Narrative
by Betty Plotnick






The beginning of the story:

Your life story, it's, you know, short and nasty, nothing special. Dad who never gave a shit about you, Mom who screamed a lot and hugged you so it hurt and you wanted to love her, but you were always a little scared to. A bunch of younger brothers and sisters, cute kids, but they cried and got dirty, and there was never enough time, never enough money, and nobody seemed happy. You tried to fill in, learned to change diapers and sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider song and go lock yourself in the car if you had to cry so you could still at least look like the grown-up.

You were thirteen when you took fifty dollars out of your mom's purse -- the only cash in the house -- and walked out the door. You told yourself you didn't give a shit about anything anymore, that nobody had ever taken care of you and now you were going to. Just you, everything just for you from now on.

Brat, yeah. You were, but. But who's to say it would've been better if you'd stayed? And it's not like anybody ever chased you down and begged you to come back.

You hitched to Ft. Lauderdale with a car full of college girls who thought you were cute and made a big fuss over you. That part was fun, and it felt right then like this was going to be easy.

It wasn't easy.

You spent two nights sleeping on the beach and eating beef jerky. Once somebody put a Heineken in your hand and you drank it and went out in the water, and it felt like you were floating, but you had to be pulled out. Somebody gave you CPR, and somebody else called the cops. You were embarrassed more than anything else, but come on. You were a skinny little kid, and you hadn't been eating. You've got better tolerance now. And even back then, you pulled it together in time to disappear before the cops came.

Later you stood up to your knees in the ocean and wondered why it's not always about this: water and stars and the world going on a thousand miles above you and a thousand miles below you. The ocean was like the world the way it should be. You didn't even know what that meant, but you thought it.

You went into a diner a little after midnight and asked them for food, something they were going to throw out anyway. You had eighteen dollars left, but you were saving it for an emergency. They said no, but they were nice about it. A waitress looked in the phone book and got the address for a shelter, and she could tell by your eyes that you didn't belong here, because then she drew a map on a napkin. She said she'd drive you herself, but she didn't get off until six. You put the napkin in the pocket of your windbreaker and thought maybe your mother was wrong, maybe people really were nice to you if you were nice to them. So far you'd gotten a lift, a beer, CPR, and this. You vowed to help out someone else, when you could, and thought maybe life was like the ocean. Like, what they said in biology class, an ecosystem, where everything fit.

You tried to clean up in the men's room. You had your hand under your shirt, rinsing soap from under your arms, and there was this guy, an old guy, but not much taller than you, and he stood right next to you and pushed his hand under your shirt, too. You didn't even know what you wanted to do. Say something to him, push him, hit him, hug him, scream? Nothing seemed quite right. You wanted to be back with your feet in the water. Someplace else. Australia, maybe.

His fingers slipped in all the water and soap on your skin. He breathed noisily in your ear. You felt cold and aimless, almost like you were already in Australia and your body got left behind somehow. He kissed you, and you let him. He steered you backwards into a stall, one hand still up your shirt, one hand on your butt, and the lock sliding into place sounded loud, like steel or iron instead of whatever cheap, shiny synthetic stuff all the fixtures in that place were made of. He had one hand on the back of your head, the dirty blonde strands of your hair catching and pulling in the joints of his watchband, and with the other hand he started to unbuckle his belt. You said, "Wait. I want a hundred dollars."

So, see. You were young, but you weren't stupid. You saw it in a movie or something, and you knew. If the world is an ecosystem, then everything belongs, and this is where you belong. This is where you fit.

He smiled a little sourly and said, "I'll give you forty."

You had to guess at how to do it, but you must have guessed okay, because he came in your mouth. You spit into the toilet and took his twenty-dollar bills, and he bought you a double cheeseburger and banana cream pie in the diner, and that's how you became a hooker, the short and nasty version.

*

The middle of the story:

Orlando is better than Ft. Lauderdale, at least when it comes to creature comforts. You make better money; you even come out ahead when you factor in the cut you pay to Lou and the fact that you're not allowed to lift wallets anymore because it's bad for everyone's reputation. You fuck in comfortable hotel rooms instead of cars and bathrooms, and nobody roughs you up. It's not that kind of scene.

It's still tourists, but not drunk college boys anymore. Now it's family men who stay in the hotel for an afternoon nap while their wives take their kids to the Magic Kingdom, and you're in and out in under an hour. You've got magic, damn right you do.

Sometimes you go out in pairs, which is fun. You go with AJ a lot, and the routine is sugar and spice, bad boy and innocent, and it's so damn sexy that sometimes it even turns you on. Johns don't stand a chance. You both say you're eighteen, and AJ practically is. AJ is funny and cool and he yells at people who look at the two of you like you're shit when you go out for pizza. You help him out with money, because he always owes something to his dealer, and when you run away again, you leave behind five hundred dollars and hope that'll hold him for a while.

You run away because you get ambitious. Brat, why not? You're sixteen and hot and you can play virginal and you fuck like a porn star and you think you can do better than even this, if only you have a plan.

You take a bus to Emerald Cove, which is one of those little seasonal towns, with beach houses and rich people, seriously rich people. You think that you might just be the ultimate vacation luxury, and maybe you could even hook up a steady job, a little cabana-boy action. You can see yourself lying by the pool.

But it's harder than you remembered, being on your own. You rent a little place on the beach, and it's shabby and nothing works, but any kind of decent apartment would be all the way on the other side of town, and you have to be down here where the action is every night or you don't get paid. You don't know anybody with connections, so you have to start right back where you started at the beginning, hanging around until cars pull up beside you, giving quick blowjobs for cash up front and sometimes even a goddamn burger afterwards. You know you're better than this, you have more to offer, but hey, at least there's no competition. Nobody offers to take you to the country club, but you hold out hope. All it takes is one lucky break, right? And people can be nice, sometimes, you swear you know that, even when you don't remember when it last happened.

With no friends and not a lot of daytime work, you suddenly have all kinds of free time. You splurge on a wetsuit and a surfboard, and it's just like you remember skateboarding when you were a kid, only a thousand times better. Your life becomes this, surfing all day, tricking all night. Spring break season comes and goes, and you make good money, and you have regulars now, even if they still like it in their convertibles and never offer to take you home with them. One of them tells you that you're not the first boy to shop blowjobs on the boardwalk in this town, but when you ask about him, the john says, "Who remembers? He's gone, it was a while back."

"No, I do remember," he says later, after you've forgotten what you asked about. "Skinny kid like you, same floppy hair. Never knew his name, he just called himself Wipeout. These beach bums, they're here a few summers and then they disappear."

You wonder if they come here like you did, looking for gold, and if they leave because they find the right direction or just because they give up.

You become satisfied in Emerald Cove; you begin to think of it as home. You don't notice something dying off inside you, and even if you did, you wouldn't know enough to call it hope.

*

The end of the story:

You will meet your heart's desire on the beach. He will be coming out of the water, sleek and graceful and shining wet. He will be a little bit older than you, and he will be taller (but you will only be seventeen and still growing; after a few years of shooting up and filling out, you'll be able to pick him up off his feet while he giggles and covers your face with sloppy kitten kisses), with long dark hair. He will notice you right away.

He will talk to you about surfing for a whole day, and you will listen raptly. He will offer to loan you *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* and the Tao Te Ching. He will tell you the life story of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and when you ask about his own life story, he'll smile distantly and say that he wrote about it once, but he thinks it needs work. He thinks the pacing is off.

You'll half believe he is a ghost or a dream or something else that can't exist, especially since you won't be brave enough to ask his name for six hours. He will tell you that it is Sea, and then you will think he's the spirit of the ocean, and your heart will ache with how right that feels. You will say, "Like the ocean?" but you will mean *You are just like the ocean.*

He will give you a smile that will change your life and say, "No, like 'Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter C.' It's my initial." You will ask him what his name is really, and he'll smile even wider and shake his head. "It's barney," he will say.

"That doesn't start with C," you will say, and then you will catch on and you will feel like the dumbest human being ever to live. He will laugh, but nicely. It won't be your fault. You will be struck stupid by this man.

It will not stop you from trying to kiss him fifteen minutes later. He will let you.

Does it matter to you yet who he is, how his story goes? He comes from Emerald Cove, and he goes to school a long way away. He is a writer, fiercely intelligent and full of joy. Some things have been rough for him, just like they were for you, but he gets by with a little help from his friends, and he believes that the universe has a spirit that is benevolent, because he has a spirit that is benevolent, and how could the universe be less than he is? You will understand, when you meet him, that the universe could easily be less than he is.

He will want to be with you all the time. It will be hard for you to make your rent in June, but even harder to stay away from him. He will read to you in bed. He will constantly track sand through your living room. He will have long, perfect legs that will wrap snugly around your shoulders when you go down on him, and actually, when you fuck him, too. He will know everybody in town and get you into movies free, and even into the country club for dinner once, although he will seem pained by the suit and scratch at it all night like a snake working to peel off its skin. He will use Tibetan prayer beads and he will only own two CDs -- *Blood Sugar Sex Magik* and one by a local band on an independent label -- but he will play them both constantly. He will laugh at all your dumb jokes, and not like he's patronizing you. He will delight in you, and you will not understand why.

You will think of him as C even though people in Emerald Cove still call him Wipeout, because you will already know too much about Wipeout. You will try to forget what you've heard.

He will be poor. He will have a scholarship. He will like sleeping out on the beach, but you will not, because you will be constantly afraid that by the time he goes back to school, that's where you'll be reduced to living permanently.

He will spoon around you when you sleep. You will be tanned and freckled, your hair bright gold, and he will have tangles of dark hair in his face all the time and fair skin that never darkens or burns. You will be sand and sun, and he will be night and stars. He will have a yin-yang tattooed on his arm, and you will kiss it a hundred times, and then have one tattooed on your body as well.

His friends will write to him. One is at school in Georgia; he has a band. He will scrawl a postcard full of exclamation marks claiming to have said hello to Michael Stipe at the 40 Watt Club, and he will sign it, "All my love, Matt." One is with his fiancee in Los Angeles; the fiancee's name is Nikki. (In years to come, once you know everyone in Emerald Cove, too, they will all call you Wipeout's Nicky, to distinguish you from Bobby's Nikki. You will love it.) One is with his wife in Canada. He will write the longest letters, and he will send a copy of a literary magazine with one of C's stories in it and request an autograph. C will sign it, "Thanks for marrying my girlfriend. Love, Wipeout." He will tell you it's an inside joke, and promise to write a story about it soon. (He will write that story. It will be in The Ploughshare Review.)

You will live day by day, and you will be ecstatic. You will never think about the future.

You will go out for hamburgers one night, and one of your johns will drive up beside you. He will ignore you and talk to C. C will be thrilled to see him, but he will shake his head and say, "No can do, sorry," when the guy invites you both to party with him.

Things will be chilly between you. Everything C tries to talk about will fall flat. You will say nothing until you say, "You could tell me the truth. I told you everything, didn't I? You could tell me what you were, and anyway, I already know."

He will not know what you mean. He will laugh when he catches on and put his arm around your waist. "No, Nicky, it wasn't like that, dude," he will say. He will tell you that he likes people, that he makes friends easily, that his friends who had it would help him out with a few bones here and there, when he was in need. He will tell you the story of his life in the language of home and gifts and loyalty and sex that's easy and wanted.

He will believe every word of it. You will not.

You will scream at him in the middle of the street. You will call him a whore and a fucking moron. The truth is, you will feel unbearably empty compared to him, drained of all the good things, like faith and hope and generosity. Compared to him, you will see yourself as cheap and unwanted, used up at seventeen. You will try to shove him, but your eyes will be scorched out with your angry tears, and you'll only graze his arm, surprising him. You will tell him that it wasn't supposed to be like this, that you came here to find someone who could take care of you, not someone just like you. (You will not believe that he is just like you, but you will lie about it.) You will tell him that the one who wanted to keep you was supposed to be better than you.

He will never have said anything of the kind, but you will know what he wants. You will not be wrong.

He will glare at you in frustration and run his fingers through his hair. He will say, "I don't want to harsh you, dude, but I think it's pretty bogus for you to decide I'm not good enough for you without even giving me a chance."

You will hate him then for being stupid, because a person who doesn't realize that C isn't the one who's not good enough is about as stupid as people come. Even more than that, you will hate him because you will understand that he will not do this for you, will not be smart enough to leave you the fuck behind. He will believe in you, and he will make you leave him instead. You will not be capable, at seventeen, of imagining any other future for the two of you.

All your life, you have gotten through the hard things by pretending they aren't hard at all, but it will not work this time. Right when you need them the most, you will not be able to believe your own lies.

This will be the worst moment of your life. It will hurt so much that you will think it must be love. You will be right about that, too.

He will wipe your face with his flannel sleeve and say, "You just can't quit being beautiful, can you?"

His eyes will be blue. He will smell like seaweed and onion rings when you bury your face in his neck. You will choose to stay.

The rest of your life story will be long, and it will amaze you.


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