THE INVITATION
Our last day together, as the Underwater Boys, began with a Whiskey Sunrise.
We pressed through tight paths following etched stone markers overgrown with vegetation and red spray-painted indicators left by modern-day pilgrims “Jim – this way” with arrows indicating more or less appropriate directions. The ubiquitous white sun filled the eastern horizon as we began that hot summer day weaving through grave markers and mausoleums. Somehow, all I could think of was “Hookers and Death.”
I remembered that shitty cult classic with Captain America and his sidekick riding ‘round desolate deserts on big old Indian bikes, smoking weed and wasting time. I remembered them ducking for cover in an ornate New Orleans graveyard with hookers and dope and then fiery death on a Southern highway. Hookers and Death. This trip, this pilgrimage, had been my idea. I had some naïve notion that this graveside visit would put the time we’d spent together in perspective. I knew I’d never see those guys again. They weren’t friends, per se, just people I passed time with and our time had come to an end. But, as I walked through that beautiful graveyard, I wondered how it was that I was on the outside. They’d remain friends, I figured, at least for a time.
We stood over Jim Morrison’s grave passing ‘round a fifth of whiskey. Taking swigs and pouring some on the ground for The Lizard King: a sort of original “one for my homies,” sign of solidarity for a man who became a self-styled American Jesus. Then, catharsis came. Not in the way I expected or hoped. Rather, a faint silhouetted memory emerged from the worm-eaten cadaver compost of the soil beneath.
Of course, I recognized that kid, the fast superstar of the football pitch in the back fields behind that Oxfordian College. I saw him a few times, usually on the way back from driving punt boats along the shallow canals or blasting crochet balls through sticky wickets. I paused frozen between recognition and lapsed memory. Still, months crept by, and I couldn’t place his face.
Then, during a whiskey sunrise, sticky residue of cloying blended bourbon warming my throat, in a Parisian graveyard, I remembered a ghost.
He shared his name with the departed American Jesus – but I knew him by the diminutive “Jimmy.” And, I guess by the time our paths crossed in Oxford, nine or ten years had gone by. When we met, our reality was far from the erudite, emerald spotted colleges of Oxford. We were young kids, in a provincial suburb along a creek.
*
She was a sun goddess.
I stood in the dry creek bed at the edge of our wooded lot. The water, that is if there were any that summer, would have flowed under a driveway through a corrugated metal cylinder. On the other side of the driveway, the creek continued along the edge of a large open grassy side yard. It would wind over and under throughout the entire subdivision eventually ending in a man-made pond one development over in the middle of same-looking high-end condos for empty-nesters and the like. I climbed just a little up the small embankment to my right to peer over the crazy cat lady’s driveway (one of those established women in her later middle age, an eccentric and mean widow allowed to do as she pleased because she come into a modicum of money) and into the grassy side yard of the house across the cul-de-sac.
She was a sun goddess.
I’d heard the term once before but not until that summer did I get its significance. I’d once asked my aunt Bunny how she knew she liked women. Bunny was always too wrapped in her own shit to treat me like a kid that at times I found refreshing.
“In high school, there was this blond, tall, athletic All-American girl next door who liked to stand in the courtyard, lean her head back, close her eyes and soak up the rays.”
I stared over crazy cat lady’s drive and spied the petite curvy figure of a woman with short blond hair and a white bikini. I was in love. She must have been 29 or 30. I was 8.
We’d just moved from the city to the county and I was in culture shock. Old beat-up Buicks and Chevys no longer dominated the streets. New model Japanese imports and German sports cars took over. People had personal computers and cable TV in their homes (often in multiple rooms) instead of ghetto blasters and bunny ears. I knew I didn’t fit in. At that point, I didn’t even know what Lacoste was.
Jimmy and a man who looked like a grown up version of him came over to introduce themselves that hot summer. I was testing the temperature, flying an egg on the hot asphalt of our driveway. Soon, Jimmy became my first real friend. After school, we’d meet in the island of circular grass in the middle of the cul-de-sac and play stupid games in the woods by our homes. After little league baseball games, he’d stop by still in his blue uniform to hang out. I’d spent most of my youth in the City. There weren’t many kids around and Jimmy’s presence was the first time I had a real friend.
I felt for a moment staid and settled.
More than a year had gone by. I was planning my tenth birthday party to be held in my backyard. I was inviting a group of kids from my class and of course Jimmy. We were smacking balled up socks around my unfinished basement as Ma filled out invitations to my party working over a workbench in the basement’s back corner.
“Jimmy, here’s your invitation,” she called.
Jimmy went to retrieve it.
“Oh, that’s not my last name,” Devin’s my step-father.
“Oh,” said Ma who understood divorce, “No problem, I’ll re-write it.”
Jimmy went home that afternoon with an invitation with his real last name transcribed on it.
*
The summer after I turned nine, Jimmy and I spent as much time together as possible. By some cruel fate of gerrymandering we attended two different school districts even though we lived in the same cul-de-sac. We spent a lot of time with my two dogs in the expansive back yard and woods making up stupid war games when I wasn’t off at summer camp, my father’s, or we weren’t at baseball practice or playing games. During the days, I’d often join Jimmy and his mother, the Sun Goddess, while she ran errands. I was still in love, the way a nine-year-old puppy love can smolder with time.
The night before we moved to the county, I spent the night at Timmy’s house. Timmy and I were never close but Ma knew his parents and would occasionally arrange activities as a result. Timmy had spent the whole evening ignoring me in order to sing-song different variations of “There’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance…” to a tall lanky girl perched in a tree out front of his house. I suddenly understood why. Girls ruled. Well, at least the Sun Goddess did.
Jimmy, his mother, and I went for lunch often that summer and she would always buy me soda, a forbidden substance in my house. I felt a part of something for the first time in my life.
“You watch G.I. Joe?” Jimmy would ask.
“No. Ma thinks it’s too violent.”
“Really?” The Sun Goddess said shocked, “well, sneak over and watch anytime, I won’t tell.”
The funny thing was, when I thought about it, I never saw the Sun Goddess except during the summer when she donned her white bikini or a sundress to drive Jimmy and I around the strip-mall and development-laden landscape of the county.
I remember one fall day going over to Jimmy’s house and asking after him. He wasn’t around. But, I saw Devin communicating with his wife exclusively through the household intercom.
“She’s not feeling well today.”
Only later did I realize the same thing happened every time I went over there three seasons out of the year.
*
Jimmy didn’t come to my birthday party.
Two days after Ma handed him his new invitation, I got sick. A few days later, I went to find Jimmy. Devin cut me off in his driveway.
“Hey, you’ve been sick why don’t you wait a few days?” his tone was striking and abrasive. I felt stung.
“Oh, I’m much better. Doctor says I’m fine.”
“Still, wait a couple of days.”
I went home.
Two days later a moving truck arrived. Jimmy, Devin and the Sun Goddess were gone. The produce aisle scuttlebutt was no one knew where they went. Soon the house sold in their absence and my first real friend was gone without another word.
When I ran into Jimmy at Oxford, I couldn’t place his face. Or perhaps I repressed the memory for fear of rejection.
As I stood there watching the Whiskey Sunrise in a Parisian graveyard, I felt alone. Jimmy was a living ghost – our story was a part of the loneliness I felt. I was, after all, alone.
