Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

F  O  U  R

ALEXANDER’S

RIDE

“Are you looking for something?”

When they decided pot was making them too hazy, they switched to cigarettes. They weren’t homeless, but sometimes preferred to live like it, and on a crate in the lean to they had built from crates, they sat looking out at the stretch of beach that went to the crashing waves and the waves that went out and out to the horizon, washing up against the California shore in the night.

“I didn’t know,” he was saying as he pulled on the end of the cigarette as if it were  a joint, and it glowed bright orange. “You motherfuckers didn’t tell me.”

“It slipped our minds.”

“It slipped your fucking mind?” he had the ability to not shout even when he was enraged, to not even move.

It was Sarah, her hair in pigtails, still smoking the last of the joint, who said, “We didn’t want to upset you. You were fucking deployed. We wanted you to hear it from us direct.”

“That’s fucked up,” said the boy who was well made with a thick tumble of golden curls, like a little Greek God. He closed his flinty blue eyes and exhaled smoke from this nostrils.

“Speaking of, how did you grow that shit back so quickly.”

He shook his hair out.

“It has a mind of his own.

Passing the hut, you would have been invited in, and then it would have been explained that this was an old conversation. Colonel Alexander Kominsky had been permanently discharged from the Marines to lead a normal life again, and the Marines was something he didn’t talk about, When he had returned to Kowapack California five months ago, he’d been talking about how he hadn’t heard from his best friend, the asshole who had gone off to school in fucking Ohio because it was the only place that had his specialty, and when he’d spoken the room had been quiet.

“Well,” Colonel Kominsky had demanded, “where the fuck is he?”

And then had come the story of how he’d been found, in an alley, throat crushed, dead almost half a year, how no one had wanted to tell him.

“But I’ve been writing his folks for all these months.”

“They didn’t have the heart to say anything.”

“They would have rather had my crazy letters rubbing it in?”

 

But there had been other things to do. He had left college for the military, and once in the military realized how much college was needed. He was keenly aware of how much older he was than a lot of kids who were starting, and he thought the quicker he did things the better, so he was started in summer, to get a semester under his belt come fall. The first day he sat high in his seat, and looking around realized he didn seem that much older than a lot of his other fellow students. The professor went down the class list and when he got to the name: “Alexander Kominsky.”—, the young man with the piercing blue eyes and the short, wavy golden hair said, “Sunny. Just call me Sunny.”

But Sunny was in a mood tonight. The mood often hit him when he thought about how no one had ever figured out what had happened to his friend, how someone they had all loved had died out there, far from them, and now it didn’t seem to matter to anyone.  Sunny had gone into the military and been off in the Middle East. Brian had gone to Ohio. In the game of who would live, how had Brian lost that bet?

“Well, Sarah was saying, getting up and putting her bucket hat on, “I’m going to trip on home. This weed hit me like a motherfucker.”

The waves made their long sound of exhale and inhale, pulling back, and then rolling on to the sand.

Sunny stood up to hug her and she whispered, embracing him, “Try not to get stuck in that gloom of yours, Mr. Kominsky.”

She hugged Jack too, the brown haired, round faced boy who looked like someone out of one of those 1950’s beach movies Sunny had seen his grandmother laughing over once.

“Protect him,” she told Jack, and left the makeshift sea hut.

Jack rolled a large blunt this time and watched the moon rise up high and huge.

“Are you going home or staying here?”

“You know how the beach clears my mind.”

“We should surf. Real early in the morning.”

“I’m down,” Sunny spoke softly. “I’m down.

They spoke very softly. They’d only taken two puffs from that blunt. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“I just don’t want you to feel bad all the time,” Jack was murmuring. “I don’t like how it keeps hitting you. We all just wanna make you feel better.”

But even now, the full white moon was hidden by the burlap curtain Jack had jerkily shut, and while he sat, legs stretched before him and Sunny sat on the crate, Jack’s hand rubbed his thigh in sympathy.

“I know,” Sunny said, his voice barely audible. “I wanna feel good again too.”

He stood up so Jack could take down his Speedo, and then sat down so Jack could kneel before him, and take him in his mouth. The makeshift hut with just its little lantern was full of silence for a long time until Sunny shuddered, and Jack lifted his head.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been with…. Anyone,” Sunny said.

“Me too.”

“Sara’s not gonna get mad?”

“Should we stay here tonight and help each other out?” Jack said without answering the question.

Naked, his erection still arching up, still held tenderly in Jack’s hand, Sunny leaned to his right, unscrewed the lantern and blew out the little candle.

“Alright,” he said.

Sunny had been fourteen the first time he’d had sex. He was aware that he was a bit early to the game and didn’t really tell a lot of people. It had been with some girl from a school across town, and he’d met her at a church lockdown. He was serious about religion back then ,and he’d always be serious about right and wrong, virtue, loyalty. He tried to track her down, but she was hard to find, and it seemed she didn’t really want to be found. So though this was Sunny’s first time, fraught with anxiety, it wasn’t anything like the beginning on a new phase in his life. That hadn’t really happened until senior year, with Sara in fact, and when they’d finally had sex it was more like something they were both expected to do. It was nice. Enough. He’d never say it wasn’t, but there was something wrong about it he couldn’t name. He also had an odd feeling of: “That’s two now. You don’t want too many notches on your bedpost.” Guys talked about doing it a lot, but the truth is a good guy wasn’t a guy who was doing it a lot with a lot of girls. One day he’d get married, One day he’d be a dad, and you didn’t want to tell your kids or your respectable friends that there’d been all of these girls before your wife.

Sunny had been surfing since he was seven, since his dad, who hadn’t taught him much else, and who had grown up in Hawaii, taught him. He didn’t even think about how good he was. He thought about how the water fit him, how it sheltered him, how it would always be there and was always a home. You had to trust the water. Everything boiled down to that. There was a thrill in riding the waves, but the thrill was not the same as fear, not really, And even should you fall off, your eyes opened into the warm blue and saw silver sand beneath, the quiet kingdom of underwater creatures.

Jack had been talking about how he liked Sara, and Sunny was talking about starting college and they were getting high at his house, but not very high. That was important, because Sunny never wanted to write off what happened on drugs. His mom was gone. The house was theirs for the weekend. Birds were singing outside. He and Jack were on the bed together, real close, and then their mouths were pressed together, and it felt so right. There was nothing to learn. Sunny knew he was goodlooking and in the summer he was in nothing but a fisherman’s hat and a Speedo. Sometimes flip flops. Jack always wore red trunks, a baseball cap and, for reasons they’d both forgotten, a whistle on a landyard. They undressed swiftly, fluidly, linking limbs, and it was the best feeling in the world. They were timid about some things, but not afraid very long, and they were in no hurry. They were not sure where this would end. Even the surprise of ejaculation was a delight, and didn’t mean an ending. They didn’t really speak until the bed was rumpled, their bodies warm, the room full of pot smoke, and the shadow of evening crossing over them.

“I always thought I might be bi,” Jack said, shrugging and laughing.

“I guess I’m bi, too,” Sunny said.

Sunny didn’t think he could do this with anyone but Jack. He hadn’t really thought of it before. His mind was on school, on the future, on waves, not on this. Sex had been complicated to him, scary even.

“Do you mind if we do that again?” Jack said.

“Right now?” Sunny raised an eyebrow.

Jack laughed.

“I’m worn out,” he said. “Not right now. But like, maybe later? Or like tomorrow? Can it be our thing?”

That made sense. Jack was his best friend. It totally made sense they should be friends like this. Guys never talked about relationships with their best friends. Maybe this was why. Girls always did. Women always wrote these novels where they were bathing with their best friends, laying naked with them, doing all sorts of stuff.

“Yeah,” Sunny said, happy. His boners had always been embarrassing, but now when his penis rose it was filled with affection and a tender yearning, the kind you should have for the guy you cared for most in the world.

“It can totally be our thing.”