Chapter Seven

Beatnik writing crap: music move me, god I want to dance. How many chances will be given, the souls of my feet tingle I want to shout along, body and soul; I want to know, to taste and know the taste, I want to escape so badly my soul wants to leap from my body, the beauty and pain of feeling things deeply. How far do you dive? How long do you drive? The road calls, get away, get away, go far away, be free, seek something out. And the song blares along and I want to shout, I am free, and have it be really something that I really mean, that I really feel, I want it all, all the dreams, to be real. Kill me if that’s so wrong, still dead or alive, on spins the wheels and on goes the song; the earth spins oblivious. We need to stomp, to sting, to shout, to make the world aware of us.

We left on a Sunday at 10:30, headed for Newport Oregon. Kang wanted to listen to albums; said nobody listens to albums anymore, just singles of songs and sometimes just listening to songs is like just looking at a corner of a painting; you don’t really get a full view or appreciation of the art, and sometimes albums are intended to be taken as a whole not cut into parts.

We listened to the latest “Sleigh Bells” album and Seth-Rem said he imagines these songs to be songs that pump up Hit-Girl in those “Kick-Ass” movies or songs Chloe Moretz would listen to in order to get into her ‘Hit-Girl’ character. Leena said the Sleigh Bells make her think of anarchist cheerleader gangs in some ritzy gang war in Bel-Air or Brooklyn. The songs sounded pretty rad. I though how much cooler music sounds when you listen to it with other people you think are cool who are enjoying it.

Then we listened to “The Cults” (one of Jan’s favorite bands; I don’t know if they knew that) and Candice said they sound like The Sleigh Bells bookish, anguished, yet inwardly adventurous little sister. I knew all those songs.

“What do you mean inwardly adventurous?” Kang had asked.

“Like, the Sleigh Bells sound like smashing bottles against graffiti streaked brick walls and The Cults are like, hiding under covers making plans, daydreaming, of boys and running away and either leaving the cult or joining a cult or something and stuff.”

‘Sleigh Bells are like Jan and the Cults are like me’ I thought. The songs did seduce me into languid daydreams; nothing really specific. Just general happiness and ambiguous adventure; the tingling exciting thought of tackling these things effortlessly without providing specifics; the ever open promise of tomorrow afforded youth of what may and could be, the allure of the great someday happening, something great happening, wealth and money and fun and substance and life and whatnot and whatever else; purpose and happiness and wonder what the great future will bring; all the presents as birthdays and future Christmases tumble behind.

Each album was about a half hour long; pretty short, yet still full and wonderful; Sleigh Bells heavy, The Cults light, both pretty. We listened to each twice. That filled up about two hour’s time. You can’t really appreciate songs unless you hear them on repeat. Even crap songs can become tolerable with multiple listens, before you hear them too much and they become even crappier and like you’d rather drill a hole into your brain than have to hear it again. Your brain has a way of trying to sculpt things into order and wants to make things better than they really are, because the self, biologically, never seeks torture. Biologically, the body does all it can do to heal itself and limit pain, using white blood cells, adrenalin rushes, cell regeneration and so on. Is it a proof of a soul, I wonder, that the body biologically wants to survive yet so many people kill themselves anyways?

I guess many of those who torture themselves justify it as a way of either pleasure of self expression or something; S&M and tattoos and piercings and junk; but no one purposefully tortuous themselves by listening to music they hate. Anyways, all these songs were pretty great, actually. We listened to “Go Outside” by The Cults multiple times in a row and everyone sang “bing, bing, bing, bing,” at the piano tinker break down part, the best part of the song and the whole album. We’re outside!

The group were all talking fast in quick engaging conversations also, over things above and beyond me; I’d occasionally participate, mostly when asked for a direct response to something by Candice. But I didn’t really feel too awkward; I was already feeling pretty good and happy, traveling with them, even if more of as a observer then participator. It felt good to travel away from home and pretend I was leaving all that negative junk, the stress of school and sadness of loneliness and worries, behind, further back and out of mind (but not really because thinking about not thinking about something is still thinking about that thing just as strongly) with every mile ventured and every song played. I was enjoying it, the ride, the music, looking and listening to them, these beautiful and wonderful and cool older young people.

Leena said, “enough of this hipster shit, it’s Disney pop guilty pleasure time.”

She took control of the iPod hooked to the van stereo and found and played ‘Ready or Not’ by some Disney Channel girl. Leena said this song, strangely, improbably enough, actually made the UK top ten charts recently. Embarrassingly, I actually knew that song because I still watch some Disney Channel sometimes; like comfort food, reverting to kiddy tween TV to either remember a simpler happier time or be reminded that this ‘simpler, happier’ time is still going on for kids all across America who will one day become nostalgia over, sometimes ironically, sometimes sincerely, this current Disney Channel programming, the way older kids, older teens and young adults do over things like “Lizzie McGuire” and “The High School Musical” franchise, playing the remember that? conversation game. Remember that? they’d ask each other in dorm rooms or cafeteria’s or in vans during road trips, or wherever and then laugh over remembering it, and how fun, and a weird astonishing pleasurable sensation to re-remember something you’ve forgotten about and once loved. Recalling it now with more mature minds and sensibilities and a clearer compass of what ‘cool’ and ‘good’ really are and really mean in art and entertainment; realize a lot of that stuff you liked as a kid was pretty dumb and shoddy and not worth obsession, but ‘pretty dumb’ can easily transform into ‘pretty great’ with the aid of nostalgia and goofiness, and laugh over themselves back then, how silly and dumb they were to be so seriously obsessed and sometimes melancholy and heart broke over trivial things like Zac Effron’s hair and his sparkling blue eyes.

She played some Miley Cyrus hits; “Party in the U.S.A.” being a big sing along; it’s kind of the original “Call Me Maybe”. Then Kang took out his i-phone and made us do the sing along again, this time recording it, and told us to really ham it up; so there’s that music video of our trip; the first trip video, he pointed out. “If I don’t look sexy in it don’t post in on YouTube” Leena said and Seth-Rem said “Don’t put it up anyways; I mean, ‘Party in the U.S.A.?’ Come on, we can do better than that.” We laughed and agreed that we could do better than that. Then we listened to Aly and AJ’s “Insomniacic” album; the most underrated album in music history, according to Leena and Candice. It’s one of their inside things to like that album. I knew of this album from Jan. It was both slightly painful yet fun to listen to it again. I hadn’t heard it in a long time. It brought back sixth grade memories, mostly good, or with retrospect, funny, if not so funny at the time.

Middle School love is pretty hilarious in retrospect; how a boyfriend and girlfriend alliance are formed in half a day and in that day the world begin and ends. How you can cry for weeks over some boy you never knew who you decided you loved only after he decided he wanted to “go out” with you, and suddenly you obsess over him and your grand futures together, naming kids and everything, and how great suddenly everything is, although you’ve never had a conversation that lasted over a minute with him, and he breaks up with you the next day because he decides he likes someone else better, and you’re suddenly near suicidal, because this has huge implications somehow, all those dreams dwelled over the last twenty four hours dashed and suddenly crumbling down like a city suddenly rocked by a magnitude eight earthquake, and without that hope anymore, what does anything mean or matter? Deathly serious at the time, so silly and absurd later.

But you can’t convince a middle school person that they’ll one day look back on what feels traumatic at the time as something silly; that angers them and invalidates their feelings and their whole world; that’s just something that they’ll have to discover in their own time.

Jan’s four old high school friends all talked about their middle school romances and laughed a lot about it. They had all, at one point or another, gone out with each other, I think, from what I could gather; Leena and Seth-Rem, Seth-Rem and Candice, Candice and Kang, Kang’s letter writing love campaign addressed at Leena. Seth-Rem had a crush on Jan. I could tell they purposefully left out talking about Jan, for my behalf, although I actually would have liked to have heard them talk about her, all past tense. I think Candice kissed Jan. In some ways they knew her better than I did. Or they knew a version of her, the school hallway version of her that I never saw. They also threw out names I didn’t recognize. I told them my own middle school love story, although it was totally embarrassing, but it made them laugh, which made me feel good.

“We were all sluts weren’t we?” Kang said, and they all laughed.

“I totally won Middle School,” Leena said, “I kissed the most boys.”

“Kiss any girls?” Kang asked, and she called him a perv and said I’m not going to allow you to have the mental image of a twelve year old me getting frisky, and Seth-Rem said, ‘She’s right bro, that’s some borderline pedophile shit’ and Kang said, ‘but we all knew each other then and Leena had boobs even back then,’ and Leena interrupted him with ‘excuse me?’ and then ‘Do you sexually fantasize about twelve year old me?’ and Kang said ‘twelve, no, but thirteen fifteen? You were pretty hot back then,’ and he said that jokingly and Leena knew to take it jokingly, but I could tell she was still a bit repulsed by it and offended by him suggesting she’s not as hot as she used to be, although she’s only something like nineteen or twenty, and the conversation would have maybe turned less playful and more confrontational except for Candice who steered the conversation away by saying ‘these songs are so much better when you realize their all about Joe Jonas’ who Aly or AJ, the younger sister, dated and broke up with before Joe dated Taylor Swift way back when and broke up with her over the phone (remember that gossip and Swift song?). Then “If I could have you back” played and they all sang along and car danced to that. Sort of making fun of it, themselves, while still totally enjoying it in an non ironic way.

We rolled into Newport Oregon around 3:15 with Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” playing. The boys wanted to listen to Foster the People or Kendrick Lamar but the girls overruled them, so JT it was. It’s interesting, overwhelming, the amount of music out there, old and new, heralded and hidden; interesting to wonder how it happens what songs come to be included in your life’s soundtracks, or to come to represent you and your group of friends or what song or band or singer would come to mean something significant; a song shared by a friend meant to comfort in a trying time for example. Maybe the song isn’t exactly a great song but it still holds powerful sentimental value. Who knows if the one boy in Topeka Kansas, or wherever, would be a big David Bowie fan if only he would have heard him earlier, but since he hadn’t he’ll never know the rewards he otherwise would have received from being a David Bowie fan, for one example. Bowie recently released a new album.

Then there’s the arbitrary randomness of what becomes popular and what doesn’t which effects all this; some song or group breaks out because some car commercial played them in some random executive department decision; and if they would have picked some other song, it, the world, the music culture, what people enjoy, who’d be rich and who wouldn’t, would all be different. It also applies to people. So many people in so many places, but you can only really be friends with those you come in contact with; but are those people really the best people for you, the one who’d make you most happy? What if you were born in some other city, or some other country; who would have been your friends then? Would you have had a better life; met better people who understood you more? Same questions apply with love, boyfriends and girlfriends.

Listening to JT (Leena and Candice really liked him; the boys not as much; they constantly made fun of him) had prompted a discussion/argument about boy bands, again. Boy bands are like girlie porn. Girls don’t like or get porn the way boys do; a naked man, generally, isn’t as pleasing to look at for a woman as an attractive naked woman is for a boy to look at. There needs to be more, other functions to, generally, stimulate a woman: mood, story, feelings, power, a narrative, money, being made to feel protected, for some, or made to feel beautiful themselves, powerful themselves (getting turned on by being able to turn on someone else) through or by a man; to better appreciate his manhood, the way men appreciate the beauty of women.

Also, generally, with straight people, women just aren’t as horny as men anyways. Hormones and testosterone and all that junk. ‘Is a penis really attractive to a woman?’ Kang had asked. ‘I just don’t see it.’

Leena tried to answer. ‘Well, they’re just so… there, you know; attractive isn’t really the right word, but…’ Candice interrupted, saying, ‘their grotesqueness is part of their beauty…kind of… sometimes’ and Leena said, ‘It’s more the thought of their sexual function that’s compelling, or interesting, symbolism and all that’ and Seth-Rem asked, ‘So, like how people, some people, enjoy watching a horror movie, or getting scared, that’s kind of the appeal of a penis for a women? Or gay men?’

‘Well, like Leena said, it’s also a case of function over form.’ Candice asked: ‘Aren’t dudes the ones who are all obsessed over penises anyways?’ ‘Their size compared with other sizes? Wanting to measure up?’

‘Well first of all, no,’ Seth-Rem answered, ‘and second, kind of maybe just in that competitive way guys are with each other, but no guy, no straight guy, likes looking at other peoples penises.’

‘That’s true,’ Kang confirmed.

‘Well what’s so great about vaginas” Leena asked, “I mean, there’s not anything much there, really”.

“That’s part of their magic,” Seth-Rem said, and Kang said, ‘they’re super cute, especially in proportion to the rest of the body, you know. A close up of one, for me anyways, is like, too much biology there to be sexy, like looking at a clam or oyster or something’.

“There’s not much there, but there’s so, so much there,” Seth-Rem said, “all the wonderful possibilities they possess”.

“Like delivering a baby?” Leena asked.

“Not really what I was thinking about, but…wait, what?’ Seth-Rem said.

“Well, science says, that’s the reason for attraction and sexuality and all that anyways,’” Kang said, “to get to that end result of reproduction. We’re agents of continuing our species, or wanting to, without knowing it; it’s a power greater than our control or consciousness.”

“Are you okay with this conversation?’ Candice asked me.

“Oh yeah, sure,” I said, then added, trying to funny, “I’ve actually never seen a penis. Not in real life I mean.”

“Well little girl, it’s time you…” Seth-Rem began and reached down his pants; Kang copying the reach down your pants gesture.

“Boys, don’t!” Candice scolded.

Still trying to be funny, I said, “Actually the conversation sort of turned me on.”

“Me too,” Leena said.

“I have a boner right now,” Seth-Rem teased (pretty sure not serious), and Candice shot him, ‘shut-up, stop-it’ look.

“Can you drive safely with a boner?” Leena asked. “Is that safe?”

Then the boys made jokes equating driving with a boner to driving while drunk, and the various laws and stuff there might be; ‘DWE, driving while engorged’ as a DUI, driving under influence. “You guys are ridiculous,” Leena said.

“Anyways, girls get their lust-sugar kicks, without maybe actually having orgasms, from boy bands, and the boys bands and their managers know it and their songs and images are all designed to incite girl lust and infatuation, so they’ll throw their money, or their parents money, at them and all their merchandise, and little girls control our culture now, decides what’s popular, so that’s why this boy band crap is popular again now and why we’re having this conversation at all,” Kang said.

“So boy bands are the equivalent to porn for girls, so what’s the equivalent to sports?” ‘Leena asked.

“Girls like sports,” Candice said.

“Not like most guys do,” Kang said.

“The fulfillment, so called, or entertainment that some guys get from sports, some girls get from fashion and celebrity gossip, probably,” Candice said, but added that it’s dumb to label and classify people and whole genders and make dumb assumptions and stuff.

So that was about the last conversation before we entered Newport.

Newport had been picked arbitrarily. There are probably better Oregon beach towns, more touristy, closer to Portland, like Astoria, that are maybe hipper and cuter with a more exciting feel. But, we wanted to make some road progress, and not that all beaches are basically the same really, except in the ways that they are, but just if a beach is busier because it’s closer to higher population hubs doesn’t automatically make it better, necessarily.

We arrived at Agate beach in Newport. “Land! Land!” Leena yelled, stepping out of the van. It is a nice yet sort of weird feeling to step out of a car or van ride after a long drive. You have to stretch yourself, try and wake yourself up a little more, survey your surroundings, can’t help but wonder ‘where am I’ even though, map wise, you know where you are. Leena stretched then took off her shirt. She wore a white bikini top. Candice did the same. I hadn’t gotten the memo to wear a swimsuit as underwear for the car ride.

“Let’s go, come on Alice,” Candice said, and they walked, then jogged, then ran onto the beach and towards the ocean. I followed. The boys came after, handsome and shirtless, and passed us, racing. They jumped into the waves. I entered the water. The water was cold, a bit shocking, but the day was bright; blue Oregon sky, a sea-breeze wind. “Road Trip!” the four of them yelled while venturing further into the waves, slapping the water with the palms of their hands. I joined in their chants.

“The ocean calls to me. I swear I was a mermaid in a former life,” Leena said, and we laughed at her.

“Take off your shirt! Take it off” Candice and Leena yelled at me.

“No, I have just a bra on underneath,” I protested back.

“Take it off!” they yelled. I haven’t been to many parties. But from what I’ve learned from party movies and stories I’ve heard is that group peer pressure is a big thing at parties, usually involving alcohol or stripping or some dumb stunt or dare. A dare is given out, publically, a chant is formed, the person accepts and accomplishes the dare (Chug! Chug! Or whatever) and everyone cheers. That’s what this seemed to be. And I was the target.

“But there’s boys here,” I said.

“Hey, we’re topless,” Seth-Rem said.

“Do you want me to take off my pants? I will,” Kang said.

“Gross, stop it,” Leena and Candice yelled.

“Your bra is just like a bikini top,” Leena said.

“Probably more modest then hers,” Candice said.

Candice was right. My bathing suit is a black one piece. Thankfully, mercifully, retro one pieces have become back in fashion enough that they can be worn and you won’t be labeled or looked at as the big lame weirdo nerd prude on the beach, but I had been on a ‘prepare for summer diet’ motivated by fear from exposing part of my body on this road trip, to all of them, but mostly with Seth-Rem in mind. So of course I’m body self conscious and don’t think I look good, but I’m not horrified by myself either, and a few times the week or so before this trip I even convinced myself someone could think I looked good naked. Not that I planned on being naked in front of any of them or anyone else or anything, but still. I think the value in that is not so much literal, but just the added confidence it gives, and confidence is more a mental thing than physical thing anyways, but anyways, letting go of insecurities allows one to feel freer and more comfortable, with the self and with the world, which widens the window to let in more potential happiness; so body self esteem, figure, diet, wanting to look good, among the younger ones, anyways, is sure, a lot, maybe mostly, about feeling desirable to the opposite sex, or those who you want to feel desirable to, but also that feeling is more about feeling good about yourself than trying to please any other person; so down to the raw of it, it’s about sex but also not about sex, or the idea of sex, you know? And yeah, health and energy too.

(Reading this file two years later, that above paragraph didn’t make much sense and a good editor would have it deleted. But I’ll keep it; I don’t want to mess with my “voice” back then too much, even if the “voice” annoyingly tried to explain things I was, and still am, clueless about. I really betrayed the “write like a Beatnik” motivation here, with this whole thing pretty much, sadly. Oh well. Sorry Jan).

I took off my shirt and swung it over my head, it was wet, and they all cheered me. Then a big wave smacked me back and knocked me down and I got a taste of disgusting ocean salt water in my mouth, full of whale piss and foam and Star Fish sperm and who knows what, and Kang helped me back up. We’re in the ocean! We’re a part of the ocean!

Back at the beach I was shivering wrapped in a towel sitting on a ash gray driftwood log watching Seth-Rem and Kang set up croquet rings, each ring about forty feet apart, one set in the center of this shallow wide stream tricking towards the ocean. I dried of pretty quickly then I played two rounds of what they called beach croquet golf; I played with the blue ball.

We went to our place where we’d stay for the night. It was nice; sort of 1970’s style, especially in the little kitchen, but nice; a flick on fire place and modern TV’s and beach art on the walls; a collage made from shells in a drift wood frame, some pictures of seagulls and watercolors of kites flown on the beach, that type of thing. An amazing view of the ocean and beach; perfect really, right there, out the big front living room windows. I thought, ‘I wouldn’t’ mind living here’. But then I wondered, or figured, with a constant ocean view, maybe it gets old and not real special after awhile, but sort of mundane, and a ocean view sort of forces you to be reflective and meditative for some reason, and maybe too much of that would get tiring, and aren’t people who spend a lot of time by the ocean, sailors and fishermen and such, sort of crazy? Maybe there’s a reason for that, I don’t know.

There was a guest journal on the coffee table and I flipped through it, glancing over some entries. A little girl was ecstatic that she found sea-shells and she wrote that she had the best time even though it rained part of one day and she was sad that she didn’t see any baby seals like her friend had. One guest wrote and drew an accompanying picture of seeing some huge ton metal container, part of a dock that washed onto the beach from the huge Japanese tsunami out the window. I remembered hearing about that. I showed it to the gang, and Kang took out his iPad and found the news story of it, with picture, and he held it up to the window to compare the picture with his own sight; the landscape the same in each, the cliff and the trees in the distance, the difference being that metal container no longer being there.

We took turns using the shower. We played Gin-Rummy while an NBA playoff game played on the TV.

“But girls don’t really, like, orgasm to Boy Bands,” Kang said. “So it’s not like really the equivalent of porn for them. Right?”

“Girls don’t have the need to orgasm like boys do,” Seth-Rem said, “so the corollary is still applicable. It fulfills there pleasure need the way porn does for guys.”

“That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard,” Leena said. “A good mind blowing orgasm is one of the best things, for girls too. Bull shit that only matters to guys.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Seth-Rem said and was about to say more but Candice cut him off.

“Guys,” she said, then flicked her eyes at me then back at them.

“It’s okay, Jan and I use to talk about sex all the time,” I said; a lie. An awkward pause dropped on the middle of the card pile for a moment when they all looked at me wondering, I could tell, whether I were a virgin or not. I’m not. Not even close.

LeBron James made some important and spectacular thunder dunk and the announcer over the TV threw out a bunch of exclamation point one liners marveling at the power dunk which was replayed a few times: ‘with complete disregard for physics and zero mercy LeBron let it be known who is king! All hail the King!’ And the crowd erupted in celebratory hysterics.