Lion and Magic Boy

I’ve had only one vacation where I was totally alone. It was when I was 17.

About two weeks before it, my dad had surprised me by being there standing on the path as I came out of my biology class. I had totally aced Bio in high school but Bio in college was a little harder and I couldn’t snow the teacher with my awesome writing skills the way I could in high school and I was just reaching the point, mid-semester, of realizing that I was going to have to open the book and attend a lab or two to pass the class. I was immersed in those thoughts when I saw my dad standing there, waiting for me. I stopped in my tracks and looked at him. Something was wrong. He didn’t belong there.

We took a bit of a walk and he told me that he was on his way farther north to Arcata where my brother went to school, to tell him the news as well. He also hugged me for the first time in years. And he cried. I had never seen him cry before.

They were getting divorced. My parents.

In an instant, my world changed. The couple I thought would forever be a constant in my life was splitting up. I was going to have to apply for financial aid. My free ride of an education was over. Life as I knew it would never be the same again.

An hour or two later, my dad left and I was alone with my thoughts. What was I going to do? How was this going to affect me?

More importantly, what about spring break?

I couldn’t go home…home wasn’t home any more. My dad had moved out. Neither parent had anything good to say about the other one. Tension was in the air.

I couldn’t go home with my friend Lish, not after having been raped a few weeks earlier at a party the last time I went home with her. I wasn’t ready to deal with those memories yet.

I decided to take a drive down to Big Sur. Alone.

Armed with a six-pack (it was a handy thing to look older than my age) and a map, I had no plan other than to follow Route 1 down the coast. And I knew someone from school who lived in Salinas, Steinbeck country, a kid we called “Turtle” because of the way he held his head when he walked. Maybe I’d look him up.

It was warm, driving. I rolled the window down and leaned my arm along it as I drove. My beers sweated in a little cooler. Stopped for awhile, inching through a construction zone, I considered handing one of my beers through my open window to the flag guy, hot in an orange vest and deeply tanned. I wish I had. In my other memories I did, and I briefly basked in the glow of his gratitude, his white teeth flashing for an instant in his tanned and worn face.

When I got to Big Sur I continued driving. I had no idea what to look for. Yep, there was the ocean, down there below the cliffs. So? The ocean. Okay, what next?

I went on to Salinas, not knowing what else to do, and spent the night huddled in my car in a large parking lot, hoping no one would disturb me. In the morning I looked up Turtle’s number and called him.

Sure, I have a place to stay, thanks. A movie, though? Okay…

I drove all the back roads and side roads all day, waiting until evening when I went to Turtle’s house. He didn’t invite me in. We went to the movie and I drove him back home. He didn’t have a car. Although I didn’t like him, I let him kiss me. Payment for the evening, I guess. After awhile he escaped from my car and bolted back into his house. At school again after the break I couldn’t look at him, and didn’t talk to him again until he helped me home to my dorm one night after I took someone’s bet to see who could drink more Tequila shots.

We had been friends and now we weren’t. I had had a family and now I didn’t. Life seemed as directionless as all the back roads and side roads around Salinas. I cut my hair and got yelled at by the director of a play I was cast in. The play folded before it began and I took my student loan funds and left school. Life happened, a lot of it.

The ocean sounds nice right about now.