For a minute as I got in I thought I knew him; he looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. He did look okay though, other than that happy stuff, which, sadly, I wasn’t used to.
I can be polite when I have to, so why not. We talked all the way to the beach, and I heard all about his horrible adult children. It made me think that’s exactly what I was going to be called by my parents in about five or ten years. My dad would tell his coworkers, “That horrible son of ours, Trey—what a disappointment that little fa…he turned out to be.” And I’m sure my mother would be crying her heart out over not having any grandchildren, or at least over not getting her dearest wish that I would have ‘a little kid just like you’ as she always put it when she was angry with me.
After a while the man, who said his name was Reggie, ran down, and just looked at me sideways with a light in his eye that made me think he might just understand and not judge. He was disappointed in his own kids, but more because they didn’t seem to like him much, than in them, if you know what I mean. They blamed him for their own problems, and, as he said, by the age of thirty or forty you really can’t use that excuse any longer. I had to agree. I had the horrible feeling I might be going to learn something valuable from this guy. Reggie; Reg. I’d been so caught up in my whole pity-party instead of real-party thing that I’d forgotten other people had problems too. Stepping out of my own thoughts for a while had been good for me; I could feel my shoulders coming down and my back loosening up. I even remembered to breathe. Being left out still hurt, but it wasn’t eating me up any more. I was grateful for that.
It turned out Reggie was going to the same beach I was. I didn’t bother to get out early or change my mind or anything. It was kind of nice to have someone with me. Being alone—I had thought that would be okay, but I realized it would have sucked big time. We both had snorkel gear. He even had food, and enough of it to share, plus most of it was junk food! Second childhood, anyone? I didn’t care. My parents never did picnics or anything remotely uncivilized, and I had no other local relatives. I figured it wouldn’t kill me to be happy and pleasant for a change. I wondered if it was wrong to pretend that we were a family, just for today.
As he turned off the car, Reg looked right at me and said, “What’s eating you up today?”
And I blurted everything out about the party and being gay and being called names and stuff I hadn’t even dared tell myself. Holy shit, batman. Holy shit. I hadn’t expected to dump like this. I thought I had myself convinced that everything was fine. Now I had to acknowledge that it wasn’t. I’d only been kidding myself, and not very well at that. I almost started to cry but dried up as Reg shoved a package of cookies at me. It made me feel six years old with a scraped knee. Everything was better now. Seriously, it brought out a smile that I didn’t know I still had in me. His smile back warmed my heart. I almost wished he were thirty years younger. For just that split second, I was in his eyes, as deep as you could go, and I felt connected to him like I’d never felt to anyone else before. It was awesome, delicious almost, and then, like the cookies, it was gone.
We got our stuff and started walking down the path to the beach. Reggie couldn’t remember if he had locked the car, so he tried to lock it from where we were. He hit the wrong button and set off the alarm. He made a face and stood there looking confused and shocked. I realized he was older than I had thought, and laughing, I took the keys from him and ran back to the car and fixed things the way they should be. Simple! I felt like a genius. I also hoped I’d never get ‘that old.’ I wondered, how on earth I could feel so close to this stranger—and he to me—when with my own family…well…maybe that thing about ‘chosen family’ was really true. When I handed him back his keys, we grinned at each other. He looked embarrassed, like he usually had no clue what all the buttons on remotes did. I wondered if he owned a cell phone.
“Goddamn modern cars,” he muttered as we walked down the trail to the water. “Why, back in my day…you know, dodging the dinosaurs, uphill both ways, all that old-people crap!” he laughed at himself and I joined him, shaking my head. “Seriously, I had a 1949 Mercury with an engine twice the size of this little toy thing I drive now, and about one/fourth the mileage…she could go 95 and purr like a kitten the whole way, until she turned into a tiger of course, but that was more at the red lights. You don’t drag race, do you?” he raised one eyebrow at me. I had pretty much no clue what he was talking about. “Chickie runs? No? You kids have no fun at all, do you?”
“Well,” I offered, “we’re usually too busy climbing out our bedroom windows at night and stealing stop signs.”
“You saw that in a movie, didn’t you?”
“Nah, I think my uncle mentioned it once.”
“That’s why you and I get along so well,” Reg said. “We have a common enemy—your parents’ generation, which is also my kids’ generation.”
When we reached the water, Reg nudged me and pointed farther along the beach, a ways past where the usual, popular entry point was. I’d never ventured down there before, even though there was a path that led through the lava field down to a hidden cove a ways down. I didn’t usually dare do anything out of the expected. This hitch-hiking thing was stupid enough, but it had worked out well. I was smart enough to know that I was very lucky in that, that all the jerks here were not necessarily at Steve’s party.
Anyhow, I looked around this part of the beach, which had the easiest entry for snorkeling and diving, and a shallow enough slant that there wasn’t a harsh shore-break to hurt little kids and old folks. Or any age if they were tourists. I hadn’t really noticed before how crowded it actually was, or if I had, I hadn’t known how to avoid it and still get in the water.
Reg pointed down the trail, only off to the right, toward where a finger of lava pointed out into a little point. Halfway out there was a patch of sand, and Reg said, “You’d be surprised how easy an entry there is there. Let’s go down there, shall we?”
I didn’t mind doing new things with someone who had already done them, so I agreed. As soon as we started off I shuddered, realizing how much I’d buried my distaste of crowds, trying to do what I wanted and still balance out my shyness. I could see the actual path through the lava field continuing on out of sight through a last batch of trees and over a small hill. I wondered if the Nightmarchers used that trail, and shivered.
There wasn’t anyone, real or not, in sight that way, and we set off toward the stretch of sand. It was an awkward walk over the lava but it wasn’t too far. I wouldn’t have wanted to go farther down the path without a ton of water and better shoes though, and anyway, I remembered from a map that this trail, the so-called ‘King’s Highway’ of old, veered inland and just kept going.
Once we got there, we set our gear down and sat down on some rounded boulders and just stared out at the water, trying to see the direction and height of the swell and the size of the waves. It was a bit rougher than I cared for, but not too bad, and the water looked clear, with maybe some cloudy water from run-off farther down where the stream came in. Sometimes there was a rip current near here, but I didn’t see any right now. The entry was rocky, but not that bad. I wondered how I’d never noticed this spot before. I wished Chris was here with me. Since I couldn’t out him at school by hanging around him and drooling whenever I saw him, which is what I felt like doing, he was so cute, I just spent my time dreaming of him and trying not to walk into walls whenever he passed me in the hallway. I didn’t dare look at him in the locker room. Just thinking about that made my shorts feel tight.
Reg was standing at the water’s edge, his snorkel and mask in one hand and fins in the other. He was just staring into the distance. “I dunno. I have the four kids and pretty much raised them on my own. Sometimes all I can say is, ‘There’s an awful lot of their other parent in them.’ One, she won’t talk to me. She thinks I’ve said and done such awful stuff it’s not forgivable—and I have no fricking idea what those things are. Sure I haven’t been the world�
��s greatest parent—I never got the guide book.” He turned and looked at me. “I’m not at all trying to make it sound like everything is always you kids’ faults. It’s not. It’s not even kid vs adult; it’s person vs. person, or maybe just the roles we play or expect others to play.
“My parents weren’t perfect either, but as their generation—and mine said, ‘We did the best we could.’ You could say, ‘the best we knew how at the time,’ same thing. Of course if one of your parents drank themselves into oblivion or beat you all the time, well, is that still ‘the best they could’? And how does that affect any forgiveness you might want to give them? I dunno; do you?”
My eyes gave away the fact that I had no clue either. I’d never even thought about these things with my own parents vs. me, let alone thought about all those generations going back and back.
I remembered this old movie I’d seen part of, ‘New Morals or Old.’ The parents did the best they could—but the kids weren’t happy and both wanted to leave home. This was set like four generations ago! I’d just never thought about it. But now that I did, it amazed me to think that that far back and probably even before that, parents and children still did not—what, speak the same language? Understand each other? Get along? I don’t know…but at least I understood now that it wasn’t just me; it was, perhaps, everyone. In the movie the son, Ralph, is supposedly straight, but I knew right away he really wasn’t. Turns out that in the original play that the movie was based on, he’s gay. Gaydar for the win, for what it’s worth.
Reg continued, “Maybe it doesn’t matter who does what. If it’s hurtful, it’s hurtful. Even if it’s not intended. You know they say we judge ourselves by our intentions and judge others by their actions?” He stopped and just looked at me. “Do you know you have the most beautiful eyes?” and Reg turned purple with embarrassment.
I went from thinking deeply to feeling insanely happy. Snap.
Reg said quickly, “You know the legend of this plant here, the Naupaka? Here, rub some inside your mask, it’s the best defogger going, and to be honest, I forgot to bring mine.” He tore a leaf off a big bush nearby and gave me half, rubbing the other half inside his mask. I did the same. Reg continued, looking up into the mountain, and then back at me. “Ah, love, sweet love. I had one once, long before I married. Very similar to this story, too. According to the legend, Naupaka was a beautiful princess who fell in love with a commoner named Kaui. The ill-fated lovers could never marry, and Naupaka had to stay in the mountains while Kaui stayed by the ocean. Before separating, however, Naupaka took a flower from her hair and tore it apart, giving half to Kaui. All the nearby plants were saddened by this, and the next morning they began to bloom only half flowers in honor of the separated lovers.” Reggie held up half a flower, or rather, the whole bloom, which very much looked like the top half of a little white flower. He shook his head, as if it had happened to him, instead of a princess, a long time ago. Maybe, I thought, it had, and I wondered why they hadn’t been able to be together.
When we were ready to continue, we glanced at each other and both started smiling and shaking our heads. This led me into giggling and Reg laughed out loud and then snorted. We had to sit down again. He looked like a beached whale that had swallowed a balloon. He had on a shorty wetsuit with racing stripes on it. His bald head would lie in wrinkles above his face mask. I must have looked like a—well, I don’t know what. I could hear pleasure in Reg’s laugh so maybe I didn’t look too bad, though when I was on my own or with friends I worried that I looked too skinny/pale/fat or that I would get, well, you know. Maybe that’s why all the guys wore such baggy board shorts, so if they got hard it wouldn’t show. I do know I wouldn’t be caught dead in a speedo, though I had the feeling that Reg might appreciate it. Which made me think of Chris again.
Then I realized I’d thrown on my old board shorts, the ones with the rip down the…oops. Good thing hardly anyone else was around. Now I was laughing at myself as well. I couldn’t believe it, but I was. It was funny. I never would have thought I could ever, ever, laugh at myself. It felt good—and safe. Yeah, that was the thing about it; it felt safe just to be me. Warts and all.
Reg poked me in the shoulder. “You’re a great kid,” he said out of nowhere. “I wish you were mine.” And he turned and started into the water.
It can be ungraceful putting on your mask and fins in the water, but it’s easier than walking like a bow-legged penguin in them down to the water. So we did it and he tapped my shoulder and told me to lead on. I had a favorite area I liked and hardly ever got to go to because it was a bit farther than I should go on my own, but since we had entered the water farther down the shore than I usually did, we were already closer to my ‘secret’ place. I turned in that direction and I could feel Reg swimming along beside and slightly behind me.
As soon as we pushed off we were seeing dozens of fish. I’d had no idea this would be such a better entry. It had always looked like it would be way too rocky an entrance, but it wasn’t, it was great. Right away I saw yellow tangs, wrasses of different kinds, a flying gurnard for crying out loud, and parrot fish and all the rest of the usual ones you see. It’s a marine preserve; so the fish are plentiful.
Everyone else was up at the usual entry. This was a great secret. The coral went out seemingly forever, with differing depths, some so close you could touch it, not that you wanted to. Besides it being a living thing and capable of being damaged easily; it also hid urchins and other sharp spiny things and eels, all of which could hurt you. I suppose there were crabs and lobsters and such but I had only ever seen one. I was usually too lost in the beauty of the different corals and the colors of the fish to worry about bumps and scratches. Whenever I did get a cut, I never even noticed it until I came out of the water. Then I’d worry about whether I’d left a trail of blood in the water that might have attracted a shark…too late then though, and anyhow, so far I’d never even seen a fin from the beach, let alone while I was in the water.
I was already lost in my head when something grabbed my leg. Having forgotten for the moment all about Reg, I almost lost it. Then he pulled up closer to me and I realized I’d probably been swimming faster than he could. I stopped, but he pointed across in front of me and I looked where he indicated. There was a big green sea turtle just rising up out of the rocks, right in front of me, and I hadn’t even noticed. We hung there and just watched it as it rose to the surface to breathe, and then we followed it for a while, until it turned back and almost knocked into me. I’d never seen one so close before, and then it dove abruptly, or sank like a rock, and zoomed past beneath me. I would have laughed out loud but you just don’t do that with a snorkel in your mouth. Even just smiling can make your face mask leak. Reg and I could see the excitement in each other’s eyes though, and I forgave him for scaring the crap out of me.
Then it was my turn to point something out to Reg. I’d never seen one before, but I thought it had to be a crocodile needlefish—ugh—those things could kill you with their needle-like snouts or whatever you call those pointed toothy mouths they had. Luckily it was swimming away. Then we swam to my special place and I gestured that we were here. It was a bit of a cove, almost around the point, but you could still surface and see back to where the popular entry was. I didn’t bother looking; the water was quiet and I could feel no surge nor see any silt. The visibility was great. The sun shone down like ribbons, no, like curtains, bubbles on tiny threads, like the bead curtains that used to be popular. I noticed Reg had a small camera and was taking photos. He was diving down below to see better, while I’d never yet figured out just how to do that surface dive stuff. I did see a little head poking out from under some coral and went closer, finally seeing enough of it to recognize the fat spotted head and barbed back of a great or giant porcupine fish—great name, huh? They’re so shy; I was enamored of them because of how shy I was. I kept watching it as long as I could. I wished I could see it out in the open, all puffed up with its quills out. That would
be awesome.
A bit later I realized we’d lost sight of each other, and I began to notice a sound. I’d once had a friend who scared me by moaning while snorkeling near me. It worked too; I was really spooked and royally pissed later. Anyhow this was different. I felt safe, with Reg somewhere nearby, and I thought I knew what it was—a whale. Whales sing, sort of…and I’d heard it sometimes on the hydrophones on whale watching trips. But this, here in the water, how far away—or near—would it have to be for me to be able to hear it? I’d have to look that up. I wondered if Reg…where was he, anyhow? He couldn’t have gotten hurt or lost, could he? I’d never forgive myself—uh oh, there was that tug on my leg again! Good—I turned to look at him—but it wasn’t him! It looked like a kid—I mean a young girl, holding her breath and holding onto me for dear life. I had no clue what was going on but she was in distress. I surfaced and took her by the arm, spat out my snorkel and raised my mask. It wasn’t too hard to keep afloat, even though she just kind of sagged out in my arms and laid her head against my shoulder, her arms around me holding on way too tight for comfort. I could feel her heart pounding against my chest and feel her gasping for air, and crying.
Whoa—from whale song to crisis in zero seconds flat. Reg would have to be on his own for a minute. I sort of swam backward to a crag of coral I had just seen, and against the rules, balanced myself on it momentarily so I could find out what was going on with the girl, and catch my own breath too.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is someone with you?” I asked my heavy limpet.
What I got back was, “The stupid current; I didn’t mean to swim this far, but…and…I-I-I—lost—my mask—and I’m scared. And I bumped my leg and it hurts!” she gasped out. “I have my little ring, my unicorn floatie, but I can’t swim back. I tried and I couldn’t do it.”
Spring Tide Love Page 3
