Chapter 1
If my parents had waited three months to die, I wouldn’t have moved across the country. If I’d tried, I probably could have gotten out of it, gotten emancipated or something. But getting to move to California was that silver living in the cloud of orphanaging (verb; the act of becoming an orphan).
When I was younger, I’d spend every summer in California visiting my new guardians. Back then they were just my aunt and uncle of course. Aunt Jimena was my mom’s sister. She moved out with Uncle Gary when he graduated from Santa Cruz and got some fancy tech job. My parents would gripe all year long about how they were going afford the trip. But as soon as they touched the West Coast there were no burdens that could hold them down. My mother’s voice lifted as soon as she saw her sister. They would giggle like teenagers and spent almost every moment in each other’s presence touching in some way. They’d take turns braiding each other’s hair, leaning on one another, and holding hands. My dad and Gary were hardly as giddy as their wives, but Gary had a lot of toys he liked showing off and it usually wasn’t until we got back home that my dad felt terse about it. While he was away from his real life, he got to play with all the gadgets Gary had and pretend like he could have his own someday.
Jimena and Gary also had a kid my age. Thomas James, but that was just his name when he got in trouble. Any other time he was TJ. We got along great because everything I wanted, he had, and everything he wanted I had. The first day of the trip he’d always be like a shaken bottle of soda. There was a year of new discoveries, toys, and secrets he had to show me. But I was nearly a year older than him and could beat him in almost every game we played. He’d barrel through the world with his bull head tilted down and I strolled proud with my chin up like I knew where I was going.
Those were the best times, when our parents acted more like babysitters and the summer felt like forever. But back home things were getting worse between my parents. One summer all those gripes about not being able to afford California came to a head in a way. They sent me off west on my own so they could stay home and work. I remember my aunt huffing all summer long. TJ told me his parents had offered to pay for everyone to come out but my parents had refused. After that, nothing they did could make me feel welcome. But for the next few years that was just how the summer went. When I started High School, I stopped going all together. I threw a real fit about it, got my ass kicked about it, and even tried to sneak there by tricking my aunt, but none of it mattered. My parents gave every excuse they had until they eventually settled on 9/11 and every conversation turned into an excuse to get real racist about Muslims.
Despite enjoying my summers away from home, I didn’t particularly like California as a place. I always figured I’d die on the East Coast, so I developed a chip on my shoulder to defend it. I liked that it was gray most of the year. I liked how crowded it felt, especially juxtaposed to the vacant soul of the franchise strip malls. I liked that being fast and rude was considered good manners. Maybe “liking” isn’t the right term. I just never wanted to be anywhere else. But now, California offered me something more valuable than any inheritance. In California nobody knew me anymore.
There was an inheritance by the way. My aunt and uncle had convinced my parents to make a will and get a life insurance plan many years ago. I know that, because she said as much when she came out to help me deal with the mess. The nice thing about getting thrown off the road to an untimely demise by a drunk drive is it pays great. But, the bad thing about having crazy religious parents is if you’re a fuck up like I am, they change their will to give all that money to the church.
My aunt’s reaction was how I knew that California could be a real fresh start for me. She couldn’t imagine they would go so far as to write me out of the of their will, which made one of us. She figured something must be terribly wrong. She just needed to find out if it was wrong with them or with me. The day before our flight to California she sat me down to figure out what she needed to have an intervention for.
“I know things must have been hard between you and your parents these last few years.” She sat in the desk chair in our hotel with her legs open and firmly planted on the floor. She leaned forward with her forearms resting on her thighs. Exhaustion had drawn deep over her face throughout the weeks. She hadn’t expected to be in New Jersey for so long, but there’s a lot of business in death. All day as we got prepared to leave, she seemed pre-occupied by something intangible in the distance. But now, she spoke bluntly, putting real effort to keep eye contact with me, fighting not to slump forward and fall asleep on the floor. “You can tell me anything that happened, but you don’t have to.” She wouldn’t continue until I acknowledged this.
“Thank you. It’s hard to know what to say… you know.” The real hard part was trying to gage what she might have been told. I could paint myself into a lie without realizing it. But if my canvas was as blank as I though it was, I couldn’t waste the opportunity.
“I know.” She let out a deep breath and considered her words for awhile before speaking again. “I was once… well your mother and I actually, we were teenagers once too, if you can believe it. We got into our fair share of trouble. I don’t know if your mother ever told you about those days. But regardless of how she handled things with you, I want you to know that with me there’s nothing you could have done that would make me not love you. And I—” Her eyes began to tear up so she straightened herself up. Finally breaking eye contact to look out the window, blink her eye harshly a few times, she took a deep breath, and came back to me. “What I’m trying to say, is I just need to know if you’re in trouble. Or if you need help. Your uncle and I aren’t going to judge you. But we can only do so much when we know so little. Do you understand?”
Sitting there, in a lifeless Newark airport hotel, I felt the warmth of the Pacific Coast cast over me. I began to carefully string my story together. I told her how I was having doubts about the church and my parents believed punishment was the only way back into the light of the lord. We fought all the time and they began to escalate until it got physical. That’s when the rift really started. Some nights they’d kick me out and I’d have to go stay with a friend. I was scared to tell people because despite everything I didn’t want them to get in trouble. The best friends to have in those situations are the ones who are also in bad places with their parents. They understood me, and their parents didn’t care to get my parents in trouble. So, I would hang around and do stuff I knew I shouldn’t have, like drink and smoke. And I stopped going to school regularly because I had a friend who was going to open a shop after high school and I’d help him run it so I didn’t need to go. Or that’s what I thought. “It’s stupid I get that now.” I told here. “It’s all so stupid. I just didn’t know what to do. I’m just stupid.” I had been letting myself cry freely throughout the story, but now Jimena was crying as well.
“You are not stupid Roberto.” Her voice was pleading as she came to sit next to me on the bed and hug me with all her strength. “It’s ok. It’s all going to be ok I promise.” Hearing her say that was more of a relief that she could ever know. It wasn’t that anything I had said was untrue. But it was a book missing a lot of pages. There was no mention of my parents finding out I was sneaking off during Sunday school to make out with Owen Marsh and the subsequent ways they tried to cleanse me of my fruitiness. I certainly didn’t talk about the real places I stayed when I got kicked out. I also figured she didn’t need to know everything else I did beyond drinking and smoking at punk shows. I had clearly made her sad enough with all the other details of my teenage trouble making. She didn’t have to know about all the ways I hurt myself, or the time I almost went too far. I didn’t want her to know about the time my father looked at me and said I should have gone farther.
With Jimena satisfied by my newly painted life, she seemed to have little hesitations moving me in. My parents always used to say Gary and Jimena were rich, but California rich must be different from Jersey rich because the townhome they owned only had two bedrooms. I would have to share a room with TJ. It could be worse though. Despite living thousands of miles away from each other he and I both grew up to have similar interests. He picked up drumsticks in middle school and never put them down, whereas I transitioned to bass when I realized everyone wanted to be the guitar player. We both skate but he’s gotten into long boarding apparently. We were like opposite sides of the same coin in that way. While I was growing out my hair and dying it red, he shaved his off. I can’t stand how quick my Mexican-stache grows in, but he’s been trying to grow out his stubble for years.TJ looks like a defensive lineman while I look like the kicker. And despite being not seeing the sun 75% of the year I still look like I jumped the boarder, while TJ passes even with a tan. I guess that’s his dad’s fault though.
The first day we try to chat, but between unpacking and catching Uncle Gary up on things, we end up passing each other through the house like strangers. I begin to worry that maybe TJ and I weren’t as similar as I thought, but on Saturday he catches me heading back to our room after breakfast. Out of sight from his parents he dims his voice “Rob you wanna” and raises an imaginary joint to his lips. I nod with perhaps too much vigor. He cracks a big smile and yells out to his parents that we’re gonna go on a walk to the coast.
Their house is part of a neighborhood of complexes that are considered “on the coast.” The only real beach is about a quarter mile and usually so packed that no one who lives here bothers to go. The rest of their coast is rocks building up low cliff sides. Half the units in the greater neighborhood area are vacation rentals. All of the “street signs” made to more easily figure out which identical condo is yours for the weekend, also include arrowed signs point towards that lucrative strip of sand.TJ is not following the arrows. He doesn’t even check the signs. On one of the streets, we cut through the side of someone’s yard in that no-mans land between units. This complex backs to a man-made pond, possibly a construction choice to say, sorry we tricked you into living so far from the beach. He walks close to the pond so it looks less like we’re walking in people’s back yard. At the head of the pond, we keep heading towards and area of shrubby cliffside. There’s a narrow dirt path that inclines, and with the trees and tall weeds around it, it’s hard to see further ahead. The path widens the deeper in we trek, and signs of life, empty bottles, and ripped plastic bags, begin to litter the way. When it finally opens up, we’re about 20 feet up from the water in a small clearing of cliffside. There’s a small fire pit, and two hip height boulders on opposite sides. It’s a shitty spot with a nice view.
TJ pulls out a plastic bag with a bowl and scraps of bud. He packs it, takes the first hit, then passes it to me. We go back and forth like this until it’s mostly burned out, and I tell him I’m good. He sits on one rock and I sit on the other. We both look out at the ocean. Neither of us has said anything more profound than “Watch out for bird shit” since I got here. I’ve heard some people can pick up a conversation after years like they only left yesterday. We don’t seem to have that bond.
“This is a good spot.” I try.
“Yeah, no it’s cool. I’ll take you here some night when someone’s got a fire going.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” There are things I could say, things I could ask him, but my head feels like it’s lifting from my body, a miserable puff of smog escaping the dense anti-matter of my body. It’s awkward now. It’s been awkward everywhere I go since my parents didn’t come home. I used to hold my own. I was never the life of the party, but you don’t want to be when you’re too young to be at the party. But I could talk, and more importantly I could play. Some of the most awkward fucks I’ve ever met could still hang if they could play. But what if I can’t find anyone to play with here? What if I can’t even play anymore? What if I’ve just become an unrelenting system of misery too awkward to speak and too useless to try. I imagine myself under the water, my body so leaded that I don’t even need rocks to stay down. I just sink.
“So, how are you doing?” TJ’s question de-rails my tiny crisis and plops me back up on land. But his question, his stupid question, makes him feel a thousand miles away. The earth cracks and crumbles around me until it’s just me sitting on a pilar of rock in the pacific.
“I mean.” What does everyone want from me when they say this? Good? Well, I’m not. Shitty? It’s true, but not in the way they think. When I first found out they had died I was in shock. It wasn’t until I woke up the next day that I realized my life had been so thrown off any potential path I was expecting that it barely felt like I was even on the same planet as the day before. There was all this hope I hadn’t realized was there until I understood it was gone. Maybe there was a chance they’d realize what shit parents they had been and turn it around. Maybe they’d say sorry or say “we know you’re a fag son, but it’s ok.” Maybe they’d find a way to love me in spite of everything. Probably not, but now it was even possibility. Death severs all those roads around you and leaves you on a rock in the middle of the ocean, alone. “It sucks but it’s good to be out here. It helps.” What else am I supposed to say.
TJ’s been timidly glancing my way on and off, but now he holds his gaze proudly and smiles like he’s just been told he’s getting a car for Christmas. “I’m glad dude. It’s good to have you out here. I’ve missed ya.” Stupid motherfucker. The sunlight seems to come from TJ. Even as a kid, when we’d do something stupid and get caught, he’d always be smiling wide enough to count every tooth. He was so damn puppy-like his parent could never follow through on their punishments. Meanwhile I crept along like a shadow. The only people that wanted to be around me wanted to fill more of that darkness into their own heart. No matter how much I tried to fake it, everyone saw right through it and crept towards that dark pit in my chest. So even though I can’t justify it, seeing TJ so genuinely happy at the idea that I might be ok made me want to crack my bass across his face and shove his drumsticks up his nose as he bled out.
“I’ve missed you too.” And despite everything, it’s not a lie.
