I Hate Nature Part III

I’m Sure

It took two days for Jen and I to drive from Santa Monica to Arcata.  The yellow Tercel was laden with clothing, Top Ramen and twin bedding, every cubic inch put to use.  My dad wore the half smile he used to avoid crying while Judi looked visibly relieved.  Like the Joads of Santa Monica, we drove off in anticipation.  We broke up the drive midway by staying overnight with Jen’s aunt in an old Victorian home on Potrero Hill.

Jen and I alternated between mixed cassette tapes; our styles of music so different it inflicted mutual audible pain.  I cringed over Neil Young while she endured the Sex Pistols.

The Eagles.  Hurl!

Sham 69.  Help me.

Crosby Stills and Nash.  This hippy crap is making my ears bleed.

Siouxsee and the Banshees.  How can this possibly be music?

A measure of peace was achieved by our intersecting fondness of The GoGo’s, Quadrophenia and the Tubes.  Though Jen and I had run in the same circle at Samohi, she was decidedly an outdoor chick and had joined Humboldt’s Crew team.  She looked forward to getting up at 5:00am and rowing in the frigid bay.  I’d rather be tied to a chair and force fed my least favorite food, peas.

I had never driven farther north than Mendocino and what struck me about the drive was the way 101 transformed.  It became staggering in its beauty; much scarier than Sunset Boulevard.  There were so many enormous trees.  Passing the little Toyota were huge logging trucks stacked with enormous freshly chopped redwoods. With fernlike leaves swatting at the windshield, I hugged the road carefully, trying to see through the spitting rain. I was terrified of this type of vehicle next to mine.  I thought for sure, my little tin car would be swallowed whole.  With visibility at an all time low, I concentrated on the yellow lines of the road, windshield wipers on the fastest speed.

When we arrived, I drove Jen to her dorm, Sunset Hall.  Sunset Hall was closer to Founders Hall in another area of the campus.  It mirrored Redwood Hall, with a grassy quad in the middle.  It was a coed dorm that housed freshmen.  We could see other students carrying in their belongings.  I helped Jen unload and we met her roommate.  She was a small dark haired girl whose body was covered in burn scars.  She was upfront about her appearance, telling us that she had been in a house fire when she was three.  She was a nursing major, kind funny and upbeat. I admired her immediately.

I left there and drove to my apartment complex, the Colony.  Because the dorms were full, I was waitlisted for a room.  In the meantime, I lived with two upper classmen:  Paul and Bunyan.  Each had a full beard, wore flannel shirts and probably wielded axes or practiced logrolling in their spare time.  In the three months that we lived together we exchanged seventeen words.  I decorated my room with concert memorabilia and play lists that I had snagged off various stages in Los Angeles. It was there that I cooked my first meal by myself: a pan of Rice O Roni. It tasted like crap.

The first few days of class were uneventful; I have very little recollection.  I stayed in my little room at the Colony, writing letters to friends at home, frustrated that I was missing out on “The Scene”. Skies became grey with regular morning rain.  In vain, I carried an umbrella to shield my vertical coif from imminent hydration.  Walking to class, my feet were constantly damp.  I speculated about whether mold would grow between my toes.  Was that a scientific possibility?

One Saturday, I climbed to the third floor of Sunset Hall to look for Jen.  Knocking on her door, to no response, I remembered that she had an afternoon crew practice.  As I turned to leave I noticed Scott, the obnoxious guy from orientation, at the end of the hall. 

“Hey” we both said at the same time.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I didn’t know you lived on this floor.”

He nodded, thumb pointing to his room.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Jen but I don’t think she’ll be back for a while.   I’m gonna walk into town.  I need to buys some cloves.” I hesitated then asked, “Do you want to come?”

“Sure.” He said, and I saw the hint of a smile on his face.

Clouds did not part, but I see now that the universe had conspired to bring us together.  From that moment, Scott and I began a  deep friendship.  The love of clove cigarettes and all things Southern California bound us.  We had much in common: both raised in beach towns, both had divorced parents.  Both had younger brothers.  And both had an inordinate amount of insecurity that was alleviated by extreme sarcasm and the cultural sport of putting other people down.  Rapidly, I learned Scott’s favorite phrase:  I’m Sure.

“Jen and I hung out in the same group.  We called ourselves the Mickey Mouse Club” I told him.

 “Mickey Mouse Club?  I’m sure”.  Said Scott, laughing.

Returning to the dorm, we smoked a clove and Scott confided in me.

“There’s something wrong with my roommate”.

“What is it?” I asked.

“He doesn’t talk.  Like, I’m sure.  He won’t say a word.  Come look at this”:

We walked into Scott’s room where he showed me the corkboard over his roommate’s bed.  While most corkboards had photos of friends and bands, this board had only one sentence, written in large letters.

“The Lunatic is in My Head” I read aloud.

“I’m sure”, said Scott, falling into a fit of nervous laughter.

“What the hell does it mean?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

“You think I have a clue?” he said.

“You’d better be careful.  He might try to smother you will a pillow.”

“I’m sure.”

Later, we found out that it was a lyric from a Pink Floyd song.  There was a lot of Pink Floyd music wafting through those halls, in conjunction with the skunk like smell of weed.  I was not a pot smoker.  It made me too paranoid.  Anyone could get a contact high most days though, just by walking through Sunset hall.  The potheads had different energy: slow, turtle like responses.  Most had long hair and glazed red eyes.  They were quiet.  We were not.

Mid Quarter, the Resident Advisors organized a social event: the Dead Celebrity Halloween party.  Scott and I started preparing our costumes immediately.  He would be Sid Vicious and I would be Edie Sedgwick, an obscure Andy Warhol Factory Model.  I helped Scott dye his hair ink black and using all of my best styling tools, gave him the spikiest "do" that his fine hair would allow.  I placed him in a trench coat and ripped T-shirt, wrapping a thin spiked belt around his neck.  I wore the white go-go boots that my grandma had given me, combined with a black mini skirt with zippers on the sides. I added large plastic mod earrings and painted exaggerated cat eyes on my lids. Getting dressed was half of the fun.

The Dead Celebrity Party was our unofficial coming out party.  We got obnoxiously drunk on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor, racing through the halls, dominating the turntable at the party where we protested what we deemed as deplorable pop music. Asia and Loverboy didn’t stand a chance.  Forcing our will upon the partygoers we put on the Clashes Combat Rock album where we did lip sync to the song, “Know Your Rights” on the dance floor.  We terrorized most of the kids by our extreme behavior.  But we ingratiated ourselves to many.  We bonded to a sweet girl from Walnut Creek named Katie, who was the first person I knew who used snuff.  We became friends because we both avoided the football games.  She put Scott and I in her student film.  In the film, I strutted down Sunset Hall like it was a catwalk to the music of Funboy Three.  It was an imaginary ad for jeans.  Katie captured a close up of Scott, who on the reverse angle looks at me, feigning surprise over the designer jeans, and drops the clove cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the dimple poignant on his chin.

I’m sure, Scott said as we filmed.

Having an inborn flair for the dramatic, I could make Scott double over in fits of laughter by doing a hammed up pretend music video to Christopher Cross’s song Sailing.  Jen had that cheesy song among her mixed tapes and we teased her about it.  When things got too serious and we all needed a study break I’d say,

“I can do Sailing”.  All I had to do was look over at him and we’d die over what we discerned as the song’s ridiculous sentimentality. Even Jen couldn’t resist the hilarity and it cracked her up.

We made fun of people because we were insecure.  We teased Jen and her friends for their choice of Tie Dye shirts.  We called them Trail Mixers.  We made up songs about them.  Despite Scott’s academic probationary status, he was very clever at making up lyrics to our songs.  We were badass legends in our own minds.

Scott had been accepted to HSU with a one point something GPA. 

“I’m on Academic probation, I’m sure!”  He’d say but with a note of worry in his voice.  Winter quarter, we signed up for, and finally passed, Algebra II.  It was a class we had both failed in high school.  We worked hard over the equations and felt good about our comprehension of the subject.  It was my one and only mathematics class in six years of college and I earned an A.

That Winter I watched on television as the Santa Monica Pier collapsed into the ocean.  It was a symbolic gesture on the Pier’s behalf; the crumbling of my childhood and the tumultuous emotions I felt as I grappled with my new surroundings.

One Friday evening, Scott and I were scoring our weekend’s provisions of alcohol through Carmen, who, at the ancient age of 22, could legally enter Redwood Liquors.  Jen and some of the Trail Mixers stopped us in the hall.  They were heading to the beach to watch the sunset and asked if we wanted to come along.

“Go and watch the sunset?  Um, no thank you.” I said

“Come on, why not?”  Jen asked.

“I hate Nature!” I said emphatically.

The trail mixing hippy chicks looked at me and gasped.

“You hate nature?” one of them asked bug eyed.

“I do.  Plus, it’s stupid to get all gooey.  Oh, look at the sunset.  How beautiful…” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Besides, I wearing heels” I added.

“You hate nature? I’m sure.”  Scott said, practically falling to the ground and rolling with laughter.

But I could tell that he wanted to go.  And maybe he did go.  I can’t remember.  Maybe this was when Scott and Jen became a couple.  It didn’t last long.  Over Spring Break he cheated on her and it wasn’t with another girl.  He felt awkward about it and I was the only person that he told.  I guarded his secret to the detriment of my friendship with Jen.  Some things were too confusing to laugh about.

 I could not have expressed why I hated nature back then except to say that it made me feel too much and at that point in my life I didn’t want to feel anything.  I preferred numbness.  Nature reminded me of that subterranean spring of emotions which ran beneath my tough exterior.  It could collapse at any time, just like the pier.  I had a great sense of sadness in my life: my parent’s divorce, my grandmother’s cancer and my deep sense of unworthiness.  One could say these are typical trials of the teenage experience but mine felt especially tough.  I was incredibly self-destructive.  Looking back, I understand how pivotal friendships were during those years.  Each of us had struggles, but we connected through a web of caring that, though it was fragile, contained enough strength to hold us within the bounds of sanity.  In spite of Scott’s insecurities, I saw in him goodness, intelligence and the yearnings of a writer’s soul.  I admired Jen for her work ethic and mental toughness; traits that I never could have achieved.  And Katie oozed such naïve vulnerability that being around her always softened one’s heart.  There are many more stories of the shenanigans of Sunset Hall, but these are the most dear to me.  For all of us it was a year of growth.  Freshman year is always a baptism of sorts and I understand now, that there is no way around the woods, only through them.  My emotional growth, unlike the Redwood trees was a slow, slow process that was only beginning.

Last year, wrapped in the warm water of the springs at Esalen I was naked, among strangers, bathing in the light of a full moon.  The ocean was so close and looking down through the crags of the cliffs I watched the waves as they smashed against the earth.  Like they always have.  Like they always will.  Stripped of everything I am humbled by the natural, grateful for the steady heartbeat of this earth.  

All I have left is awe and reverence.

The End