About 216 miles into a 400.8 mile trip up the 101, from
Ventura to Petaluma, I realized I was steeped in nostalgia. I had just spent seven days with my personal
history. It seemed like every notable
mention from my past made an appearance in the last week. Once I cleared the Santa Barbara county traffic,
and escaped the fierce winds and monotonous landscape of Steinbeck country, I
released my death grip on the steering wheel.
I looked in the review and saw my exhausted little man dancing through
dreamland. Somewhere between Soledad and
Salinas, I finally allowed myself a few minutes to absorb the overwhelming journey
through a different part of my life that was the past week.
I thought back and smiled on the recent memories we had made
with people so precious there isn’t even a word in human language to describe
their value. Then I remembered that they
were the same people I had made memories with before I even knew what a memory
was. It was about that time, we hit the
San Jose city limit sign, that I heard a little voice, deep inside my hardened façade,
scream at me about love stories. I was
thinking about friends and laughs and dolphins and wine. But somehow, a voice I hadn’t heard in more
years than are worth counting was poking at me.
With a sharpened stick. And it was
yelling at me about love stories. More
specifically, it was terrorizing me about my own love stories.
My very first love affair came at a pretty young age. I was 14.
I spent my summers on the water.
Not just any water, more specifically a body of water that connects
mainland California to these remarkably obscure islands off the central coast. For the sake of realism, we will call the
water the Santa Barbara Channel and we will refer to the islands and the
Channel Islands. That was my first love. The islands.
The water. The sea creatures who allowed
us to co-exist with them. The cargo
boats that frequent the channel. Oil platforms
Gina and Gail. Everything about that
place was magnificent. It was
magical. Never before had my soul felt
right with all of my surroundings.
NEVER.
It’s funny that my first love affair segued into my
second. Because of the channel and the
islands, I met Jason. He was everything
I wasn’t. He was born into a family with
money. Not a lot of money. But more
money and opportunity than I had. He was
the product of a way of life that I could never understand. He was the heir to a legacy I could never
have understood at the time. But there
was something about that shy, school boy smile that melted me every time I saw
him. Behind that innocent smile, there
was a lot of bad boy.
The days that we worked the same boat, I made it my priority
to avoid him. I would watch him with conviction,
though. He operated with such experience;
such expertise. After all, he had been
doing it his entire life. The water wasn’t
just his job. It was his destiny. For me, the water was a summer job that paid
for gas and allowed me the time to get right with myself. Whatever that means.
But Jason was always there.
Always. There was a long 14 hour
day on the water. We left Ventura harbor
at 6:AM, en route to Santa Barbara Island.
It was a four hour transit. Six
hours on the island. Then another four
hour transit home. We tied up the boat
at a little after nine. Much later than
our usual 6 o’clock arrivals. Those
extra four hours gave us more uncomfortable silence than we had ever had before. Even fishing and swimming and diving couldn’t break the tension. The four hours back from Santa Barbara Island
put us both at ease. There were
passengers and chores to take care of.
But when we put the lines on the pier and watched everyone disembark,
Jason and I were alone again.
We had a beer with the captain and walked to our cars. As we walked up the brow, the marine layer
got thicker. It was a cool night in the
harbor. The air was wet. I was parked at the far end of the parking lot;
he was parked closer to the boat. I
walked past him and, in a display of exhaustion and comradery, I touched his
elbow. As I walked away, he grabbed my
hand. It felt like an hour had passed as
I tried to figure out what was happening.
Then, I walked back to him. His
hand was at my waist by then. I leaned
into him, head down and body shaking. There
were no words. Only a kiss. One.
Single. Kiss. Then we got in our
cars, and drove away.
It doesn’t matter how hard we try to be realistic. It doesn’t matter how many times we roll our
eyes at sentimental nonsense. We ALL
need a love story. We all need to LIVE a
love story. My first love story was
Jason. He was supposed to be gone. He was supposed to have dissipated from my life.
But the way my life works and the way my soul pulls me to the islands, I should
have known he would never be gone.
I watched him board the boat. I watched him lite up the engines. He was largely unrecognizable to me. He had a shaggy beard and a bigger belly than
I remembered. But when I heard him talk
about dolphins and the islands over the loud system, I knew it was him. So, on the trip back I knocked on the door of
the wheel house and asked if he had a minute for an old friend. Jason looked at me, ambivalently, until I
raised my sunglasses. He looked into my
eyes and said “NO. FUCKING. WAY.”
I sat on the bench behind the wheel. I kicked my feet up on the back of the captain’s
chair. It was so familiar, yet so foreign. We talked about where we have been and where
we might be going. I asked about his
mom. He asked about my dad. He showed me a picture of his son. We talked about our dreams of doing something
different. At one point, I confided to him “If it would pay the bills, I’d come
back to Island Packers tomorrow” He said
“You should do that.” I hollered at him “It’s
been 20 years, Jason.” He looked at me
like 20 years hadn’t passed. Then his phone rang…
I dismissed myself.
Then I went to the fantail and watched Channel Islands Harbor get
closer. I watched my kid run laps around
the boat deck. When we were finally tied
up at the pier, I took Radley back to the wheel house. I made him shake Jason’s hand and thank him
for the safe trip. Then I hugged
Jason. He hugged me back.
And that’s my love story.
-Inner Peas
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