night, waiting for the bandits to return. Passing over hot dogs and beer for chicken soup and grab bag of vitamins, it is the first time since the car stopped at In and Out we ate as a whole group. The cold water faucet of the public outhouse is all that suffices for a shower, and barely convinces others against their ability to contract the sickness. Our seating arrangement made me the lone person on the port side of the table and the focal point. Conversations gauged about sickness are as bleak and as uninteresting as pet funerals.
As a group, we had exhausted our list of activities we could find, and were ready to head home. We thought about leaving in the morning of the fourth day and drove around the park to look into other sleeping arrangements. I was still in quarantine in the large 5 man tent, cramping the others into the spare 2 man tent, and the thought of hot water, beds, and solid walls to protect us from the cold nights was temptation enough to debate a $75 per person fee. After seeing the restaurant in the Hotel, we couldn’t help to sit down and take a real meal. The lavish 15 foot halls of the Park’s premiere hotel made us al the more ready to go back to civilization as soon as possible.
We packed and hit the road. Rather than spend an hour fitting items on the roof rack we showved everything into the limited space of the station wagon and filled the last seat with supplies that couldn’t fit in the trunk. As we wound out of the park and on to the grapevine, we stopped alongside the roads highest point simply to gaze upward. Spending summers in Minnesota yields glimpses of the northern lights, yet perched along a massive rock looking at an array of stars that could never be counted, I still can’t think of sights as wondrous. Orion was more than a belt, his full figure and bow shined as beacons aligning us with the travelers from ages before that gazed upon the same full sight looking for answers.
Already I was getting the impression that this is such an amazing thing that I am going to forget these things. The more I am going to lose this image it is going to be replaced with another. Each image came up, was there for a flash to be appreciated and savored and then reluctantly let go because it’s going to be superposed with others. - For All Mankind
Looking up at a vision of space so fully intertwined with an atmosphere as beautiful as Yosemite is worth a thousand illnesses and miserable car trips, in one moment, everything I cherished because I knew it’s splendor rushed into memory, and I left behind every path for the feeling of what can happen in the simple beauty of the world already given to us. As the minutes staying there began to push our arrival time closer to improbable, we all knew the time was over. Even 20 minutes more would have been worth years of morning rush hour traffic. God wasn’t there at that stop, but serenity was tantalizing close, and my patience was eternal.
In part to the stars, and certainly due to my fever breaking, the car trip home was of good spirits. The trip hadn’t concluded, merely the stage that took place in Wilderness. And the second beginning of the trip had the same feel as the previous. Talk of Disneyland, Magic Mountain, San Diego, beaches, and another sort of wilderness south of the Border. My friend from high school was coming in the following afternoon. The options were enough to raise us all to another plane of vacation euphoria.
Sadly, trapped in the back of the car, Jesse and I slowly drifted into delirium, lashing out with frantic, claustrophobic giggling. At first it started with changing every chorus on AC/DC’s “Back in Black” to a diddy about being trapped in the back of Chuck’s car. Walter thought that putting on Bob Marley would settle us down, until Jesse and I began inserting anti-Japanese epithets into the songs, double irritating because we opted for the Don Rickles tone, and Walter was Korean. We exited for Taco Bell, requiring stops twice more, and by the time 2 am rolled around, we three passengers had reached a peace in our tiny spaces and left Chuck awake, alone, and fighting off the effects of a marathon driving session in pre-Red Bull times.
“We’ll grab our gear in the morning,” we agreed and headed to mattress and sheets for a long sleep.
++++
The new consensus of the group was San Diego and Tijuana, a plan I had heard too many horror stories to willingly consider. Bringing a fellow Hoosier out to California was a daunting enough and adding Papa’s and Beer could forever stain a young mans life. The baby steps were to simply prowl the campus and walk the promenade in Santa Monica. Were we above 21, Sunset would have still been a calculated risk.
Steve arrived from Indy and we took the first night easy, catching up. We went to Santa Monica to catch Memento and spent much of the night talking it over, wondering about the disconnect between one set of actions is a learned response or if it’s a simple excuse worth tricking the mind into doing to accept the world on one’s own terms. We finished off the night with a beer or two and a few hours of classic videogames, playing Gauntlet longest of all, thinking of middle school, when we first became friends and used them for escape from girls instead of the real world as we did now, and even if the connection elicited a mental binding to times past, it arose a feeling we all wanted, one of comfort in old friends, both digital and flesh.
The second night was going to be more eventful as more of my friends were back on campus, and the house party scene that was USC was awakening again as Thursday dawned. After the three from the Yosemite venture were stalking the creatures of the San Diego Zoo, the only one of my close friends at school in town was Nancy’s roommate Rita.
At the time Rita and I had formed a castoff kinship. She and one of my closest friends at SC (Ron) had dated since the second week of freshman year, and seemed rather content together. In retrospect their mutual blondness may have been their uniting singularity and common ground as a couple, but they seemed the functional side of the slide of couple behavior we knew of, with Nancy and I being the irrational extreme. Yet weeks before, after a long bout of partying ended at my house, Ron walked a girl I was wooing home, and by next morning, his failure to get back to Rita’s bed was the gossip of our little circle.
I was friends with both, and tried to play as so, telling Rita to brace for forgiveness and not to gear for retribution. I pleaded with Ron to lie, but the shame of one’s first true infidelity overwhelms the logic and henceforth destroys the relationship. In the crumbled aftermath of Rita’s heartbreak and my continual romantic seasickness with Nancy, we not only had someone of similar disposition to complain to, but people who were close enough to the others’ ex to divulge the secrets we wanted to hear. Through online chatting, a few meals, and the occasional drunken rant at parties we became partners in misery. When we partied together, we always had a good time.
Rita, just as I, had friends visiting from her home town, and together our group seemed motley enough to create a good time. Our first step was the lone frat house that wasn’t on a vacation in Cabo or Cancun. The party was massive, as all of the local members had called in all of their friends on campus for the party. By 12:30 the kegs were under wraps, and by 1, the fire department had arrived in lieu of the campus security, apparently on vacation with the student body.
The group of eight of us wandered back to my apartment, where I was the only roommate there. We were dancing, smoking, and having the party release we were pining for with spring break. My friends and I were shotgunning beers by the case; Rita and her friends were dancing with each other in every sort of suggestive manner imaginable.
As the night waned to 3 am, I walked to the bathroom. Upon entering I found Rita waiting in line. After a knock on the lavatory door, we both realized neither of us was waiting for the bathroom. Slow small talk and incremental shuffles of the feet for positioning; heavy eyes with little mutual contact, breathing that matched. Waiting, confusion, and then…surrender. Instantaneously we knew we had to cease and yet couldn’t stop, our mutual revealing of deep emotional wounds and friendly therapy had created a role of romantic messiah for the other in both of us; we felt as one would be know what to do for the each other because we had heard first hand.
We stopped once, out of fear of being caught and more of the repercussions, only to continue again. Four times we would meet and escape the party for private meetings, the first was one of mutual helplessness, the second from my pressing for more, the next from her for the same, and for the last and most intense session, it was once again mutual, but in contrast to the first moment, we both were aware what would take place, we realized, that in that moment, we both wanted each other.
I awoke the next morning with a noticeable lack of a post drinking headache. I walked into the living room to find Steve on the couch. My other two friends took the beds of my absentee roommates, knowing full well the only one to catch consequence would be me. The sun was still beaming in through the window at a low angle that cast the shadows of the Venetian blinds to the wall behind it. I feared to look at the clock because I knew the conclusions of the certainty; it was barely 9 in the morning, and I was not hung-over because I was still drunk.
Awakening my computer, I was not the only one up this early. The top most window was an IM box from Rita, reading “I’m so sorry. Call me later, we have to talk.” I closed it with nervous fear that she had panicked after she went home and tried to rationalize the happenings. Ill prepared was I to find behind her message was one from Ron. He demeaned me by questioning my friendship and trustworthiness. For all of the bitterness I had with him for cheating on Rita with a girl he knew I liked, and even with his sly attempts with Nancy the previous summer, I knew I was still at fault. Wounds of disagreement on opinion heal with friends, and while Ron and I slowly mended our friendship over the next years, what pains still is that he knew the details. Rita had told him how it transpired, telling him of the first moment Rita and I took the step, a private chance was now a public mistake.
Steve and the rest went to grab some food and waste the afternoon in recuperation. Mere moments after they left Rita knocked on the door. Neither of us able to bear the phone call; she had the impetus to initiate the face to face.
As she walked in, we had the short hug out of habit. And we sat. First watching TV, making small chat, before we could muster the talk. I know now that it was immaturity that ruled that moment. I was only 20, and had little relationship reference. My parents divorce demented me on any course, I bailed from girls before they could create a impact. I never stayed around long enough to understand the differences of longing and love. I knew of the chemically blissful adoration side, but not yet the slow, paced growth that paid off slowly with life long dividends. I had no notion of why people considered infidelity; I thought it was merely an act of lust, not one borne in hopes of moving on. I was convinced she was going to tell me she made a mistake; that she was going to go back to Ron and tell him she was too drunk to know what happened. Too confused by a new dark side where my subconscious would manifest true desires in uncouth acts I had never considered part of my personality- and not yet willing to embrace- I thought and responded from inexperienced naiveté when she asked: “What do we do now?”
The night before was filled with nervous joy. 9 days of worry-free nonchalance is a mighty dish to eye once it’s been put before you. One knows that you can’t overdo it, you can’t go all out from the beginning, yet the overwhelming upside of such a feast is thoroughly appetizing to the body and mind. The rational path is the second in sequence, following the notion of indulging to impulse. We all knew that it was going to be a long trip the next day, and it was better to be prepared for the best yet to come than to bet all the chips on night one.
We were headed to Yosemite the next day. More importantly, it was spring break. It was the four of my group’s solution for the quagmire of a full nine days of freedom and maybe three days worth of cash flow for the normal, collegiate wild spree of booze and failed/shameful hookups. We took the splendors of life that do not age, and picked the national parks as a destination. An yet, even as we had forsaken wild inhibitions, we were going to be as far away from any notion of conformity possible. There would be no television, no internet, no… bathrooms. It was the vacation the grandparent in all of us wanted to take.
Chuck and I wandered the aisles of the supermarket with a sense of purpose, yet constantly sidetracked by anticipation. We were going to go to Yosemite National Park, by all accounts one of the most beautiful parks in the world, and when we got there, we were to hike the wilderness during the day and scream, drunkenly, at the moon at night, only to get up and do it again. We had bough the booze, we had the food, yet we spent another 60 minutes wandering the aisles, looking for items we may have overlooked or not planned for.
Coffee? Would we want to make coffee in the morning? Was it easy to make; and then how much would it cost to have coffee available in the mornings? We looked over items with persistent curiosity, wondering if one more item could elevate the trip to the legendary status we dreamed it could be.
After bringing in the haul from the last trip to a store and packing them away, we all retired to bed, preparing for the early morning trip. It’s a classic state of higher education, you prepare yourself for something important, but when the time comes, you realize there is no rush at all when it comes to getting started, and you don’t just hit the snooze, you set the alarm back an hour or so.
We left about two hours after our original start date. Of course, this being college, the gas stop was not pre-planned, and so we sat at a gas station waiting for Chuck to pay for the gas. We sat very still in our seats, not so much out of anticipation, but because the car was packed to the brim with utilities and supplies that moving the seat could result in damaging supplies. Rather than confine ourselves for an extra ten minutes, Walt, Jesse, and I decided to look around the shop inside, and after steering through a couple packages of ramen and the sleeping bag doubling as a foot rest, purchases were road trip variety, beef jerky, soda, sunflower seeds or corn nuts, etc. We had finally realized that the journey was upon us.
First it was onto the Adams on-ramp, and then off to the 405 and finally to the interstate 5 itself. When the 405 of Los Angeles cedes into the 5 in the Northern reaches of the Valley, it becomes just another interstate, the single transit way to the northern and inland parts of the state, and for all measures where the bubble of LA’s highway nonsense and the culture comes to an end. Five, then 10, then 30 miles out, we were free of the imposed boundaries of our school. As we all discussed possible scenarios and plans, the actuality of the trip finally sunk in, and it was a calm and euphoric sentiment: we were finally on vacation.
As we headed past Fresno and the acres of pre-harvest grape racks, a new feeling started to overcome me. Instead of being a beautiful and cognitive sensation, it was a slow dawning of misery. My back was aching, the bumps along the grapevine were becoming aggravating, the music of the mix CD’s we had made was getting too loud.
The road into the park is naturally scenic; the path was carved from the granite for autos, and next to the sheer faces of the stone and with trees overhanging the pavement some hundred feet above, the car feels less like a work of engineering, but a transport into a world that cared little about our progress. The atmosphere is enchanting; the road is winding, narrow, and a mere single, confining lane. It’s a place where images of America’s homeland are bore out of; the kind of place Rockwell collectors hyperbolize with their fifties upbringing. And I felt helpless and overwhelmed to it all, unable to appreciate the beauty, because I had maddeningly just become ill with the flu. Looking along the entryway to the park and saw snow in spots on the ground, I thought not of warm images, but of Frost; the road divulged felt like death.
RV’s lined the campsite where we were set up. The slip our car was assigned was made for a vehicle nearly 3 times the size of Chuck’s Outback. The only item that was singularly ours was a box to store our foods in and out of the range of raccoons and bears. The only room not on wheels was the public bathroom, and it was hidden from our camp’s sight by a pair of giant Motor Homes.
As we unloaded the goods from the car and set up the tents, we mulled our options. The very hallmark of Yosemite lay to the rear of our slit. The area has endless hours of trails, sights, and destinations all of which can be highlights of a lifetime. As a group the biggest oversight was not planning for any specifics. It’s an act that was due to the culture we were all a part of; even with it’s endless freedom, college still has structure which guides students. Without planning, we had just traveled 400 miles to find a new place to booze. Walt mentioned a hiking trip, Jesse mentioned a different path for a hiking trip, and Chuck stressed we should set up the tents so we didn’t have to do so in the moonlight. I was partial to Chuck’s assessment, above all, I wanted to lie down and let my body wage battle against the flu.
Night came, and as we moved around the fire to settle, the wildlife joined us. What would double as a metaphor for debauchery in Rosarito was now a literal interpretation as the first wave of rodents approached. Humans are smarter than raccoons but this gave little advantage; they had home court. Their strategy honed over years of surviving off tourists, it was a simple script they followed to unsettle, survey, and then invade en mass in an attempt to free the confines of thelockbox. For them it was a basic need for food; to us it was a rodent shock and awe campaign.
The weather was another planning folly; living in LA for more than a year creates a sort of brain damage when it comes to weather. A factor only when less than optimal, one learns to adjust instead of anticipating. Walt, Jesse, and I were not from California, and linked the weather of LA to that of the state as a whole. Chuck was from Nor Cal, but also reasoned his outback had more space than my Pathfinder. As the mercury dropped below 30, blankets wrapped our fully clothed bodies inside sleeping bags.
Falling ill on vacation measures somewhere around incensing irony and mounting proof of a cruel god. As the hours of the first day pass, I wonder about the beauty of the surroundings. Is it only beautiful because one isn’t privy to it everyday, or because one has to place themselves externally to even grasp the idea. Cast with the flu, images do nothing to appease, and serenity becomes a forgone conclusion of a short path to the light at the end of the tunnel. Knowing I would beat the virus helped little, as it merely meant waiting it out, and the path involved bundling up in view of Half Dome rock and covering my face to stay warm.
We sit around the fire for a second night, waiting for the bandits to return. Passing over hot dogs and beer for chicken soup and grab bag of vitamins, it is the first time since the car stopped at In and Out we ate as a whole group. The cold water faucet of the public outhouse is all that suffices for a shower, and barely convinces others against their ability to contract the sickness. Our seating arrangement made me the lone person on the port side of the table and the focal point. Conversations gauged about sickness are as bleak and as uninteresting as pet funerals.
As a group, we had exhausted our list of activities we could find, and were ready to head home. We thought about leaving in the morning of the fourth day and drove around the park to look into other sleeping arrangements. I was still in quarantine in the large 5 man tent, cramping the others into the spare 2 man tent, and the thought of hot water, beds, and solid walls to protect us from the cold nights was temptation enough to debate a $75 per person fee. After seeing the restaurant in the Hotel, we couldn’t help to sit down and take a real meal. The lavish 15 foot halls of the Park’s premiere hotel made us al the more ready to go back to civilization as soon as possible.
We packed and hit the road. Rather than spend an hour fitting items on the roof rack we showved everything into the limited space of the station wagon and filled the last seat with supplies that couldn’t fit in the trunk. As we wound out of the park and on to the grapevine, we stopped alongside the roads highest point simply to gaze upward. Spending summers in Minnesota yields glimpses of the northern lights, yet perched along a massive rock looking at an array of stars that could never be counted, I still can’t think of sights as wondrous. Orion was more than a belt, his full figure and bow shined as beacons aligning us with the travelers from ages before that gazed upon the same full sight looking for answers.
Already I was getting the impression that this is such an amazing thing that I am going to forget these things. The more I am going to lose this image it is going to be replaced with another. Each image came up, was there for a flash to be appreciated and savored and then reluctantly let go because it’s going to be superposed with others. - For All Mankind
Looking up at a vision of space so fully intertwined with an atmosphere as beautiful as Yosemite is worth a thousand illnesses and miserable car trips, in one moment, everything I cherished because I knew it’s splendor rushed into memory, and I left behind every path for the feeling of what can happen in the simple beauty of the world already given to us. As the minutes staying there began to push our arrival time closer to improbable, we all knew the time was over. Even 20 minutes more would have been worth years of morning rush hour traffic. God wasn’t there at that stop, but serenity was tantalizing close, and my patience was eternal.
In part to the stars, and certainly due to my fever breaking, the car trip home was of good spirits. The trip hadn’t concluded, merely the stage that took place in Wilderness. And the second beginning of the trip had the same feel as the previous. Talk of Disneyland, Magic Mountain, San Diego, beaches, and another sort of wilderness south of the Border. My friend from high school was coming in the following afternoon. The options were enough to raise us all to another plane of vacation euphoria.
Sadly, trapped in the back of the car, Jesse and I slowly drifted into delirium, lashing out with frantic, claustrophobic giggling. At first it started with changing every chorus on AC/DC’s “Back in Black” to a diddy about being trapped in the back of Chuck’s car. Walter thought that putting on Bob Marley would settle us down, until Jesse and I began inserting anti-Japanese epithets into the songs, double irritating because we opted for the Don Rickles tone, and Walter was Korean. We exited for Taco Bell, requiring stops twice more, and by the time 2 am rolled around, we three passengers had reached a peace in our tiny spaces and left Chuck awake, alone, and fighting off the effects of a marathon driving session in pre-Red Bull times.
“We’ll grab our gear in the morning,” we agreed and headed to mattress and sheets for a long sleep.
++++
The new consensus of the group was San Diego and Tijuana, a plan I had heard too many horror stories to willingly consider. Bringing a fellow Hoosier out to California was a daunting enough and adding Papa’s and Beer could forever stain a young mans life. The baby steps were to simply prowl the campus and walk the promenade in Santa Monica. Were we above 21, Sunset would have still been a calculated risk.
Steve arrived from Indy and we took the first night easy, catching up. We went to Santa Monica to catch Memento and spent much of the night talking it over, wondering about the disconnect between one set of actions is a learned response or if it’s a simple excuse worth tricking the mind into doing to accept the world on one’s own terms. We finished off the night with a beer or two and a few hours of classic videogames, playing Gauntlet longest of all, thinking of middle school, when we first became friends and used them for escape from girls instead of the real world as we did now, and even if the connection elicited a mental binding to times past, it arose a feeling we all wanted, one of comfort in old friends, both digital and flesh.
The second night was going to be more eventful as more of my friends were back on campus, and the house party scene that was USC was awakening again as Thursday dawned. After the three from the Yosemite venture were stalking the creatures of the San Diego Zoo, the only one of my close friends at school in town was Nancy’s roommate Rita.
At the time Rita and I had formed a castoff kinship. She and one of my closest friends at SC (Ron) had dated since the second week of freshman year, and seemed rather content together. In retrospect their mutual blondness may have been their uniting singularity and common ground as a couple, but they seemed the functional side of the slide of couple behavior we knew of, with Nancy and I being the irrational extreme. Yet weeks before, after a long bout of partying ended at my house, Ron walked a girl I was wooing home, and by next morning, his failure to get back to Rita’s bed was the gossip of our little circle.
I was friends with both, and tried to play as so, telling Rita to brace for forgiveness and not to gear for retribution. I pleaded with Ron to lie, but the shame of one’s first true infidelity overwhelms the logic and henceforth destroys the relationship. In the crumbled aftermath of Rita’s heartbreak and my continual romantic seasickness with Nancy, we not only had someone of similar disposition to complain to, but people who were close enough to the others’ ex to divulge the secrets we wanted to hear. Through online chatting, a few meals, and the occasional drunken rant at parties we became partners in misery. When we partied together, we always had a good time.
Rita, just as I, had friends visiting from her home town, and together our group seemed motley enough to create a good time. Our first step was the lone frat house that wasn’t on a vacation in Cabo or Cancun. The party was massive, as all of the local members had called in all of their friends on campus for the party. By 12:30 the kegs were under wraps, and by 1, the fire department had arrived in lieu of the campus security, apparently on vacation with the student body.
The group of eight of us wandered back to my apartment, where I was the only roommate there. We were dancing, smoking, and having the party release we were pining for with spring break. My friends and I were shotgunning beers by the case; Rita and her friends were dancing with each other in every sort of suggestive manner imaginable.
As the night waned to 3 am, I walked to the bathroom. Upon entering I found Rita waiting in line. After a knock on the lavatory door, we both realized neither of us was waiting for the bathroom. Slow small talk and incremental shuffles of the feet for positioning; heavy eyes with little mutual contact, breathing that matched. Waiting, confusion, and then…surrender. Instantaneously we knew we had to cease and yet couldn’t stop, our mutual revealing of deep emotional wounds and friendly therapy had created a role of romantic messiah for the other in both of us; we felt as one would be know what to do for the each other because we had heard first hand.
We stopped once, out of fear of being caught and more of the repercussions, only to continue again. Four times we would meet and escape the party for private meetings, the first was one of mutual helplessness, the second from my pressing for more, the next from her for the same, and for the last and most intense session, it was once again mutual, but in contrast to the first moment, we both were aware what would take place, we realized, that in that moment, we both wanted each other.
I awoke the next morning with a noticeable lack of a post drinking headache. I walked into the living room to find Steve on the couch. My other two friends took the beds of my absentee roommates, knowing full well the only one to catch consequence would be me. The sun was still beaming in through the window at a low angle that cast the shadows of the Venetian blinds to the wall behind it. I feared to look at the clock because I knew the conclusions of the certainty; it was barely 9 in the morning, and I was not hung-over because I was still drunk.
Awakening my computer, I was not the only one up this early. The top most window was an IM box from Rita, reading “I’m so sorry. Call me later, we have to talk.” I closed it with nervous fear that she had panicked after she went home and tried to rationalize the happenings. Ill prepared was I to find behind her message was one from Ron. He demeaned me by questioning my friendship and trustworthiness. For all of the bitterness I had with him for cheating on Rita with a girl he knew I liked, and even with his sly attempts with Nancy the previous summer, I knew I was still at fault. Wounds of disagreement on opinion heal with friends, and while Ron and I slowly mended our friendship over the next years, what pains still is that he knew the details. Rita had told him how it transpired, telling him of the first moment Rita and I took the step, a private chance was now a public mistake.
Steve and the rest went to grab some food and waste the afternoon in recuperation. Mere moments after they left Rita knocked on the door. Neither of us able to bear the phone call; she had the impetus to initiate the face to face.
As she walked in, we had the short hug out of habit. And we sat. First watching TV, making small chat, before we could muster the talk. I know now that it was immaturity that ruled that moment. I was only 20, and had little relationship reference. My parents divorce demented me on any course, I bailed from girls before they could create a impact. I never stayed around long enough to understand the differences of longing and love. I knew of the chemically blissful adoration side, but not yet the slow, paced growth that paid off slowly with life long dividends. I had no notion of why people considered infidelity; I thought it was merely an act of lust, not one borne in hopes of moving on. I was convinced she was going to tell me she made a mistake; that she was going to go back to Ron and tell him she was too drunk to know what happened. Too confused by a new dark side where my subconscious would manifest true desires in uncouth acts I had never considered part of my personality- and not yet willing to embrace- I thought and responded from inexperienced naiveté when she asked: “What do we do now?”
posted by Indiana at
5:13 PM
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