Black

We were driving south on the 101 somewhere an hour or so north of San Francisco.  I was with Jeff, a friend so close I often wondered if he wasn’t really part of me.   My sometime girlfriend Deborah was in the front seat with us. The car had a back seat but we always seemed to ride three in the front. In those days we just needed each other that much.  It was after midnight and we had come down out of the mountains and were driving through a faceless stretch of road, one valley after another filled with tall brown grass and the occasional oak tree.  I knew if we just kept driving, eventually we would see the Golden Gate Bridge.

The night was warm and the air smelled sweet, like the sun had had been melting fields of cotton candy all day, and the smell still lingered into the night.   Years later, when I was a junkie, a woman who wanted to save me would ask, “Where can we go baby?  Let’s get out of here.  Let’s move somewhere. Anywhere you want”

I answered, “Lets move to that valley that smells like cotton candy.” And we did.

That night we were alone on the road. It was a moonless night and the headlights of my rusty old Datsun didn’t do much to interrupt the darkness. I could see the headlights of another car up ahead coming north.  Staring at those lights, I could tell something wasn’t right, but at that time in my life there was plenty that didn’t seem right, and I was pretty used to letting those things just pass me by.  
Jeff was sitting in the passenger seat. I heard him say “Paul.” 

I shifted my gaze from the odd lights over to him and waited for him to say something else. 

“Paul, Stop!”  He raised his hand as if to point, or perhaps more to shield his face from some danger in front of him.

I looked back at the road and saw a man in shorts and a t-shirt standing on the center line, waving his arms.   I stomped the brakes and the car skid to a stop. The smoke from the tires continued forward, wafting into the headlight beams and surrounding the man. He lowered his arms.  Behind him on the road was an orange blanket laid out in a long pile. I suppose I knew there was a person under the blanket, but that thought hadn’t fully formed yet.  There were large black grease smudges on the blanket, making the whole package look like a giant orange banana slug stopped in its slow quest to cross the highway.

Our headlights illuminated only the man and the giant slug. Way off to the left, out in the field I could see those headlights that still were not quite right. I wondered how it came to be that these people were in the middle of my lane, several hundred feet away. As I got out and approached, the man in the shorts knelt down and put his hand on the orange blanket. I saw a head partially uncovered at one end of the blanket.  I could see hair and blood and mixed up in that something shiny and white, maybe bone or a piece of painted metal.  I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. “I don’t think we can help him,” the man in the shorts said to me.

He must be in shock, I thought about the man in the shorts.  That’s why he isn’t trying to help. I’m going to have to take over. I was angry with this man and his shorts. I wanted to shove him out of the way and get in there and get to work.  But then the blanket shuddered and a sound came from it that later Jeff and I would debate on just what it was like.  I said it was a Tom turkey gobbling. He felt very strongly that it was more like the last sound a toilet makes at the end of a flush.


With the sound came a small wave of blood that washed out from under the blanket. I hadn’t noticed the blood before because it flowed from the far side of the body, staying in the shadow.  And because it was in the shadow it was black.  I followed the small wave with my eyes and watched it flow the entire width of the roadway disappearing into the gravel and weeds at the edge.


Toilet or turkey, that sound triggered a deep instinctive fear in me. I took a step back and my hands went straight to the back of my neck.  I told this story later to a hippy girl I was screwing in Arcata and she told me that was my kundalini I was protecting.  She said the spot at the top of my spine was where my life force emanated.  It made sense I suppose. I was watching this man’s life force seep and gurgle its way out of his ripped open kundalini.


Looking past the pool of blood I could see other figures now, farther down the highway.  I decided to investigate. Perhaps there I’d find some easier application for my type of half-hearted heroism. I walked past a twisted white pick-up, its doors open, windows busted. Scattered glass crunched under my feet.  Beyond the truck another man in shorts, uninjured, was kneeling next to a woman. She had long black hair.  It stuck to her face in clumps matted by the blood flowing from seemingly everywhere I could see.  She had her arms under her and was crawling with her bare elbows on the pavement, dragging her motionless legs behind her. I said to the man. “Try not to let her move.”  He looked at me and said nothing.


The woman cried out “Where’s my husband? Find my husband. Is he alright?” I thought about this for a moment and said, “He’s ok. He’s fine. Try not to move.” She stopped trying to crawl, let her body slump sideways against the man in the shorts.  He put his hands on her, stroking lightly as if he were petting a scared animal.


I stood up, hands back in my hair, walked back toward my car. Jeff was standing next the orange banana slug man.  The sound came again. Another wave of blood washed across the road. Jeff and I looked at each other.  Other traffic was approaching by this time and among them a highway patrol. He pulled his cruiser into the grass of the center divider so that his lights were shining on the man, his mutilated head, and the now very large pool of blood.  When he stepped out of his car he had in his hand a first aid kit about the size of a lunch box. We watched as he set the kit on the hood of his car and opened it. He looked at the man. Looked into his kit. Looked back at the man. Looked at us. There seemed to be no answers for him.  


Jeff and I walked back to our car; got in, shut the doors.  Deb was still there, fuming.  Apparently I had told her to “stay in the car.”  The three of us debated the sexism in that comment for a while as we watched the scene in front of us, as if at a drive in movie.  More police arrived. A female officer came and asked us some questions through the open window of the Datsun.  At some point in this conversation she realized our car was not part of the accident. She closed her notebook and asked us to continue on our way. I started the car and we drove in silence around the man, across his pool of blood and continued down the highway. 

Love or Palm Trees

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I spent the year after my divorce working in Hawaii.  It was great therapy but when I came home I had a hard time adjusting.  The thought of dating again scared the hell out of me.  And I was probably watching too many Lost reruns because I became obsessed with the idea that I needed to get back to the island. I was complaining about my love life to my friend Justine (who is also my ex wife) over coffee one morning. She said, “We just need to get you out there.  You should try online dating.”

In a moment of weakness I agreed. She took my picture and uploaded it to a dating site, wrote a bit of copy and hit Create Profile. It took less than 5 minutes.  

 “I look hungover,” I said, looking at my picture online.

She grabbed the laptop and under the heading, First Thing People Notice About You, she added the line "Looks good hungover."   
"Thanks for that," I said.

My hung-over profile pic

It didn’t take long, within a few days I was chatting with an urban planner from the East Bay. By coincidence she and I were both taking a night class on geo-spatial mapping. It was a geek match made in heaven. Her name was Syd. I thought I was in love already.  We agreed to meet at this funky bar in downtown Oakland, I can’t remember the name but it was filled with dusty kitsch on the walls and small taxidermied animals.  When did road kill come back in fashion? I got there a bit early and chose a seat at the far end of the bar where I could watch the door. I was nervous and the gray squirrel just over my right shoulder staring me down wasn’t helping. Apparently this place was famous for its fresh squeezed greyhounds.  On the bar was a wooden crate of grapefruits and an old style manual juicer with a modified 3-foot long handle.  The bartender went through an acrobatic routine every time someone ordered one.  It was a bit of a show and people gathered around to watch. I suppose this was the hipster version of “Cocktail.” Only instead of Tom Cruise this guy looked more like Shaggy.  With Scooby’s head mounted on a plaque behind him. 

Syd was fun. We had a great time talking about the abundance of bad urban design in the bay area.  Only occasionally getting hit with a random citrus spray from across the bar.  Later we had dinner a few blocks away at a crowded Chinese restaurant. She took me home to her apartment and the next morning we went out to breakfast at a little cafe just up the street from her place in Rockridge. I was telling her about my recent job in Hawaii and how it had netted me a ton of airline miles and a free place to stay there on the island anytime I wanted. I remember she had ordered corned beef hash and fried eggs.  I was watching the colors of her breakfast run together, the yellow of the egg yoke spilling down onto the pile of diced pinkish meat and bleached white hash browns. It reminded me of Loco Moco, the Hawaiian name for fried eggs over mystery meat and rice, always with a side of macaroni salad.  I don’t know. Maybe it’s that anything you eat under a palm tree just tastes better. The feeling over took me and before I knew it I said, “We should go to Hawaii together.”  Her response was a rather tepid “Hmm, I’ve never been there.”
On our second date I tried to get her to commit, bringing my laptop and looking at airline schedules online while sitting on the side of her tiny uncomfortable futon bed. 
There was no third date.
 
The next girl I met online was a writer from the Mission. Shari was so beautiful and maybe the tallest woman I’d ever dated. I was picturing her in a bikini before I ever saw her in person. But I knew I had to show more restraint with my tropical aspirations, so I waited as long as I possibly could to make the invitation, the end of our second date.  But before you judge me let me tell you about the date.  We had a great dinner at a Peruvian restaurant in West Portal and then drove out to the beach. We walked arm in arm near the waves below the Cliff House. It was cold and windy and we leaned in close to talk. After a kiss that almost knocked me over she said “I can’t take you home with me.  My apartment is too messy.” I thought about protesting but didn’t have time before she said; “How about we get a hotel out here by the beach?” 

Wait, is that the sound of angels singing?  maybe hula girls...

We were stuck together like two strips of fly paper for the rest of the weekend. We ordered take out and left the room only for coffee in the morning and drinks in the evening. With things evolving so quickly, when the words “Hey, how about a week in Hawaii?” came out of my mouth, I was sure she would say yes.  Instead I heard, “Let’s wait until we’ve known each other a couple months before we plan anything like that.” I was crushed. But I recover quickly. I smiled and said of course that was a good idea.  In truth I still cannot imagine anyone’s hesitation at accepting such an offer.  Especially after the weekend we just had.  And come on, a couple of months?  It was already April for Christ’s sake.  We continued to see each other for a while but I could tell the damage was done.  In fact she even scolded me for my “escapist fantasies” in our break-up conversation.

I'm slow but I do eventually learn from my mistakes.  So the next time around I decided to take a completely different approach.  I felt I had a plan so good I knew it would work on the very first date. Sharon was young, smart, and very sexy. She had long dark hair and these amazing blue green eyes with bits of gold, like lightning in a tropical storm.  We met briefly for tea on a Tuesday then agreed to dinner that following Saturday at Zazu, a small romantic place on the outside of town. I knew the sous chef there so I went so far as to stop by a few hours before, chat him up a bit and scope out a good table.  Then I went home to get ready.  I picked her up at her house, a little bungalow on Tupper Street in Santa Rosa.  I was more nervous than I should have been.  Walking up to her front door and knocking seemed so formal and awkward. I realized this was the first girl I had dated who lived in an actual house. She invited me in and that awkward feeling stayed. Except for a piano in one corner and a few books and papers scattered on the floor the living room was devoid of furniture. It looked like a house someone had just moved out of.  Like she was just stopping by to sweep up and grab the last few items. I asked her how long she had lived there.  She said 7 years.  I watched her as she put on her jacket and closed her laptop. It was sitting on a built in bookshelf. The power cord ran down to the floor and across a few feet to an outlet at the base of a painted column. It reminded me of the way people at airports find whatever power they can to sit and charge their phones and computers. 

As we walked in the restaurant I caught Adam’s eye and he nodded to me. After a few minutes, water, bread, the waitress came over and said, “Adam said don’t bother with the menus he’ll just start sending things out.”   Sharon was impressed. Hell, I was impressed.  And the food was amazing.  Roasted padron peppers with shaved macadamia nuts. Deep fried bacon wrapped figs.  We were having fun. I felt a bit distracted still and after the second waitress complimented her on her dress I realized I hadn’t said a thing about it.  Focus Paulie.  The conversation was mainly about food and family and then she mentioned some travel she had done in the tropics. Here was my opening.  This was the moment I’d been waiting for. I told this entire story I’m telling now.  The post divorce year on the island. The airline miles.  The urban planner. The writer.  I get a little animated when I tell a story, waving my arms and raising my voice. At the end I said, “Who would imagine it would be so hard to get someone to go on a tropical vacation with you!?”   She laughed, I laughed, She said, “That is a pretty funny story Paul.”  And I thought, YES! I’ve finally nailed it, white sands, Tiki bars, palm trees... Hawaii, here I come baby! 

On the drive home she was pretty quiet. Eventually she turned to me and said, “Paul you are a nice guy but I don’t think I want to see you again. I just don’t think you’re ready to date. You spend way too much time talking about your exes.”

My airline miles expired around the same time I canceled my online dating profile.