The Suburban You (14 page)

You paddle furiously and do not have the extra breath to talk with your son or your friends. You get to the finish line just one boat length behind your friend and his son. You are all sweating and your arms are sore and tired. “That was great,” your friend says, turning around to acknowledge that he is the winner. “Yeah,” you say, “that is a great arm workout,” meaning, but not saying, that your arms are spent.

“It's such a great day, isn't it?” your friend says, meaning, but not saying, “We beat you by a boat length, therefore we are better kayakers than you.” “Yeah,” you say. “What a relaxing way to spend the afternoon,” meaning, “There is no way that I will ever admit to this guy that I am tired, even though I could not pick up a fork right now if I had to.”

You all jump out of your kayaks into the water and swim. You pull your kayaks up onto the beach. You wait for the others to arrive. You wait for a long time. When they are in sight, you yell out to everyone, “Hey, you guys, isn't this great?” meaning, “We beat you, you are not as fast as us.” They agree, knowing what you mean, because they have no alternative. “Yes, we had a nice relaxing paddle over here,” meaning, “You guys are assholes for racing against each other.”

Open the Windows

You frequently drive with your wife and kids, and whenever you do you are the driver. You are a driver who likes to drive with the windows open, especially in the summer on days when it is eighty degrees out. Even on very hot days, you like to crank up the AC and open the windows. There is something about fresh air that you really enjoy. It is one of those small pleasures in life that makes you very happy.

Unlike you, your wife does not seem to enjoy the feeling of air washing over her while driving, and she has a very subtle way of revealing that fact to you. She closes the windows immediately after detecting that they are open, usually starting with your window. It could be a beautiful, eighty-five-degree day and an open window will really bother her. She will reach to the center console, where the window controls are located, and proceed to close your window first, because that is the open window that seems to bother her the most. Then she will close her window, followed by the back windows. She thinks that because the fresh air annoys her it is as annoying to everyone else in the car.

What is especially bothersome to her, for reasons that you are unclear of, is an open sunroof. You are lucky enough to have two sunroofs in your SUV, which influenced your decision to buy the overpriced gas-guzzler, but neither will get to be opened for more than a minute or two because it takes only that long until you detect your wife's left hand reaching for the overhead, roof-mounted sunroof controls. Sometimes you will try to sneak open a sunroof, say, before your wife gets in the car while you are waiting in it for her, but every time she will notice that it is open and it will bother her. When she does notice, she will look at you like you have done the most ridiculous thing imaginable as she depresses the rocker switch, closing it.

You cannot begin to understand why she would want those windows and sunroofs closed, but she does. It becomes her top priority each time you and she are in the car together. One hypothesis that you have going, but which you have never shared with her, is that she knows you get great pleasure out of driving with open windows and sunroofs, just like you get pleasure from drinking grape juice, and that is pleasure she does not want you to have. Often she will call you from home while you are in the car on your cell phone and will tell you that she cannot hear you because the window is open. You close it. An open car window annoys her even when she is not in the car.

But one day you drive your friend-boss's car home. It is a Volvo convertible and you drive home with the top down. You pull up to the front of the house and the kids announce to Mom that “Dad got a convertible.” Your wife comes to greet you as you are walking up to the house, knowing that the car belongs to your friend-boss, and looks at the car enviously. “I love convertibles. Can't we get one?” she says.

Go Windsurfing

One thing that you like to do at the beach is windsurf. To windsurf, you launch from the sailing beach, a beach reserved for boaters, not swimmers. It is a hot day and you call your friends and tell them to meet you at the beach. You tell them that you have a great idea. “We will meet you down at the north end of the sailing beach,” you tell them. “The kids will have a great time swimming there and I will bring my windsurfer down so that the kids can surf on it and dive off of it.” This will be a fun beach day. You get your suits on, round up all the beach gear, and everyone piles in the car for the three-minute ride.

To the south is the swimming beach for your suburb's residents only, and to the immediate north of that is the sailing beach, also exclusively for the residents of your suburb. To the north of the sailing beach is a private stretch of beach that serves as the enormous sandy backyards of your suburb's nine most expensive homes. The private beach, you assume, is for the exclusive use of the nine homeowners who have paid for this privilege. Their homes are all eight-digit homes and most of the forty- to fifty-year-old dads who live in these homes, you assume, have received enormous sums of money for cashing out of something or other and for the most part wear shorts, T-shirts, and sandals when they go to “work” every day. You do not make eye contact with those homes, because they are a constant reminder to you that you are not winning this particular competition, not yet, anyway.

The private beach is important to you because it is adjacent to the section of the sailing beach that has been delegated for windsurfers. You figure that on this Saturday everyone in your small group, even you, will get to do exactly what they want to at the beach. You will go windsurfing while your kids just step over the imaginary line in the water and go swimming in the private-beach water. When you come in with your windsurfer, you will pop off the sail and your kids can mess around on it and use it as a surfboard/diving board. Perfect!

You unload your wife, the kids, towels, sand toys, beach bags, football, Frisbee, lacrosse sticks, and life vests and head off to park the car. You wave to your friends, who have already done the same, and your wife and kids go to join them. You go park your car in the lot that is a quarter-mile away from where you just dropped everyone off. You run from the parking lot to the windsurfer rack and while doing so realize that the sand is hotter than the asphalt and you burn your feet as you painfully sprint the quarter-mile.

You unlock your windsurfer from the rack and carry it to the water, a trip that is about a hundred yards, and drop it there. Your kids are playing with their friends. You run back up to the rack and grab your mast, sail, and boom. You assemble the sail, a fifteen-minute process. A strong wind kicks up and suddenly ten windsurfers launch from the shore outward. You stay behind. Your kids are anxious to get into the water. You tell the kids that they can go swimming right in front of where your board is sitting on the sailing beach. “Let's go,” you say. Everyone jumps in and you are all having a great time.

Three minutes into it, a woman drives over to you in a four-wheel, bright-green-colored John Deere all-terrain vehicle. You assume that she is the beach manager, riding on her official beach vehicle. From the comfort of her leather padded seat she yells, “No swimming on the sailing beach.” “Oh, it's OK,” you tell her. “I am their dad, and these are our friends. I am here with my windsurfer and the kids just wanted to cool off. We”—you look over to your wife and friends—“will take full responsibility. We have done this before.” To which she responds, “No swimming on the sailing beach!” even more loudly than before. “Come on, Dad,” your son says, fearing that you will get put in jail if you do not acquiesce. Your friends look at you nervously. “We can't swim here, Daddy,” your four-year-old daughter says.

You get out of the water and talk privately to the beach Nazi. Being a corporate executive, you have experience convincing people to do a lot of things and you believe that after a brief conversation with her she will understand your predicament and look the other way. On the walk over to the strict-looking woman sitting in the four-wheeler you think how impressed your family and friends will be when you show them how persuasive you can be. She tells you that this is the sailing beach and not the swimming beach. “No swimming allowed here,” she concludes, then twists her throttle and is off to bust another lawbreaker who she notices toward the south end of the beach.

You announce to your wife, your kids, your friends' kids, and your friends that you have another idea. As you announce this, you look out and the wind is still blowing strongly and coming from the south, so there are no waves. These ideal conditions, of high winds originating from the south and flat water, are a rare combination on this sailing beach and you want to take full advantage of them, but first you must take care of your disappointed kids, wife, friends' kids, and your friends.

“This is my idea,” you say. “Let's take three steps over this way”—you point to the private beach. “We will take the board and the kids can dive off it.” Everyone is excited. “He is so creative,” you think your friends are commenting to themselves about you, even though that is the furthest thing from their minds now.

The kids are psyched. You get the board and push it out into the water, toward the private beach. “It's OK here,” you tell your kids. Your kids and your friends' kids pile on the board and they are having the time of their lives. They paddle around with the board and where it is deep they jump off. They all stand on it and try to balance it. For them, this is the best day of the summer so far. You think that your friends think that you are great for turning their kids on to this new activity. Everyone is having great fun. Your vision is realized.

Not so fast, cowboy. From the eight-figure house that is adjacent to the sailing beach but on the private beach, a woman emerges. You notice her walking toward you. She looks mean and she looks like she is on a mission. She senses that you are the person to talk to in this situation. This woman is one of your neighbors, a woman whom you have not yet seen at a party, school function, or anywhere else around town. She storms over to you and points to a sign, which you have noticed and ignored, which says,

PRIVATE BEACH
NO TRESPASSING

She tells you that you are on
her
property, that this is a private beach, and that the beach on the other side of the fence is the public sailing beach. “Could you move over there,” she says, not asks. Beautiful, you think, another opportunity to exercise your skills of persuasion. You describe your situation to her and tell her the long story of how you told your friends to come here, how the kids are finally having fun, and how this will be the last time that you encroach on her privacy. “Just this once,” you plead. “It is a very hot day and we are just trying to do something fun with the kids.” She does not care about any of it. She wants you off
her
property. If she lets you on, she says, she must let everyone on. At that moment, you vow to yourself that if you are ever fortunate enough to own a home that is so terrifically located you will always provide public access to people who are enjoying and respecting it.

Always looking for a positive spin, you turn to your family and friends and announce, “Hey, who wants to go over to the swimming beach?” Your idea is met with less than enthusiastic expressions from everyone until you and the guys peel off alone to start hauling up all the beach gear. “Maybe Blake's Spanish teacher, Ms. What's-Her-Name”—who they have all heard about—“is over there.”

The next week, you go to the swimming beach and take a walk with your family along the beach. Losing track of where you are, you look up to notice that you are already at the private beach. There is one curious thing, however. The sign that last week read

PRIVATE BEACH
NO TRESPASSING

has been painted black and is spray-painted with the words

NUDE BEACH

Learn How to Kite Surf

Your friend Stephen windsurfs. You also windsurf, but you have never done this activity with him. You are talking to him one day about a new neighbor in your suburb, the twenty-one-year-old son-in-law of a man who owns a national business you will refer to as an oil-changing and lubricating company. This son-in-law is lucky in that he got the right woman, the lubricating king's daughter, pregnant.

Since they haven't a place to call home, Dad buys the couple, immediately after their rapidly arranged wedding, a $4-million fixer-upper that is on the water. You hear that Dad gave this fortunate couple, with their well-lubricated cars, a matching grant to fix the place up, you know, to make it tolerable.

The home is right on the lake, and being on the lake inspires water activities. Your friend talks to this oil-and-lubrication beneficiary about windsurfing, something that the lubrication kid wants to try. The kid tries out this sport, which is a lot like learning how to ride a bike. You have to understand how to balance, and once you do that it becomes second nature. Before you do, though, it is just hard work. On that day of learning how to windsurf, the lubrication kid kind of gets it and likes it.

Your quick-witted and funny friend has an idea. He has always wanted to go kite-surfing but has never had the opportunity. The equipment is expensive and it is specialized. Knowing that you all like to believe that you are terrific athletes, he tells the lubrication kid, “Shit, you really got the hang of this today. You picked up windsurfing faster than anyone I know. How did you like it?” “I love it, man” is the lubrication kid's response. “If you like windsurfing, you should try kite-surfing. Have you seen that before?” “What's that?” the lubrication kid inquires. “Well, you have this surfboard with straps. Separate from that, there is a massive kite made out of high-tech Kevlar. It is ribbed with titanium battens. The kite is attached to two handgrips by four one-hundred-foot-long guy wires. You fly the kite, then strap on the board and off you go.”