From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Night -Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm

Funny he, Adam Evans, thought,  a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed,  the rain poured down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back  that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.

He thought first and mainly about how early the sea came into his life, almost from birth down at those ragged edge of the sea slopes around Granitetown, the 1950s old time sea air country farm turned modern housing development of single three bedroom homes and duplexes for up and coming World War II veterans like his father with plenty of kids to house and some prospects, where he lived growing up and was tumbled into the sea early. Literally tumbled early to the sea as an errant older brother, aged maybe five, rolled him, maybe aged four, in a barrel, a tinny old trash barrel, down those ragged slopes that formed the outer perimeter of the housing development and gateway to the sea and he would up in about three feet of water crying to get out. Crying also that he had gotten his new trousers and jersey all wet and seaweedy and that he would catch hell (not the word he would have used then but appropriate) when he got home and Ma saw his condition. And Teflon older brother would get away scot-free and he, no snitch even then, would Velcro once again some mother trouble. And he did, although, damn age, he could not recall the penalty, maybe a few days without television.  

And learned the power of the sea early when one winter storm night, maybe about fourth grade but in any case a situation that would, minimum, call for at least one no school day, Mother Nature played a dirty trick on her seaward brethren and tried to bring them home to her bosom all in one lashed-up swoop as the exploding high water, ignoring painfully constructed man-made seawalls, came right up to that home’s front door  and the lot of them, two parents and three brothers,  only reached higher ground in a split second before a big foam-flecked (aren’t they always foam-flecked  like some angry man ranting to a rapt crowd when they come in that hard, fast and furious) wave crashed down on their home. A few nights spent in the gymnasium of his elementary school, Snug Harbor (jesus, what a name after that episode), and weeks of clean- up and smells of bleach to get rid of mold and other stuff  taught  him well the fickleness of old Mother.

And later, childhood later, a few years after the winter storm later anyway, when he, bravo he, decided, yes, consciously decided that the impeding summer storm he could sense coming (he had developed a sense about weather, sea weather anyway, without the need for television prompts) would be no deterrent to his taking that somewhat water-logged log he eyed on the beach and using it to help him swim to China, or some such place, on the current. The China, or someplace being prompted, that day by episode 234 in the Velcro Ma wars that he had just lost another round in and was ready to chuck it all if he could just get away to make his fame and fortune . The subject of the dispute, a case of missing money from her purse (money missing and spent the night before on sweet roll crème-filled Twinkies, ditto cocoa rich chocolate cupcakes, and a few off-hand pieces of penny candy, mary janes , no, not that mary jane what would he have known of weeds, dopes, and such in those suburban dark ages, tootsie rolls, stuff like that, maybe adding up to a dollar, a big dollar just then with Pa just out of work and no dough rolling in and mortgages to pay, and hungry, not sweet tooth hungry kids to feed, and so every penny counted. Round to Ma, and adieu, no more burden son.

But enough of motivation, and enough of not having the sense that god gave geese because just then he let go of the log to do something, something forgotten. And with the sea picking up steam that log kept eluding his grasp as they, he and the log, headed to open water. And losing the log in the churning waters he, not a strong swimmer then (or now) almost drowned, and would have and fate changed, except for the screams of his panic beach-bound older brother (the rolling barrel older brother, thanks, he owed older brother one) seeing his plight sounded the alarm for help and some Madonna savior swimmer, beach-bound too, came and swooped him up before he went down for the third time. And later he yelling beach-bound and still full of water, yelling to his savior bother “Don’t tell Ma, jesus, don’t tell Ma.” And he didn’t .

Or that night, that funny night (funny night in retrospect, then and now retrospect) when he, his buddy since elementary school Will (and proper subject of some wild non-mighty storm tales) and his girl, Carrie he thought  although it could have been Donna, Donna whom Will  later married and divorced after about three weeks of marriage right after he caught her running around with about four different guys, and a couple of  dykes to top things off, and who would wind up a very senior cadre, if cadre is the right word for those times and that feeling, in the summer of love in San Francisco, 1967 not fifteen blocks from this stormy night Seals Rock Inn, and she, she Terry Wallace, his mostly through high school flame, sat in Will’s father-bought high school car, a ’59 Dodge, “making out” (term of art for “doing the do,” “going all the way,” sex, hell, fucking) while the sea churned up around them at old Nippo Point Beach just up from home Granitetown and the police, spotting the storm blasted car and the fix, came and rescued them rescued them while they were in, ah, compromising positions (you figure it out,  back seat car figure it out, or read the Karma Sutra, position number twenty- one, or just read it and dream figure your own position,  he just laughed his thought laugh) because in the throes of love they had not realized that they were in a couple of feet of sea water and rising that had splashed over some poor man-made seawall built against Mother’s angers. And the cops, the cops snitching, snitching like they always do, snitching like crazy to Ma (and Pa too on all sides), talking about court and under-age, even when Donna, yah, that’s right, it had to be Donna, she was just that bold and sassy, offered to give them a piece, or maybe some head, if they would forget the whole matter. Mas and Pas didn’t and  Will and he walked, walked alone all summer, and all summer heard  Karma Sutra laughs from fogged up cars down at that broken Nippo Point seawall they claimed.

Or that day, that wind- swept, foam-flecked sea day (okay, enough of foam-flecked seas, enough of rough seas. big swirling rough seas, immense, beyond man-sized immense out in the deep blue deep all green gloss gone  falling but almost tepidly to thankful womb shores, cluttered with jetsam and flotsam, logs, ancient memory logs, China-worthy logs, from hurt penny-pinched  childhood, cigarette packages, maybe discarded from some white tee- shirted corner boy venture out in the submarine race night, lobster traps, useful for student ghetto table, every smashed and swirled thing,  enough of wind, enough to fill a lifetime wind , a lifetime of sad blown winds, a lifetime of false trumpet winds, Miles Davis be-bop full-throated winds, if they, the winds could have “dug” be-bop instead of aimless fury), when his world fell apart, the day when Diana, his first wife, had left him, left him for good, for good after about seventeen mad bouts of irreconcilable differences and about sixteen almost reconciliations. Enough of  almost reconciliations to fill a book, a book of how to, and how not to, his version, his final truth version, screw up the genteel, gentle, the broken, or better half-broken women (nah, woman, she ) from saddened youth spills, damnations, and mishaps without really trying.     

Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth, but kind of sad sack funny he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hating  bad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.

Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the old  Hayes-Bickford lunch room just up from the old end of the red line Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, nor is the subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, some  be-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets and  wet dream bad boys and poetry  died of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention, sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up.  

He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no, a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it. And all this peeking, half peeking, got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of coffee and a couple of hours of where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiously  about at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for the  life of him remember  how that subject came up, except maybe  something triggered when she mentioned Iowa, or something.                 

And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie western trek push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With her long de riguer freshly- ironed brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at that two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he figured it out better why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that thought would not let him be.            

And memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkins’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken- back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield mistake, she actually plunged fully- clothed (not having been told of the need  for a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there was just enough room if the tide was right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide.

He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring him along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked  and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)

Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest ,some, well, one- night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run (yes, he ran, so you know he was sexed-up too) up to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S.1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red faced purchased their “rubbers”  (and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky I-know what-you-are-up- to-right-now sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-makings (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their way of expressing that desire) would come later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.                   

And funny too in that same sad sack love way they early on  had vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake, than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie”  (quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shaded  eyes and existential desires) to run with the tide. She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and of  his bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriff  kick them out wage-less, or with so many  deductions for cheap jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally, Salvation Army, hand- out in some desolate back street town (and he knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food)  that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16^th century wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly, braceros), and their  sorrows .           

And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, easily coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along giggling like a schoolgirl),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren (after all not everybody got caught up in the minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five- routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage (and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and…) offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street,  not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.

And they, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the slut remarks of  high Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove- consummated married she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (his mistress, his whore,  from what they had heard, and Diana  blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in the  wind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting,  feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.                          

And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode with his older brother, his older brother now name- etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this now very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that “no that is six dollars for those candles , not free brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more sorry  but I have a headache ,he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “making it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of, marriage counselor spoke of, missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations,, they grew older and apart, and…

She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocks  thank you, she told him of the other man) when she called it seventeen times is enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness said, anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.

Or that time later with Sarah, jesus has it been twenty years now, as the winter seas once again bore down their fury when they, at her insistence she from coastline Oregon near Coos Bay, had moved to water’s edge Marblehead outside of Boston away from city crowds and city concerns and city madnesses and city doubts and too city delights, and the seas came up over a painfully constructed double seawall (watched over time turn from single storm blasted sea wall), damn double seawalls and still not enough, and almost touched the top of their front door steps. And they seeking shelter again in a make-shift home school like he in in kid time and spending obligatory weeks with bleach and mop buckets.  She, Sarah she, too eventually calling it quits, although not over another man, or over his man and nature obsession, or over that breeched double sea-wall but just her calling it Sarah quits. Just like the way she came in to that meeting, the Park Street church meeting, some pressing urgent meeting to stop another generation’s war and they connected like the passing air that night they met, both on the hurt rebound, and both clingy, clingy as hell, and both without a word shortly thereafter, maybe a couple of days not more than a week, deciding quickly to stay together for a time, not kid foolish eternity time, an indeterminate time. And she brought forth a rebirth of kindness in him (she was organically kind, needed no winds of time shift, no big world- historic motion motive to do that) and of shared funny times, mature now (ragged bushes, and up river hide-aways just a laugh and tingle memory), although rugged cross rock still travelled, mature travelled and no fair maiden rescues. And he sorry, end of youth, end of mystery awe, end of mad adventure sorry, strangely more than Diana sorry, when she left.

Or that Maine time a few years back when, alone to clear some troubled thoughts after the end of his last marriage (and last marriage), a sudden winter storm came up the coast of Maine and he was stranded in his Thoreau-like lean-to shack not build for heavy gales but summer frolic for a couple of days when Mile Road the sole road in or out, drowned smothered flooded marshland on both sides and so no escape except for the boat-worthy , was cut off sunken under five feet of water, he short of supplies  and house fuel not having heard any forecast, his life-long  sea trouble radar apparently failing him or maybe unadorned hubris from his quick decision to head north against all cautions after he gathered himself together post-court battle, and he finally knew what it was like to be totally dependent on happenstance, to siren call Mother Nature, on others, and, in the end on his own devises.

Or tonight, the winds blasting away against the open air door to his room, rain splashing down the wind -battered door seeping into the room a little, torrents of rain, torrents of thoughts, momentarily left to his own devises, left to his own thoughts. Just then he thought, that no, no he had been wrong, he really had been  searching for that metaphor, that metaphor, that mighty storm metaphor, that would sum up his life.