And She Was (17 page)

I took a swig then passed to Les. He took several swallows then handed back to me. When Jill rapped on the rear window, Les had the bottle firmly planted between his thighs. He lifted it to his lips and returned it to his crotch. Honey rapped again. I turned to see her morgue-purple lips yelling and her fuchsia nails gesturing. Les took another drink and nestled the bottle back between his legs. He gazed straight ahead at the gulls soaring over the road between the ocean and the cliffs.

“The thing is,” he said, talking more to the water and rocks than to me, “I can be
the fag
in Dutch or
the Indian
somewhere else. I’m where I belong.”

I stared at him, maybe a little too long. “Okay,” I said and settled back against the rattling cab and watched too. A rare beautiful day made the shadows deepen along the cliffs and turned the waves nearly translucent green at the crests. When Jill and Honey gave up their window rapping, Les shared the tequila again. We passed it back and forth in silence and watched the gulls careening in our dust and the waves sharing themselves with tidal pools.

The party was being held at Humpy Cove, a perfect curve of sand about thirty minutes east of town. It was a rough trip. I think Jill tried to hit every pothole she could, knowing Les and I would get the worst of it. She pulled off at a wide spot in the road. Two trucks were already parked there, two wheels off the road. I stood up slowly, kicking my legs in turn to get the kinks out and hopped over the truck side. Several men, each holding a can of beer, stood around a good-size fire. Two others were rolling a big driftwood log close to the blaze. The other two HiTide babes were already there, beers in hand. A stack of liquor lay on the sand.

My plan for this party was to keep from getting drunk. I wasn’t really sure what was expected of me and figured I’d better be somewhat firm
of mind. Whenever you get invited to a party to balance the number of guys and gals, it’s kind of ambiguous. With me along, there were five girls and seven men, which left two guys out. I wasn’t sure how I should calculate the Les factor.

Jill and Honey didn’t wait for us. They slammed the truck doors and headed for the party, waving and shouting hellos. Les and I followed more slowly, picking our way through a stretch of beach grass littered with driftwood. He still had the tequila, which he used to balance himself. I noticed immediately that I was a bit tipsy. My boots slipped from the tops of the logs I attempted to walk on and sank into grassy sand, which made for an awkward journey. I usually don’t notice my impairment level when I’m sitting down. And while watching toilet paper unroll is a fair test, walking driftwood logs is even better. I’d have to switch to plan B, not getting any more drunk.

As I cleared the grass-log field, I saw that two of the HiTide chicks had already chosen their guys. Lots of body draping, laughing, and beer sharing. The other coke-whores were still choosing. Four of the guys were paying very good attention to everything they said. One poor guy was still off trying to wrestle driftwood logs. At a certain stage of intoxication you can pick up on all sorts of dynamics between people that usually go unnoticed.

“Hey,” Honey said, pulling herself away from an engrossing conversation with two of the fishermen, “this is Brandy.”

“Hi,” I said.

“I’m Les,” Les said because no one else would.

“She’s over at the Elbow,” Honey said, ignoring Les. “But we’re trying to get her on at the HiTide.”

The two paired-up guys raised a Bud in my direction and bent back to their fake blondes.

Of course, this was news to me. It was bad enough that the HiTide babes and I shared a hair color and a certain slutty sensibility. I didn’t need to share their bar.

I dug through the ice chest and came up with a Bartles & Jaymes Very Berry wine cooler. I tossed the cap into the fire. Out on the beach, the wind blew more aggressively than in town. I tipped my head back to take a long drink then reached up to slide the rubber band out
of my hair. It streamed back as I stared out at the sun-skimmed water and let the wind into my eyes.

“Hey,” Honey said, suddenly beside me. “So what do you think? Looks like Jill’s leaving, and we’ll need someone.”

“I like the Elbow just fine.” I wanted her to hear my dismissive tone, but she wasn’t adept at picking up subtlety.

“It’s better at the HiTide. The guys aren’t as hammered. The hotel gives us free rooms.” Honey downed the last of her beer. “And, do we know how to party.”

I smoothed an arch in the sand with my right foot.

She leaned toward me, her voice lower. “It’s just classier at the HiTide. You probably didn’t know, but the Elbow usually has a native girl working the floor. You know, someone local. You’d fit in better over with us.”

Fit in. I looked at the scattered party participants and realized that for the first time in weeks I was with an all-white crowd, that I
fit in
with this gaggle of blondes. I thought about the Elbow; it was true. It was a native place. Sure there were lots of white fishermen, but always an Aleut backdrop. Always that undertone feeling of trespass. At the Elbow I was the blonde, however uncomfortable. At the HiTide I’d be one of the blondes; I’d lose my backdrop.

“I don’t want to fit in,” I said.

This time Honey picked up on what I’d hoped was a haughty tone. “Fine. Whatever.” She swayed back to the two fishermen she’d left.

I walked away from the fire toward the ocean across smooth sand. I hated the part of me that wanted to join them, be one of the pack. I’d never had a sister, hadn’t even had a best girlfriend since grade school. As soon as the boys arrived on the scene, I’d been too busy. I turned my back to the wind to watch them for a minute—hanging on their men, but still together, shouting conversation, laughing. I’d read about myself once in a women’s studies course. The definition had jumped off the page. Male identified—a woman whose self-esteem, self-worth is achieved only through relation with men, often shunning female companionship. I’d quickly listed several women I knew and decided I didn’t fit the definition. And even if I did, I was nowhere close to overcoming my diagnosis by attempting to female identify with these chicks.

The wine cooler went down easy, and as I drained it, the driftwood-rolling guy was there with another bottle.

“Tom,” he said, handing it over.

Tom was a nice-looking guy—sandy brown hair, longish and thick. He was about five nine with a broad chest and a round, hard ass. He was definitely the kind of male with whom I liked to identify.

“Aqua Vitae,” I said, clinking my bottle against his Corona. “Brandy.”

Tom shoved one hand into his pocket. “Do you live here?”

“Sort of.”

“Where you from?”

“A little of a lot of places. I spent time in California and Seattle.”

“San Luis Obispo. I surf.”

“You mean like for a living?”

“Nah. I wish. Been coming up here every season so I can surf the rest of the year.”

“How’s that working?”

“Choice.” Tom gave me a grin that closed the area around us. He dug a half-smashed joint from his pocket and lit it. After taking a toke, he handed it to me. “What do you do?”

I sucked in the smoke and held on to it. This wasn’t the usual stuff I’d had around Dutch. This was straight from Kona.

“I’m a cocktail waitress.”

“You mean like for a living?”

I took another toke, passed the joint back, and refused to answer.

Honey and one of the guys stumbled past us, arms winding around each other as they made their way down the beach. Honey giggled and winked at me, which pissed me off. I gave her a hard, I’m-not-your-buddy look and turned back to Tom.

He threw his drained beer bottle and pulled another from his coat pocket. “You ever surfed?”

“I’ll surf the day they put sharks on the endangered species list.”

Tom laughed. We walked along the beach. He pointed out the various stages of the waves, how to look for patterns that belied underwater topography. This same knowledge made it easier for him to pick up his second favorite hobby, sea kayaking.

“You know right here is where they invented kayaking. Well maybe not invented. But the Aleuts were the most radical kayakers in the world. They would outdistance the big sailing ships. They’d scope out a big swell, then go for it, riding for miles. I mean, they were basically surfing.”

As the sun reached for the horizon, turning everything lustrous and gold, the wind stopped. After so much unseen force pushing on my body, fiddling with my hair, playing with my clothes, the sudden calm felt odd. Like I’d stepped indoors into the largest room imaginable. I was also quite drunk. As Tom and I picked our way back to the fire, he took my arm now and then to keep us both upright.

At the fire, someone was roasting
baidarkas
on a stick. Two of the coke-whores were making out with two of the fishermen. Les, straddling a driftwood log, was deep in conversation with one of the unpaired guys. A pot of clams in seawater boiled away on a rock at the fire’s edge.

When the clams opened, one of the guys poured out the foamy water. We all grabbed a couple, unhinging their shells and peeling up the small bodies. After the clams, a joint made its way around the fire.

That’s when the jokes began.

Tom told of a ship’s crew who spot a pirate gang fast approaching. “The captain says, ‘Quick bring my red shirt.’ The captain slips it on. They all kick ass and win. The next day, two pirate ships attack. The captain says, ‘Get my red shirt.’ It’s bloody, but they kick ass. Stoked from their triumph, the crew asks the captain why he always wears a red shirt for battle. ‘Well,’ says the captain. ‘If I get cut up in battle, the red will hide the blood, keep morale up.’ The next day, they spot ten pirate ships coming on. The crew is freaking. But the first mate says, ‘Captain, should I get your red shirt?’ ‘No,’ the captain says, ‘bring my brown pants.’”

The joke fit the Aleutian-beach-party mood. Several more jokes, most involving a priest, a rabbi, and something else, made the rounds. Les told one about a priest, a rabbi, and a fag.

Perfect timing. Everyone laughed. So he got adventurous.

“Three guys in a bar are arguing about who’s got the biggest dick. The bartender gets sick of listening to them, so he says, ‘All right, pull ’em out and lay ’em on the bar. I’ll decide.’ So the guys whip their dicks
out on the bar. Just then a queer comes up. ‘What’ll it be?’ the bartender asks. ‘Well,’ the queer says, ‘I was going to order a sex on the beach, but on second thought, I’ll take the buffet.’”

Les didn’t notice the not-quite polite chuckles that whispered “enough.” He was standing up now, hands on his hips.

“What’s the nicest thing one guy can say to another guy at the bar?”

Shrugs all around. Silence.

“Let me push in your stool.” Les laughed alone, oblivious to the shift. “Okay, so after a blow job—”

The fisherman with Jill stood up. “Who the fuck brought the fag?”

The dying-sunset feel, so sensuous and cozy moments before, turned ominous. I looked at Les’s face, just going slack as he realized his error. As he realized he was no longer among friends.

I didn’t admit I brought the fag. But I did launch into the only jokes I knew. The best rescue I had in me, stoned and drunk as I was.

“So,” I said, standing up and rolling my shoulders back so my sweater rode up. “Mary Jane was walking down the alley one night when four boys grabbed her and started ripping off her clothes.” I said it with the required sweet southern voice. “But Mary Jane just laughed. She knew her clothes wouldn’t fit those boys.”

It was a hit, and Mary Janes were the only jokes I could ever remember, so I told another.

“Mary Jane went to the movies one night all by herself. This man came and sat right beside her. Well, he started reaching his hand down her bra. But Mary Jane just laughed. She knew she put her money in her shoe.”

“That chick’s a moron,” one of the fishermen said.

A few more rounds of jokes eased the tension and kept everyone together for a time. Then pairs began dispersing into the night. By the time I noticed, all four of the HiTide chicks had taken off with their chosen guy. Tom slid his arm around me.

“You want to take a walk?”

I looked at Les, now left with the two unattached guys, still trying to think up more jokes. He wasn’t going to get laid, but it didn’t look like he was going to get the shit beat out of him either.

“Why not.”

Tom and I started toward the road because everyone else had gone toward the water, and it was probably getting crowded that way.

We managed the grassy strip with only one fall and were soon over the road and climbing the soft rounded hills behind. The sky capped the island with a slow-turning spangle of stars. We climbed a narrow path shadowed under a half-moon to the top of the first mountain and didn’t even pause as we descended again and climbed the next.

Hiking when you’re drunk is not a graceful thing. But hiking stoned is like floating sometimes. I was both, but the pot seemed to push to the front as my boots found the path passing between hillocks of ryegrass, mounding from the rocky earth like moguls. Coming down I couldn’t help but skip now and then, giving way to the push of gravity. I forgot about Tom as I hopped from one tuft to the next. With each launch, I felt for a moment at the apex that I might not come down. That I could hop three or five or a hundred at once. I think I may have flapped my arms a couple of times. You never can tell. There may be minute gaps in gravity that only those lucky enough to be springing across tufts of grass would discover.

Of course I fell. It was the boots, poorly made for tuft jumping. Tom reached down to help me up, forcing me to remember he was there and that I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with him. We climbed the next soft mountain and found a pillbox at the top. The perfect concrete hexagonal throne. I listened to the waves and watched the sparkling ridges that are an ocean under moonlight.

He put his arm around me and drew me in for a kiss. I kissed back. Then started the requisite speech about how I had a boyfriend, how much I liked him, always making sure I didn’t seem too sure, because I wasn’t. Thad was a million miles away, and Tom was close. Very close. The two were unlikely to meet up anytime soon.