The other day, I heard someone talking in an office I was walking by. Her voice had a sharp, abrasive, vaguely New Yorky accent that reminded me of a former university acquaintance, a transfer student from Brandeis, I once gave a ride to when her white BMW (given to her by her parents) was in the shop again. She gingerly got into my lime green Mustang that I bought used with my own money and thought was totally the coolest car ever, as if it were one giant cootie.
She clutched both sides of her seat in a death grip and cringed back into the headrest as we catapulted up the on-ramp into freeway traffic. Once settled into the fast lane, I turned on the radio just as Tenth Avenue North’s song “By Your Side” came on. I turned up the radio as I shouted “Oh, I love this song!" (did I mention the top was down?) and began singing along. It was at that moment that I learned the true meaning of the phrases, “If looks could kill,” and “She looked daggers at me.”
Despite my efforts to be nice to her, she’d already made it pretty clear that I was some variety of subhuman because of my generic southern accent and the fact I was a service brat, but that I was an unapologetic Christian was the final straw.
I knew lots of folks get the dry heaves at the mere thought of contemporary Christian music, so at the time I didn’t think her reaction was all that big a deal. But thenceforth she would not even say hello to me when our paths crossed. I heard that she referred to me using compound adjectives describing my alleged political affiliation, eating habits, sexual proclivities and ancestry. I was hurt.
Sniff.
Okay, okay, I wasn’t hurt. I didn't think much about it at all. I just shrugged.
Before the above episode happened, how I met this girl, the first Jewish individual I ever knew -- or at least knew was Jewish -- was that she glomed on to me because I was a surfer and she was hot to hook up with what she called a surf Nazi, that being not at all what surfers mean when they say surf Nazi.
What she meant was a surfer dude, a
broad-shouldered, muscular, tall guy with sun-bleached blond hair and an outdoor tan,
somewhat under-endowed between the ears but very well endowed between
the legs. Her fantasy fuck in other words, not someone to introduce to mom and dad but someone to boast about to her friends.
The problem was that she was a very...um...ethnic-looking, had a figure like an ironing board and a personality like a rattlesnake. Oh, and she couldn't swim, let alone surf, and never tried to learn. Her hunting technique was to lie on the beach in her thousand-dollar Rodeo Drive one-piece with obvious bra padding and say to any dude who walked by after riding the waves, "That looked dangerous!" The guy would glance at her and give a wan smile without breaking his stride.
I surfed, so naturally had conversations with guys on the beach before going out about the waves and the wind and what not, sometimes chatted while floating if the waves weren't cooperating, and walked back up the beach with them afterwards. When we passed by her, of course I had to stop and say hello, which gave her a chance to ask who my friend was and trot out her that-looks-dangerous routine. That always fell flat because we surfed because it was fun and sometimes transcendental. It could be dangerous, but like any physical skill you learned and managed the risks so that you could do what you wanted to do.
Saying surfing looked dangerous was like telling motorcycle racers that they must have a death wish and thinking that would attract them to you.
I mean, really.
Sometimes we
would have little beach parties after sunset, with a fire sending up
sparks to blend with the stars, sip a little happy juice, cook hotdogs,
chat and cuddle. She would invite herself along and try to join in, but
it was always uncomfortable because her behavior wasn't...how can I explain it?...natural. She wasn't one of us and clearly didn't want to be. She was slumming among her inferiors for purposes of her own. Still, out of courtesy, we tried to make her feel welcome.
She had her eye on one quite splendid example
of the male animal and repeatedly made plays for him that he never
seemed to notice. But that never fazed her. She kept at it until one
evening, not seeing him by the fire, she went looking for him and
discovered him giving a surfer girl an enthusiastic demonstration of kama sutra
techniques. Awkward.
After that she never came around anymore, and after the Mustang episode she never talked to me again.
A few years later I saw her once more by chance. She was performing at a comedy club in Oceanside that had a lot of Marine clientele. I was there with a couple of crayon-eaters and was surprised to see her because I had assumed she had gone back east and married a stockbroker or something. Her routine was of the "they're wrong" type, not the "it's funny because it's true" type. I guess it was okay. I'm not a judge of such things, but the audience laughed and clapped. Anyway, I thought I should go up to her after her act and say hello, but then I forgot about it and only remembered as we were in the parking lot and I was climbing onto the pillion seat of my date's motorcycle. I was about to say "Oh, wait, I forgot to..." when I stopped myself and thought, why should you say hello to her? She never liked you and only wanted to use you to get what she wanted. When that didn't work she dropped you. Why are you always trying to be nice to everybody? Some people don't deserve being nice to. So I mentally shrugged, wrapped my arms around my date and hung on tight as we roared south along the Pacific Coast Highway.
