On Saturday, after a deeply awkward but adorable attempt at bonding with my dad over coffee, I meet Sean Santos-Orenstein at the foothills of Prospect Park’s winding dirt paths and orange groves, our closest approximation to “real” nature, to the outside world. He’s standing on a blanket under a big oak tree with two paper Stater Bros. bags at his feet. Even with his black Ray-Bans on I can tell he’s google-eyed as he grins, and right now, all of a sudden, I realize exactly how cute he is.
Still, I haven’t thought about whether this is a date date or not, and secretly, though I have no business feeling this way (as beggars must be beggars), I hope it isn’t. Since Jake Walker, I can’t really care about boys. They’re clearly not the solution to any of my existential crises, and also, they’re not that great. (Life is really not the way anything in NYLON magazine says. Or at least mine isn’t, and maybe that’s why I’m not in NYLON magazine.)
If it’s boring or weird, I’ll just go home. If (when) it’s embarrassing and awkward, I’ll flee the scene like I usually do and drive around crying to Rudy and Morrissey.
“Heyyy,” he calls as I make my way over to the tree.
“Hiii.” I wave, and he gets to work pulling stuff out of the grocery bags.
“Wow, this is a whole spread.” I eye the bags of grapes and chips, the little thing of salsa.
“I mean, I thought I might as well go all out.” He grins and lands his long body on the blanket, which, actually, is more of a throw. “Glad you could come.”
“Me too,” I unfortunately squeak. Plopping down, static hits the backs of my thighs. (How is it December and almost 80 degrees? Shorts are the least interesting article of clothing, and they’re extremely hard to work with. I hate it here.)
“Sooo…” I fidget hesitantly. “What’s up? I mean, how are you? I mean, I don’t know anything about you.”
He laughs easily and pops a grape into his mouth, smirking at me.
“You’re hilarious.” He smacks on a grape. “Hm, about me…” He pauses, and I patiently stretch my legs in front of me and lean back on my palms.
(For posterity, and because I’m pretty proud of getting creative with khaki shorts that are a little too big for me, the whole outfit is: a red vinyl belt, bright red lips, espadrille sandals, a white oxford shirt pushed up at the arms, and a pin of a Gustav Klimt painting. It’s very class-mom-on-field-trip-day. Or Black Diane Keaton on vacation in Italy.)
(By the way, this is an example of a look my mom goes crazy over. I think she wishes I was Black Diane Keaton every day, shopping the racks of Ann Taylor Loft with her. “You can’t beat a nice, crisp white button down!” That’s one thing my mom is passionate about.)
“Well,” he finally says, “I don’t play any instruments and I’m in a band with no name.”
We both crack up and he jabs me softly in the arm. “Shut up! What about you?”
“Well, personally I think Overdressed and Mouthful is a perfect name.”
“No, for real,” Sean laughs and smirks sharply. “Tell me about who you are. I want to get to know you.”
He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and long tight cutoffs, printed socks, and simple low Adidas. Dad-on-field-trip-day-but-dad-is-in-TV-on-the-Radio. He scratches at patchy sideburn stubble. I believe I am being seduced.
I consider lying, flirting. But whatever.
“Hm. Who am I. Well I like reading books, writing. Music, obviously. I like the color green and apples and thrifting and movies…” This is the part where I usually stop talking, but today I disrupt my own peace.
“I mean, I’m kind of a mess, I know it. So many things are wrong with me. But there’s so much I want to do and be; I have a feeling I could be this grand, passionate hero.”
I don’t know why I quote myself, but I do. I just want to say it out loud, almost as a joke.
“Wow,” Sean whispers.
“Except,” I sigh, “I’m trapped, and I don’t know what I believe or where I’m going.” I pull some grapes from their stem with a self-deprecating chuckle. “Sorry, that got real dark, didn’t mean to be a downer!”
He laughs, but not at me—it doesn’t make me feel stupid or weird.
“You really hate small talk, don’t you?” He pretends to elbow me.
“You asked.” I shrug with a pout, blushing under my black girl.
Sean quickly looks down, drags his hand across his forehead and through his puffy hair. I notice his dimples. He pulls off his shades; his eyes do their happy glistening.
“No…I don’t think you’re a mess,” he mumbles, squinting. “And I don’t think you’re a downer. I think you’re smart. And what you just said was actually really beautiful.”
I smile and try not to ruin anything because I don’t know how I’m supposed to be. “Well, thanks.” I reach to surreptitiously pick a blade of grass.
“Seriously,” he basically marvels. “Everything you say is like a little poem, it’s amazing.”
I snort shyly. “Maybe you’re just easy to talk to.”
He grins and shrugs proudly. He’s good at saying a lot without words. He’s sort of intense—but it’s working for me, there’s instant intimacy. I feel like I’ve known him for years. I bend my head back over my shoulders and look up at the sky, its shapeless clouds.
“So, tell me a story about you,” I insist.
“Hmm…” He tilts his head to join me in cloud-gazing, folding his knees up to his chest and drumming them absently with his fingers. “I think about living in Italy one day. Last summer I tried to teach myself Italian. You know, with Rosetta Stone? I pretended to understand all these Italian poems—I thought I’d pick it up by osmosis, eventually. Anyway, I gave up after two weeks.”
He throws a grape into the air and tries to catch it in his mouth. He doesn’t.
“That sounds awesome! I’ve never been to Europe.”
“Sparkling cider?” He extends the Nalgene to me and I prop myself up on my elbow.
“Ooh, sure!” It’s lukewarm and sweet, but a charming touch. (Who thinks of that?)
“Maybe not live there. There probably aren’t too many other Black Jews in Italy.”
I swallow, snorting with surprise. “You’ll be one of a kind, then,” I try.
“Oh, I already feel that, believe me I do.”
I take another drink and pass it back. “So, what’s it like? Or, I mean, I don’t know much about Judaism.”
He offers me a chip. I wave it away, listening intently.
“Well, I’m not that religious actually. We celebrate High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur. Passover is pretty dope. But that’s pretty much it. I don’t do anything special.”
“But what do you believe?” My voice cracks; I cough nervously to cover it. “Or, I guess, what do you have to do to be saved from hellfire or whatever? You pray?”
(People are always telling me to pray about my sins, saying they’ll pray for my sins, talking to me about damnation.)
“Yeah, we pray. I pray sometimes but not, like, frequently. I believe in rituals and family and all that stuff, being a good person, basically. Jews don’t really believe in hell.”
“Oh, whoa.” My eyebrows furrow tightly as my face tenses into a pucker. It’s like my mind can’t wrap itself around the idea of a life not ending in eternal flame. “Wow,” I absently repeat, like I’m trying to memorize the information.
“Oh!” he hops up from the blanket and I’m stirred from my mind’s somersaults.
“By the way,” he announces, rifling around in the shopping bags excitedly. “In the spirit of our new friendship, at the suggestion of one David Santos, I made you a mix.” He tosses me a jewel case.
“That’s so nice! I wish I had burned you one.” I adjust my eyes to his handwriting; I think the mix is titled “Anthems of a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl.” I think my lips and my whole body might cover him any second, I can’t fathom how perfect it is.
“Ah, yes! A track listing—you really are different from David.”
He grins as I scan the picks—there’s some Atlas Sound and Broken Social Scene, but also some stuff I’ve never heard of, like the Blood Brothers, and some old-school Marvin Gaye and Nina Simone. Weird, but super good.
“Thanks so much, dude.”
“For sure. My pleasure.” He exhales and lays his body like a paper doll on the blanket, and I lay back next to him. “That’s better. So, let’s talk resolutions.”
“Yes. How’s yours going?”
“Uh, it’s not? I don’t know, I was super fired up last week, but the truth is I have no plan. It’s like I’m trapped in this tiny world of my brain and I can’t get out. That’s why David and I spend so much time goofing off and we don’t even have a band name.”
“Aw,” I croon. “Or look at it this way—you have many band names. Infinite possibilities!” I chuckle half-heartedly and run a hand through the grass. “I know what you mean, though, about being trapped in your own brain, thinking too much.”
“It sucks,” he sighs, looking up at the periwinkle sky. “And it’s not just that. I’m going to college next fall—wherever I go—but I just don’t want to wait that long to get started.”
“On what? You mean studying, or working?”
“No—just living. Sorry I’m not making sense. Erase that.” He swats at his forehead.
“Crazy talk.”
“No! That completely makes sense. I feel that way too, for sure—like I want to just grow into myself already, to know who that person is and what she’s all about.” (I always talk so much with my hands. That’s a thing I know about myself.) “I just don’t have the freedom to do that right now. So, yeah, trapped.”
He hums a little as he sighs. He smells like salt and dryer sheets. He turns his face to mine, but clumsily. (That’s a hundred percent not this movie.) “Well, what is it that you’re passionate about?”
“Um, writing, I guess.” Something flies into my mouth. Of course, I spit it out loudly, sticking my fingers up to my lips. Sean snickers. “Also—” A fly buzzes around me and I try to dodge it, cursing. (I’m very good at dates.)
Sean is cracking up now and I laugh too, sitting up and collecting myself.
“Also, the truth.”
“Ah, the truth. That old rascal.”
“Man, you’re so lucky you go to public school. Vista is an alternate universe. We’re completely cut off from reality.”
For a minute I think I’m getting chilly and rub my arms, but the weather hasn’t changed.
“I have a cousin that goes there,” he offers. “She’s a freshman. Dude, she really is in her own world. I feel like all she does is go to youth group. It’s dope that she’s so passionate, but sometimes when I hear her talk I worry that she’s passionate about the wrong thing. You know what I mean?”
“God, totally. It’s kinda scary. Like, why am I the freak, just because I’m not really sure what happens when we die?”
“Well, first of all, we become dogs, obviously!”
I can’t help it—I get the giggles, and Sean, trying to keep a straight face, eventually erupts in laughter too. I laugh so hard my sides start aching—about the joke, but also about everything. It’s weird to feel so close to someone so fast, like we just met and decided we’d be besties.
“But, all right, second.” He elbows warmly. “Do you really think you’re going to hell?”
“I…I don’t know.” I drop my head. “I’m not perfect.”
“Well, you know, no one—”
“No one’s perfect, I know, I know.”
“No, I was gonna say, no one cool goes to heaven. You can’t do anything fun there.”
“Right! So, hell, I guess.”
“To hell!” he shouts, wielding an imaginary goblet.
“To hell.” I jut my raised fist into the bright sweet center of every orange in California. “To the church of raising hell!”
“Oh, shit!” Sean gasps wildly, and I smile, prouder of myself than anyone in their right mind would be, like I just gave birth to an icon.
“I know. That is an incredible fucking band name and you should definitely use it and give me credit, obviously.”