There’s the beautiful Bolsa Chica lagoon—it’s so big and beautiful and wonderfully spread out upon these fossil fuel and methane rich lands. It’s green, and why do I love thee so? Because of the sparkling water and the big juts of green salt-tolerant brush spread so large and flat, peaceful, away from humans, your purity, your soothing peace, just like Ballona Wetlands, where I grew up. I always loved looking at nature, looking away from myself into something that seemed so ordered, perfect, free from conflict. At least free from human conflict. Then I turned away. I headed down some street a few blocks farther from the beach and back where the buildings got all clunky. I was back in human land.

I parked on the street and entered one of these concrete apartment complexes you get completely lost in. Everything looked the same, all the doors, all the potted plants, all the aluminum-framed horizontal windows, even the door mats. After searching up and down in all four directions, I wound through a concrete walk winding among various palms and palmetto plants—not sure which were real and which were fake—and found her place. I knocked.  

“Come on in.”

I pushed open the door and stepped inside a one-bedroom place. Well, at least it wasn’t a studio. God, I dated so many uppity chicks who had nothing but a studio! They always act as if they had something because they got a cheap rent. It didn’t mean jack to me. Owning a home was everything in my world.   

“It was hard to tell yours from all of the others,” I called.

She didn’t get my insult. “Concrete jungle,” she said. “But I love it.”

A counter separated her living room from the kitchen. She was mixing drinks and had whirled around. She had on a black bikini with a white sheer top, her auburn hair bunched on top of her head. The effect, in totality, given her baby doll beautiful face, was both cute and bizarre.   I chose to emphasize the cute. I don’t know. I’m not trying to sound like a dick, but I guess I am one. I mean, I was just judging her on her looks. At least, at first. But then it changed immediately. The way she talked out of class wasn’t the same as in class. She wanted to be mine, I thought. How could I not think she was ready to be mine?

“You’re late, Daddy.” She kissed me on the lips, holding her glass of beer. “Can I make you a margarita? Do you want salt?”

I took a sip.

“Not bad.”

“Me or the drink?” Her eyes twinkled. It was so corny, it should make you sick. But I swear to God these kind of tawdry salty relationships are happening all the time. Maybe it’s a Frank Valli love song in the background or some rapper. I don’t know. But maybe it was just the way we smelled. I don’t know. I told you. I don’t know why I picked her. I am so stupid.

“Both.”

“Did you bring your trunks?”

She shoved me in the bathroom.

“Don’t worry, I won’t attack you.”

I came back out feeling like a six-foot-two second-rate athlete. I was never a starter, not on my high school basketball or football teams. In fact, I was so beaten up from football with such a swollen diseased knee I never got to go out for varsity basketball my senior year. But I was not very good anyway. I never started on varsity football and basically got to go out when the special teams went on for the kicks—and that was just physical insanity. By then I had switched my focus to poetry and abandoned all hope of playing for the Lakers. I ran track. I did the shot put. I did everything I could to get out of PE. I had fun. I was never that good, though. I just liked sports enough to be okay at any sport but never great, though I made a few good basekts and won some championships through junior high. That was quite something. All I am saying is I felt second rate. Maybe I felt like a lucky girl with her. Maybe I felt fortunate as hell that she liked me. We all talk a big game, but not everybody beds women left and right. I was a total geek, not even emotionally a professor. Did I tell you I was a professor? I was a 30 year old professor and emotionally like a teenaged. Oh Jesus, I was in trouble. She was in trouble. 

She took my hand and led me out the door of her apartment, across the deck, and through a metal wrought iron pool gate. We ended up at a spa. We should never have touch. Instead she told me to strip.

“Take off your shirt.”

“And your pants.”

“No.”

“You heard me. Right here. Right now.”

I spilled some of the drink.

“Come on, now,” she said. “Don’t break your glass. I should have poured yours in a plastic cup. Don’t be clumsy, David. I would have hated to see you on the basketball court.”

“I could play okay,” I said.

“Sure.” Our bodies fell in close.

“Is there anything else besides singing in a rock band you love doing?” I said while we poached in the water and rocked. I told you it was all tawdry. It was all SEXual (like Michael Jackson, who was born on my birthday, used to say).

“I want to paint.” She reached for her cigarette, which was tipped in a small black ashtray set on the ledge. She wasn’t making any effort to get away from me. It was like I was a jet pilot coming in for a landing on an aircraft carrier, beautiful sky, no winds, everybody hand signaling me in with their batons. I was letting her talk. That was the whole point. Just let the girl talk, guide myself in and not get too crude in it all. God help me my crude ways.

“If I’m too old to be a rock star, I think I could be a really good painter.” She exhaled the smoke. “I always did want to paint. I just never had any support. My grandma said she’d pay for me to go to art college, but she never did. I sang in a punk band, but we didn’t last very young. You know, guys are always trying to make it with you. You know how it is.” 

No, I’m shocked. Guys trying to make you?  No way. 

What do you mean no way? Aren’t I good looking enough?”

“Hell yes you are gorgeous.”

 “It was bothersome.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

She took another drag from her cigarette out of the side of her mouth, put it down, and then she shoved me, violently I would say, underwater. “What are you doing?” I gurgled. She held me down, her hands on my shoulders. Up above I heard her laughing. “That’s for all you bullshit, guy.” 

“Hey, if you don’t let me go, nobody is going to root for you later,” I gurgled.

Then she let go. I shot to the surface, but she was already stepping out, and my hand only touched her calf. She was already out. She wrapped a towel around my shoulders.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Come on.”

We walked back to her apartment. She had a little patio in front and we were grilling out there. I watched her put steaks on the barbecue. She parried my officious, pricked barb.  

“You ever think about organic foods?” I said.

“Nah.”

“Okay, but do you know what they are?”

“A rip-off?”

The steaks were not organic but they were absolutely delicious. 

“See, you eat meat,” she said. “You’re no environmentalist.”

“Oh man. You don’t know anything. We’re all just doing the best we can.”

“You’re all a bunch of hypocrites.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We are.”

“At least you’re an honest hypocrite.”

“You’re the first person who ever call me that.”

“What?  Honest?  Or a hypocrite?”

“All environmentalists are hypocrites. We have to live with it daily, except maybe Jesus. He was an environmentalist you know.”

“You think so?”

She was wearing jeans now, and a top, leaning back in her chair, legs kicked up, toes nails painted red. Her feet were rather large and misshapen from too many years, even at her tender age. Actually what I was grooving on those first few months was my discovery of an artist.

Tiffany was really good as an artist, and I realized quite quickly she had a lot of talent that I could help her to develop. 

I didn’t know anything then about the high correlation between insanity and artistry. I didn’t see any insanity. I saw love. I was a love junkie. If I could get it, I wanted it. I wanted her. I have to admit. I thought she looked good. I guess I was thinking of a revolution in human love or a revolution in attitude. I wanted her to succeed.

When I went in the kitchen to grab a glass for some cold water, I opened up the cabinet. She was extremely well organized, beyond just neat. I could easily see that keeping everything in its place was important to her. Every steak knife, plate, cup, glass, type of food had its place. Opening a cabinet, I saw how every glass and goblet lined up in perfect symmetry. 

I came back and sat down just as she went to her closet and pulled out a box, those big ones you get from department stores for sweaters and dresses. She put it on the coffee table.

She kept color pencil drawings and watercolors of animals. She seemed to be able to imbue her drawings with vitality. They were a tad cute, like her.

Taj and Dave, two kids in their twenties about to get married, dropped by. Dave brought his guitar. Tiff belted out “House of the Rising Sun” and blew me away. She began dancing right up to me, smiling, her brown eyes laughing, her hips touching mine, teasing.

I mean, that was how it went those first few weeks. I quite loved her right away. I was quite smitten. I was taken. The sex was good too. Very strong and trusting. She even quit her lonely hearts dating club and told another boyfriend to go water skiing by himself. I told you it was all common.

The next few weeks passed relatively quickly and August turned into September. I was teaching someplace else, gypsy literature junky I am, but we were talking on the phone a lot. We saw each other a few times, saw some movies, walked along the beach, kissed and smooched and enjoyed Huntington’s beach front and the big pier. The sun was shining hard and winter was coming on. Truth be told, I had other girlfriends. I was not taking anyone seriously. We went to the movies a lot and saw what was hot in the nineties when Clinton was president and times were good, just beyond the Reagan Wall Street years. I suppose I wanted to grab my share. I felt like I should get married. She was there in front of me. I did not know a lot about her or her family. I knew her mother had married three times. She never spoke much about her father at first. She had a sister. They were on and off. She was vague, purposely, kept me away from them. Didn’t want me to know too much.

One weekend that late summer we went to Mexico. I picked her up and we made it all the way to the border into Mexico, taking the scenic toll road south. 

At Rosarito, that string town of Calimax, poor stores, bars, hotels, and beggars, we went horseback riding, clopping on the stones on the beach past thatched roof curio huts. We rode up along the sea. Tiffany was in jeans and tank top again; I was in jeans and a Guayabera shirt.

She slipped off her jeans with her bikini on underneath. I stripped down to my surfers. I hoped I looked like a stud. I rather seriously doubted this.

The water we waded in, after we got off the horses and paid a kid to hold their reins, was warmed and dimpled by the sun. I looked out at more kids in the crystal blue foam. I breathed in the moist sea air and put my hand around her shoulder when she came and stood by me. It was as natural and right as anything in my life. At that moment anybody on Earth would have envied how I felt. I felt really good. I really cared for her. Amazing. I mean, love is always an amazing thing, especially if you’re really looking for it to come into your life, then you know how special.

The sea aroma wafted up over the rocks and kelp. We went to lie down. She turned over later. She put her hands over her eyes to shield herself from the sun.

“I want to clean up,” she said.

My hand was on her brown belly. I felt her warmth, her breath, her curly hair in my fingers, olive skin on my fingertips.

She put herself up on one elbow. 

“You know, get myself on a healthy diet and change my lifestyle.” Then, a few minutes later, “How many kids do you want? I mean, if you were to get married.”

“I like kids. But I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought.”

“I want one.”

She kissed me. I was in Mexico with a woman who had just kissed me and basically told me she was mine. But the limit it was understood would be one child.

We stepped out into the night when we got to her place. I reached around and kissed her, then kissed her again. 

She put her arm around my waist and nibbled on my ear and neck. But after we kissed at her apartment doorstep, she said, “You have to go home.”

I didn’t move. “You can’t stay,” she said. “I have to work tomorrow.”

She pushed me away.

”Go,” she said. “I’ll see you next week.”

 

In my bed that night I lay listening to Tom Bodett on the radio tell these terribly forlorn stories about a sad lonely pimply kid in Homer, Alaska who had his own problems with his relationships: with his girlfriend, dad, mom, and just about everybody. I blame you, Tom Bodett, for what happened next.