Here’s Looking at You, Kid

an accidental romance in fifteen parts

by Douglas

Chapter 11 – SoCal

So, the December days got shorter and darker, as wet, windy storms blew in from the Pacific, drenching everybody and everything; and I tried to get back to some kind of stability, some kind of emotional balance, and study for my finals.

It wasn’t easy.

Between my excitement about the apartment situation – yeah, and the episodes of near-panic, too, until I actually signed the lease – and beginning the official tutoring sessions with Cole, and working on my last paper, and doing Christmas shopping for my family . . . between all of that, I felt like I was being pulled in too many directions, all at once.

Okay. So I guess I wasn’t alone. Semester finals will do that, to most everybody.

Still.

Somehow I survived the whole experience, though I have vague memories of sitting, studying, in the library, as wet below the knees as if I’d been wading in a river; shivering and dripping, with my wet jacket on the back of my chair. Trying not to drip on my laptop.

Pretty often with Cole next to me; during the worst storms he just wore his flip-flops, and rolled up his pants legs above his ankles. I mean, it made perfect sense; and actually, lots of students on campus did the same thing. But it was so COLD out, I didn’t know how he could stand it.

But then the little brat would play footsies with me, with his feet bare, and I’d lose my concentration and I’d have to hiss at him to stop, and he’d look at me with that innocent, what-are-you-talking-about? look, and I’d try to go back to reading again, and I’d miss the pressure of his foot on mine . . .

Somehow I survived.

*

Jim and Greg came through with recommendations, fast. With style.

Greg’s came on his law firm letterhead – he’s a partner, so his name is on it – and as I read it through, I couldn’t help but wonder who he was talking about. Nobody could be that virtuous. And responsible.

Jim’s recommendation was a surprise; it came on his own letterhead. Turns out, Jim had become a Charitable Organization, his own 501(c)(3) charitable organization, with his own dot-org URL and everything; kind of a professional non-profit, all by himself, working with other non-profits.

And with those recommendations and my check put together, the Watanabes couldn’t sign the lease fast enough.

I remember how my hand was shaking, as I signed. And the explosive relief I felt, walking away from the building, heading towards the campus in the dusk to meet Cole.

*

And all at once, it seemed, finals were over; and the term was over. And it was Christmas break; and I found myself back home in San Diego, surrounded by my family, slightly dazed, not quite knowing how I got there.

It was – a contrast. A whole collection of contrasts; going from the Cal campus, to San Diego; from my dorm room and the dining halls, to the room I grew up in, and my mom’s home cooking.

From friends and mostly-strangers, to family. And a loving family, too; even if we’re not all that excitable, or demonstrative – the love is there, like a quiet warm.

Still.

Even with all that, home, the holidays, and the comfort of family, the second-best times that break were when I spent days with Derrick and Drew; hanging out with them, going to a couple of movies, sharing coffee and meals, and all the familiar things about where we grew up.

And the single best time came a couple of days before New Year’s, when – like I said I would – I drove up to Santa Monica, to spend the day with Cole.

*

“Where are you?”

The quintessential, meeting-somebody-in-a-crowd, thing; me talking into my cell at Cole, on Santa Monica Pier.

“On the pier, where are you?”

“That helps a lot.” I stopped, and shaded my eyes, and scanned around me, slowly. “I’m just past the carousel.”

“Oh. Well, keep walking, and I’ll see you.”

So I kept walking, and we kept talking, me telling him more about my Christmas, and Derrick and Drew, him telling me about his Christmas and his parents –

“WHERE are you?” I went again, eventually, stopping; and beginning a slow, 360-degree scan.

“Maybe – here?”

And there he was, phone to his ear, right in front of me. Two feet away. Shading his eyes the same way I was – just to make fun of me.

“Oh.” I kept my phone up. “And how long have you been there?”

“I started following you at the carousel,” he said, with his brattiest smile. “I’ve been right behind you. It was fun.”

“Did you know you’re a little fuck?” I said, politely; into my phone.

“Yeah,” he went, smugly. Still into his own phone. “Yeah, I’ve been told that, before.”

Some of the people walking by were beginning to give us curious looks.

“So, you think we should hang up?” I said. “And stop burning our minutes - ?”

And we closed our phones at the same time, and then we were hugging, hard.

What a rush. What a rush.

*

We did Santa Monica Pier pretty thoroughly; wandering up and down, looking at the surfers – me telling Cole what they were doing, him with a light in his eyes that told me I’d be taking him surfing, real darn soon – and buying the kind of tacky souvenirs that I loved, and food, and everything.

And then Cole took me up on the Palisades, up the cliffs from the beach, to the manicured parks running along the cliff tops, with Ocean Street and the exclusive beach resorts and expensive houses facing the water.

Palm trees and flowering bushes everywhere; the ocean, going on forever. So Southern California; so not like Berkeley. It was strange, Cole being there.

But good.

And then, best of all, on this best day of the trip – we rented bikes. And rode along the paved bike path, the one right down on the sand, all the way to Venice Beach.

*

“Spare change?”

“Sorry.”

The young guy with the scraggly beard and blond dreads didn’t seem to mind. “That’s cool,” he said, cheerfully. “Have a good day!”

Usually, when panhandlers say that, it’s a guilt thing; but this boy seemed to mean it.

Maybe because it was such a beautiful day – for late December. Maybe just because, well, it was Venice Beach.

“Look at that!” went Cole, admiringly. At a kind of mobile, a kinetic sculpture that seemed to be made out of glowing light sticks; spinning in the gentle breeze. “Oh, cool!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah; not bad.”

Okay.

So, if you’ve never been to Venice Beach – you need to understand; it’s a little edgy.

It IS a beach, a beach with an awful lot of people, even in late December; but it’s the walkways along the beach, and all the booths and little shops, the street vendors, the bright colors, the really, really pervasive smell of incense and patchouli and marijuana in the air – THAT’s Venice Beach.

Oh, and the tie-dye. There are more tie-dye t-shirts for sale in Venice Beach than anyplace else on earth. Do people wear that much tie-dye?

We walked on, in no particular hurry; enjoying being there, enjoying being together.

“Whoa,” went Cole, smiling; in front of a canvas-walled, open-air store, with a mannequin – a male mannequin – covered in leather S and M gear of all kinds, and some kinds I’d never seen before.

“Don’t get any ideas,” I said, and tugged him along; and he gave me a brilliant brat-smile.

“I like it here,” he said a couple of steps later, looking back at the booth, then looking around. “Actually, it makes me a little homesick. Reminds me of Telegraph Avenue, back home.”

“It should. You don’t think some of these people don’t commute? I’m pretty sure I saw that woman with the bead purses – no, over there, to the left – I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her on Telegraph. Remember?”

“Jesus, you’re right!” He shaded his eyes against the low December sun, looking at her. His smile was delighted. “Should we go ask her?”

“No.” I tugged him along, again. “Let’s let her keep her trade secrets. Besides, I’ve only got you for today; I don’t want to share you.”

And that got me a quick squeeze, of his hand on mine.

Wandering further on down the beach, slowly; sometimes shoulder-bumping each other, gently, deliberately, that way we’d been doing more often, lately. Past a sidewalk artist, using airbrushes and some incredibly toxic-smelling paint to make fake-looking, alien, planet-scapes and star-scapes, in dozens of colors.

“So,” I went, a little lazily. “You’re not coming home until – the seventh?”

“Yeah,” said Cole. With just a hint of that limitless disgust that only a teenager can produce.

I looked at him, sideways. “That’s a lot of family time. You, and your mom and dad all together, I mean.”

Cole’s mom and dad always got together for major holidays, it turned out. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Cole’s birthday; sometimes here in Santa Monica, sometimes back in Berkeley.

“Yeah,” from Cole, in almost the same tone; then quiet, for a couple of steps. Then – “It’s not so bad right now, with the three of us together. But my mom’s leaving New Year’s Day to go visit my Aunt Marie in Seattle; and I’m stuck here alone for a week.”

“Alone with your dad?”

“Which pretty much means, alone.” He was looking down, now, his hands in his pockets, as we walked. His face serious. I let the silence go on, for a couple of beats.

“I told you, my dad’s in finance, right?” Cole went, at last.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, he’s an investment banker. His office is in Century City.” His eyes slid sideways to mine, to see if I understood. He gave a little nod, when he saw my face.

“Yeah. I don’t get to see all that much of him, when I’m down here; there’s always a deal going on.” He shrugged. “It’s who he is, really. It’s like, his whole identity.”

“I understand.” I knew enough about investment bankers, from listening to my own dad – he’s a lawyer, and he’s been at least a little involved in some corporate finance deals. Takeovers; buyouts, whatever, they’re high-pressured, high-priced things that take months and eat up the lives of the people doing them. My dad tries to stay away from them.

“Oh, I’m not complaining. Not really.” Cole twitched a corner of his mouth, still looking down. “Like, I’m totally secure, financially. I’ve got all the money I need, for college. How many people can say that, they can go through four years of college, with no student loans? And, he really does try, with me. He cares.” His mouth frowned down, a little. “Even if he’s always on his cell, whenever we do anything together.”

“That – ” I started to say that it sucked, then I changed my mind. “That’s too bad.”

Cole shot me a look.

He really doesn’t like pity; I’d learned that about him. And he hates showing weakness. He really hates showing weakness.

“It’s really not like that,” he went, evenly. “I’m not neglected, it’s not like I’m emotionally abused; not like Trevor. It’s just kind of – boring. Especially since I can’t drive. I mean, this is Southern California; what do you do, if you can’t drive?”

Well, that explained a lot. His campaign to try driving my Mini Cooper, I mean.

“Yeah,” I said. We stepped around a woman massaging a beefy guy’s bare shoulders, in a massage chair on the sidewalk; his skin glistened with oil. “Yeah. Still – Santa Monica’s not a bad place to be stranded. Those parts of it you showed me, those two pedestrian blocks on, what was it, Third Street – ”

“I know, I know,” Cole interrupted. With an impatient shake of his head. “You’re right, it’s a nice enough place. So is Venice. It’s just that, it’s not MY place; it’s not my city, I feel so isolated here. I don’t KNOW anybody. And when I do come down here, I miss my friends. And I miss Trevor.” Another sideways glance, at me. “And I miss you.”

I shoulder-bumped him gently; and he bumped back.

“So,” I went. After a quiet couple of steps. “Do you have to come down here? Is it, like part of your parents’ divorce settlement - ?”

“Nah. Nothing like that.” Hands in his pockets; head down again. “No, my parents are still officially friends; it wasn’t that kind of divorce. I come visit because my dad wants me to. And, he’s like, my dad, you know?” He looked up at me, then back down. “And . . . mostly, really, because it’s good for him. To have someone around at home, at least sometimes.”

I reached around and squeezed his far shoulder, and he leaned into me for a warm couple of seconds.

We passed yet another open-air stand selling cheap sunglasses, by the hundreds; and then a place with all-hemp clothing, t-shirts, pants, hats, most of them with stenciled marijuana-leaf designs. Not saying anything, for a minute.

“I don’t know what it’d be like, having divorced parents,” I started. A little hesitantly; glancing at Cole. “It can’t be easy. Do you ever, like, wish they could get back together - ?”

He puffed a little puff of sardonic laughter. “Yeah, right. The divorced kids’ dream, getting the parents back together. No way; no way. The only reason Jeannine and my dad are still friends, is because they split up.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. I know them. And if you want an example of a marriage that shouldn’t still be a marriage, just look at Trevor; his parents are barely hanging on, barely talking, and his asshole father takes it all out on him. Or maybe not; I think maybe his asswipe father’s just an asswipe. A general-purpose asswipe.”

“It’s that bad?” I’d known for weeks, now, that Trevor’s dad was a jerk, and a verbally abusive one; and it worried me.

“Yeah. And that’s another thing that sucks, about being down here. The Asswipe’s been riding Trevor, really bad, the last few days. If I were home, Trevor could come sleep over with me; that always cools things off. Enough, anyway.” He shook his head. “But I’m not there, instead I’m using up my minutes trying to talk him down, keep him from blowing up. It’s fucked.”

“What about Trevor’s mom? Can’t she do something about it?”

Cole snorted. “Yeah. Right. The Asswipe never does anything in front of her, he’s the almost-perfect father. And Trevor’s too cool to tell her, the idiot.”

“No way.” I stopped, a second.

“Way.” He looked at me; and  I saw the worry, behind the scowl. “Oh, she’s got to know. She’s just got to. She lives there. But she doesn’t know how bad it is for Trevor, how homophobic The Asshole is . . . ”

“But he’s not out to his father! Just his mother; right?”

Cole looked at me. “Like his father doesn’t know? It’s what he rides Trevor about. And something bad is going to happen, someday.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, as we went back to walking slowly along.

“Yeah.” Cole shrugged. “Yeah. Well, it’s just how things are.” He put his hands deeper in his pockets. “But I wish I wasn’t stuck down here, for another week.”

And suddenly, the look on his face, the tone of his voice – all at once, he was a vulnerable sixteen-year-old again; and my heart just, throbbed in sympathy for him.

So I reached around him with one arm, and pulled him in close to me, again, but tighter, this time, and I held him like that; pressing, warm, for second after second, as we walked along.

And I felt his body relax, a little; and lean on me, and shape to me a bit, the way a boyfriend’s body will do, and my heartbeat thudded up again.

We stopped at a kind of sidewalk restaurant for a snack, before riding back. We shared a plate of nachos, actually; corn chips smothered in cheese and beans and not-very-good guacamole.

His choice. But I still ate some.

The things we do for love.

It really was on the sidewalk – that part of the little restaurant, I mean. Literally. Just a flimsy plastic sheet for a roof, and a kind of skinny metal rail running along the walkway, and on the other side, the whole reality of the beach. Inline skaters zooming by close enough to grab our food; people walking, more people sitting and selling or sitting and begging, and then the whole expanse of sand, and open-air showers, and lifeguard platforms, and beyond everything the ocean, and the sky . . .

Our little table was right across the walk from a tarot reader and a stand selling yet more hemp goods, this time hemp macrame. As we munched our gooey chips, we could hear the tarot reader’s readings, first one client, then another, and then another; they sounded kind of similar, and I watched the corner of Cole’s mouth twitch, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

“So,” Cole went, eventually. Wiping his fingers deliberately on the flimsy little brown paper napkin. “Did I tell you, I got the grade on our history paper?”

His voice was way too casual, way too controlled; but I was too excited to notice.

“Really? Cool!”

“Yeah. It was just posted last night; I found it this morning.”

“And?”

Okay; maybe I said it a little smugly.

Cole shrugged, with a smile. “An ‘A’.”

I blinked at him; waiting for him to go on. He just smiled his Cole-smile at me.

“An ‘A’?” I asked. After a couple of seconds. “Just an ‘A’?” Not an ‘A-plus’? I mean, no extra points, or anything? A hundred-and-ten, out of a hundred?”

“Nope. Just an ‘A’.”

I could tell by the look on his face, Cole was enjoying this. Way too much. But it didn’t matter; I was still absorbing it.

“An ‘A’. Just an ‘A’.” I repeated it.

Cole nodded.

“Were . . . ” I groped for it. “Were there any comments? Feedback?”

Cole’s half-grin widened, a millimeter or so. “Yeah; she said, ‘Good Work’.” I could see his eyes scanning my face, his amusement building.

I was quiet a second or so, taking it in. Then:

“’Good Work’? ‘Good Work’?” my voice rising.

You have to understand, about this paper we did.

“’Good Work’? No extra credit?”

I mean – it really was brilliant, as papers go. Submitted on a DVD; beautifully argued, beautifully researched, a bibliography almost as long as the paper –

“And she didn’t even bother to say anything about the extras? The graphics?”

The paper itself, the writing, was brilliant; but Cole and me had found visual aids, too: charts, pie graphs, maps . . . art work, engravings showing English Civil War turning points, like the King in Oxford – and also daguerreotypes of principals in the American Civil War, Lee, Grant, Sherman, Lincoln – and we’d put them all on the DVD with hyperlinks to the text in the paper . . .

“Well,” went Cole, still watching my face, “she did say, ‘Good Work’. I thought that might cover it.”

I could feel myself getting louder, and I couldn’t help it. “And the video clips! All the interviews! Nothing about the video clips - ?”

The video clips were key; they made the paper.

It turns out, huge numbers of people are, like, obsessed by the English Civil War in England, and the American Civil War, here. A lot of people – I mean a LOT – get together to re-enact famous battles, and stuff. On both sides of the Atlantic.

We’d found tons of video clips online; Civil War re-enactors, talking soulfully to the camera, in character, about why they were fighting, what battles they’d been through, what life in the besieged cities and the trenches was like –

And we’d put a bunch of them on the DVD; again, with links from the text, and from the supporting graphics. And WE’D GOTTEN PERMISSION from all the sources! We’d gone through total hell doing it, but it was all legal.

It was all brilliant. And the video clips were moving as anything, too.

Ken Burns couldn’t have done any better. I swear it.

“No,” from Cole; “No, nothing about the video clips. Just, ‘Good Work’.” His head was tilted a little to one side, now, as he watched me, with that smile.

I finally exploded.

“That, that . . . Cole, I would’ve gotten an A-plus on that paper here! At Cal, I mean. ANY history class! That paper is so, so far beyond normal college work . . . it’s postgraduate material! And she didn’t say anything about the bibliography, all the cites - ?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I dimly noticed the tarot reader and her latest client looking at us; the tarot reader clearly annoyed.

Cole’s half-smile deepened into a dimple. “You know, it is possible that I kind of . . . pissed her off, a little. Over the semester, I mean. Some of the things I said in class . . . ” His eyebrow twitched. “Maybe. She’s kind of sensitive. Kind of like you.”

That stopped me, for just a second. Then –

“But . . . but, that’s WORSE, that’s not incompetence, it’s, it’s, MALICE. You don’t grade down somebody’s paper because you don’t like them, that’s, just, so totally wrong, it’s UNETHICAL . . . ! Fuck, Cole, you’ve got to appeal this! You’ve got to petition the department head, show the paper to somebody, show it to your counselor – ”

I went on with my rant, as people at the other tables looked at us, and the tarot lady went back and forth between glaring at me and talking happy talk to her client; and the December sun started dipping towards the water, and Cole just kept on, smiling . . .

*  *  *  *  *

Thank you for reading! Comments are always deeply appreciated, at dlgrantsf@yahoo.com.