Jun. 28, 2003 - 2:34 p.m.
Dear Vincent,
Mr. G, the teacher I spoke so highly of once told me that as writers we are both a example of human nature and an observer of human nature. That we are given to free passage between living, and being able to step back and examine life. The danger was becoming so wrapped up in yourself that you forgot about inclinations, tendencies, and trends and that you were in fact, susceptible to them. But the danger was also in becoming exclusively an observer, and never developing as part of human nature.
I mention G because he has walked back into my life as abruptly as a fender bender. It is a habit of mine to write character sketches about the people I know or have known. Having started a few years ago I keep them in a beat up binder labeled in my cramped scrawl 'the people profiles.' The binder would do as well to be digesting them rather than holding them because after I write them they usually don't see the light of day ever again. If anything, they exist for when I want to remember someone more clearly. Which, again, is rarely, because if I remember anything I remember people. Having held G in the highest regard for many years, the character sketch about him had been nearly impossible to pen. I found that in each drafting, I felt that my attempts were inadequate in doing justice to his explosive personality. About three weeks ago, a late night writing session yielded a draft I found I was pleased with. I handed it to a friend of mine, Jimmy, who'd known G to proof it for me. I wanted confirmation that my writing had encompassed him at least recognizably. Jimmy, who it turns out is still in contact with G, passed the piece on to him. But he didn't tell me he was doing so. Thus, I was pleased but mildly bewildered when I arrived home from work yesterday, to discover that G's voice crackling from my answering machine. The end result is that I called him back and we spent some time catching up, and we're to meet up for lunch in a few weeks. G was the one who ignited my passion for English and writing. He was, for a long time, my mentor, and it is a very happy thing to have reconnected with him. Even happier, is that there is a notable difference in the tenor of our relationship than there was when he was my teacher. (No it's nothing inappropriate but I'll be sure to warn you if I ever decide to part ways with conventionality completely and become sexually liberated.) It has been many years since he taught me and whereas when he taught me the information exchange was strictly one way, now it seems that he and I will be friends. He spoke with me, as if I were his equal. And being recognized by someone I hold in such high regard as a equal, though I feel the recognition is misplaced is the ultimate form of flattery.
And now Vincent, I believe I promised you some short anecdotes and observations from my brief binge with the beach.
The bathing suit seems to be a virtual torture device. No one is ever completely happy with how they look in bathing suits but you wouldn't know it because they just keep getting tinier and tinier. "She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka dot bikini..." Some bathing suits I saw this year were made of such small scraps of material that I reasoned tissues are larger and more substantial. Keeping the bikini up requires either telepathic brain efforts or large amounts of inactivity. Since I have not been gifted with telepathy nor am I given to excessive amounts of inactivity I've had to content myself with the slightly more concealing bikini designs.
I watch a group of high school aged boys at the beach one day. They brought along a yellow duck floatation device, the type that wraps around little kids waists. They took turns tromping about in it to attract female attention. It worked splendidly. By the time the day was over they had successfully lured several groups of twiggy girls with long silky hair piled high atop their heads back to their blanket for some chatting. Unfortunately, the boys lost their investment in romance the next day. While goofing around in the water minus the ducky floaty a stealthy tot of three of four crept up and made off with it. When the boys came back the searched for it for several minutes in vain before one of them spotted the tot sitting on it a few yards away. Approaching the tot, the parents of the child regarded him suspiciously and the mission to retrieve the ducky floaty was aborted. He probably realized what I was wondering, "What will he say?" I mean please, you're telling me that a high school boy is going to go up to a little kid in front of that kid's parents and try to take a ducky floaty away with his only justification being "It's mine"? Yeah, sure. Thus the child was triumphant, having executed a crime ingeniously as only the very young can. And the boys had to resort to making friends with the little kids around them to attract the girls, which is just as effective but takes infinitely more effort and patience.
Then there is the boardwalk. A veritable highway of pedestrians sandwiched by the beach and an endless strip of shops and restaurants. The perfect place to people watch. One evening as I prepared to merge onto the boardwalk from a side street I was confronted by a guy around my age wearing nothing but a plaid blanket tied kilt style around his hips and his grinning friends. The conversation went something like this:
Blanket guy: Hey, I was at this party and I spilled some beer on my pants and this was all I had to wear but I forgot how to make a toga can you show me?
Me: Why don't you just go back to your hotel and get some pants?
B.g.: I lost my pants.
Me: All of them?
B.g.: Yeah.
Me: I'd be interested to hear that story! I love retelling second hand stories. How did you loose all your pants?
B.g.: Um, there was an accident.
Me: An accident in which all your pants were destroyed.
B.g.: Yeah.
Me: That is unfortunate. Why don't you borrow pants from your friends- or oh no, did that same accident also destroy all your friend's pants as well, leaving you with only two pairs of pants between the three of you?
B.g.: Yeah!
Me: Well, I'd be happy to show you how to make a toga! Here, hand me the blanket.
At this point Blanket Guy faltered for just half of a second. I expect he hadn't believed he would honestly be expected to remove the blanket at some point. People really should think things through more carefully. Naturally I persisted,
B.g.: Um, can't you just tell me?
Me: Nonsense, it would be like telling you how to ride a bicycle and you'd never done it before and expecting you to know how. Let me show you.
B.g.: Um... (nervously glancing about)
Stepping forward with my hand extended as if I was going to take the blanket his guts finally gave out and he said,
B.g.: Uh, never mind I'll be fine.
Me: Well that's okay. You could always get really drunk and then you wouldn't care if you were naked or not.
I passed by him much later that evening on the boardwalk. He still had the blanket on and I said, "So I see you never figured out the toga thing?" He looked at me and responded brilliantly, "What?"
The dress code of the beach is also the dress code for the boardwalk. To dress for the boardwalk it is necessary to confront oneself in the mirror and ask, 'am I wearing the least amount of clothing I can to be considered clothed but really quite naked?' Which made the lady in the lime green trench coat worth following for a few blocks. In the midst of hundreds of scantily clad bodies this woman was wearing loose floral print pants and a dress like blouse in migraine pink. Her suspiciously red hair (suspiciously so because of the abundance of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth) and a lime green trench coat completed the effect of complete disorder. With a wide loafing step the trench coat billowed from behind her. Naturally, she was the subject of much scorn from the teenage girls she passed. I listened to more than one of the aforementioned "twiggy girls with long silky hair piled high atop their heads" gasp and slap their hands across their mouths as they said in not so discreet whispers to their friends, "Did you see what that woman was wearing?" I must confess that the 'twiggy girls' are my least favorite part of the beach. They dress to code in their triangle string bikinis during the day. They tan to the point of crispiness, so that I imagine if you were to shake their hand too vigorously you might just be able to break away charred fingers that turn to dust. They pile their hair atop their heads in messy buns to make sure it doesn't get wet or even worse, tangled. And in the evening they wear very tiny things that do better than just cling, they fit like a second skin. They brush their hair silky and when all's said done and applied the tremendous feat they've achieved is to look like every other girl there. Notice that it is such girls who find time to discuss the unfashionable quality of the lime green trench coat woman's outfit as if such a fashion faux pas were the equivalent of nuclear warfare. At least the woman in the trench coat was memorable.
Out of all the 'twiggy girls' I watched I can't call a single face or persona back to mind. It is when I listen to those girls talk that I understand what you mean when you talk about 'non conversations' Vincent. These are the girls who have fallen into the abyss G mentioned of forgetting to be mindful of falling into stupid human tendency.
Then there were the guys who had a balcony looking down onto the boardwalk. For three successive evenings they stood there hanging over the railings watching silently as the crowd milled below them. Not daring to venture forth into the chaos below. And it is here that we find the other type G talked about, the type that becomes only the observer.
But my favorite image from the beach remains the one of the father and daughter. He was a string bean giant of a man. And she was a slip of a toddler in a ruffled pink swimsuit. For three days I watched her tug him along by two of his fingers. He of course, had to stoop. She would squeal when he dug up sand crabs which blended into her pink petite hands. She pointed and sprang from place to place and he looked and followed her accordingly. She charged defiantly into waves that could have carried her neatly away and he lifted her blithely above them so just the spray wrapped about her. And at the end of the day, he would scoop her up and carry her up and away over the sand so that her impatient feet wouldn't be burned by the scalding sand.
The beach is always a tangy experience. All the same, here I am, home again finding myself back among the things that matter the most.
Congratulations and Felicitations on your album! If for a second we pretend there's such a thing as luck than luck to your newly formed group.
One of the little boys at work today asked me if I was wearing underwear. "Yes." I said. "Why?" he asked. "I don't know." said I in reply. Reproachfully he told me, "You know, you should really know the reasons you do things."
Casually,
Meghan
what they said - what they will say
