by Rachel Cohn
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have some kind of cosmic connection, so even if I hadn't seen him, I would have sensed him. And no way would I have thought he would miss the last day of surfing before school started back up, especially with the extra high waves on account of a recent tsunami in Taiwan or wherever that had all the surfers at their trucks raving about the bitchin' curls.
This girl who was sitting on the ledge several feet away from me with a sketch pad on her lap yelled over at me. "You looking for Shrimp?"
I nodded, suspicious, thinking maybe this stranger girl was the famous Autumn who was a prime reason, I believe, for Shrimp deciding at the beginning of this past summer that he and I needed a relationship time-out. But Autumn was a hippie surfer chick, and the girl jumping off the ledge and walking toward me was a hefty Asian girl wearing army fatigue pants, black combat boots, and a white T-shirt with a picture of Elvis shaking President Nixon's hand, tucked in with a belt that had a Hello Kitty buckle. I admire big girls who wear hip-hugging pants with leather belts and tight shirts displaying Republicans; that is one rockin' look that no hippie girl burying her curves under faux Indian saris would ever dare. Also I could never imagine someone named Autumn having a crew cut of black hair with copper dye in the shape of a hand on top of her head.
"Do you know where Shrimp is?" I asked the girl. She had moved over to sit on the ledge next to me.
"Shouldn't you know?" she said. "I thought you two were inseparable."
I was about to say Who are you to be knowing my business when I recognized her--I knew her. She was in my
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history class last school year at the École Des Spazzed-Out Enfants Terribles, the "alternative" private school at which my mother enrolled me last year after I was kicked out of the fancy boarding school back East. The arty school for popularity-challenged freaks like me turned out to be not so bad, actually, even though I didn't show up at it as often (like, daily) as my mother thought (blame, Shrimp). The school is definitely better than any snooty New England prep school, though--but let's remember it's still a school, which in my opinion is a crap institution that is just a massive conspiracy hazing ritual. Those people who say "High school was the best time of my life" I am (a) very suspicious of and (b) convinced they are full of shit. Lucky for me, I've finally reached senior year, then freedom forever. Nine months to go and I can be set loose upon the world. Watch out, world.
Last year at school this girl had long black hair like mine that draped over the side of her desk when she fell asleep during class, a sleep that always ended up with her thumb in her mouth and drool falling onto her desk beside me. Her name was...I don't remember. Last semester was all about deep intoxication with Shrimp. I couldn't tell you about anything or anyone else that happened during that term.
"We broke up," I said. More like, he dumped me at the beginning of summer vacation because I was supposedly harshing his mellow when I accused him of fooling around with the Autumn chick while I was grounded to Alcatraz, formerly known as my room, for spending the night at Shrimp's. But true love is a force that cannot be denied, and I know that one way or another Shrimp and I will be together again.
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And I am way more mellow now.
But where the hell is Shrimp? Call-by's to the house he shares with his bro have resulted only in answering machine pickups, and he hasn't come by to see our mutual bud Sugar Pie at the nursing home since the end of August and she doesn't know where he is.
"That hella sucks," the girl said. Helen! That was her name, just like my favorite famous dead person, Helen Keller. "You two were all over each other last year. I'm surprised I even recognized you, considering your face was always sucked into his every time I saw you at school. I heard Shrimp is off surfing in the South Pacific and he's, like, coming back to school when he gets around to it. Wanna go over to Java the Hut and find out for sure?"
"No," I said. The first time I see Shrimp again after our summer apart, I don't want our meeting to be in his brother's Ocean Beach café where Shrimp and I used to work together, that same spot where I developed this unquenchable side order PURELY PLATONIC crush on Shrimp's brother, Java, real name Wallace. Java is a taller, more filled out version of Shrimp who just so happens to also be a vision of physical perfection. He may be a coffee mogul, but Java's no Shrimp. Java's the guy you have sex fantasies about involving hot tubs and licking chocolate off body parts, the kind of fantasies you would probably go "Yuck" to if the actual opportunity ever presented itself. Shrimp's the guy you want to wake up spooned into for the rest of your life and not even worry about having a breath mint handy at first morning contact.
I glanced down at Helen's lap at the sketch pad, which
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had a charcoal pencil drawing in the style of a comic book, picturing a short old geezer wearing a leather jacket, cowboy boots, and a bandana tied around his neck, and a long, salt-and-pepper, pointy beard hanging down from his chin. He was digging through a patch of trees, and the side view of his hunched-over body displayed the words ball hunter on the back of his leather motorcycle jacket.
"What's that supposed to be?" I asked her. Ball Hunter man looked familiar.
"It's this comic book I am trying to develop. It's about this senior citizen superhero who hangs out at the golf course at Land's End hunting for golf balls that get lost in the trees. And, like, maybe solves mysteries and stuff."
"I've seen that guy!" At the top of the steep cliff that is Land's End, where the cliff overlooks the point at which the Pacific Ocean meets the Golden Gate (and where Shrimp and I first got together in his brother's hand-me-down Pinto, parked under the dripping trees at the crest of the windy road), there is a beautiful museum called the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The museum is built in a neo-something or other design with a Rodin thinkin' dude sculpture in front. The Legion of Honor is also famous for being in some old Hitchcock movie starring some boss blond lady with freaked-out eyebrows who was not played by my namesake, that other Cyd Charisse, the fancy movie star-dancer with the long beautiful legs going on into forever. One time I sprang Sugar Pie from the home and we visited the museum together and she pointed out this gnomelike guy digging through the trees on the golf course outside. Sugar Pie said everyone in The
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City knew the guy had some kind of supernatural power, and that's why he was never kicked off the course for hunting for the balls.
Helen was my new sorta idol. Aside from the fact that Shrimp is an artist and so I am naturally inclined to dig painting-'n'-drawing types, I truly admire people who can create life on a blank page where only white space existed before. I can barely draw a stick figure. My talents are more in the economics, customer service, and cute-guy-finding areas.
Helen said, "Well, the other thing I remember about you was that when your face wasn't attached to Shrimp's it was attached to a coffee cup. Wanna go grab a coffee in The Richmond, seeing as how you don't want to scope out Java the Hut for your boy?"
Helen got up from the ledge and headed off toward the cliff up to Land's End on the road leading into The Richmond District, clearly expecting me to just tag along.
I am a man's woman. I've spent seventeen years on this planet going from Sid-daddy's girl to ragdoll-toting tomboy to boarding school lacrosse captain's girlfriend to the one true love of the hottest pint-sized artist-surfer in San Francisco. Making female friends has never been a priority-- for them or for me. The only real female friend I've ever had is Sugar Pie, who is old enough to tell tales about spiking the punch at USO dances during dubya-dubya-two and then taking advantage of a few good men. But this past summer, my newfound favorite (only) older brother, Danny, had told me Sugar Pie only counted for partial credit, that I needed to branch out.
So I got up from the ledge and followed Helen up the
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cliff toward The Richmond, where the dumplings are better than the coffees, if you really want to know, but where apparently my first prospective f
riend who was a girl my own age was inviting me.
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*** Chapter 3
Sad fact: Surfers aren't just beautiful; they can be stupid, too.
According to Helen.
Helen says that the art teachers at school think Shrimp has the potential to be a great artist, but he lacks ambition and drive. She says important gallery owners have come to school art exhibits because they're friends with the teachers, and they have expressed interest in Shrimp's work, but Shrimp blows them off. According to Helen, a "real" artist would kill for an opportunity like that. Helen says Shrimp could probably go to the best art schools in the world if he wanted, but he won't pursue opportunities from people who could help him push his talent to the next level. He'd rather be chasing waves than meeting other artists and studying in New York or Paris.
I don't know if I like that Helen knows things about Shrimp that I never knew. I knew he was talented, but I didn't know about the gallery owners; I never heard about teachers who want to help him get into famous schools far from home. So I had to tell Helen what she doesn't know about Shrimp, because she could never know him the way I know him. I said, "You're wrong. Shrimp wants to keep his art pure. He's not about selling out. He thinks great art is not about the canvas or the sculpture, but about the way the artist lives the life, well-rounded and, like, bonded to nature and whatnot."
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"Bullshit," Helen said. "You believe that? That's just an excuse for him not to challenge himself to work harder, think bigger."
A waitress placed two cappuccinos on our table and walked away. The cappuccino foam was loose and watery; first sign of a bad barista. The foam should be dense and peaked like a snow-covered mountain. As I lifted the glass to my face, the coffee smell that should have awakened my nostrils to joy was instead weak and bitter. But I took the leap of faith, anyway, and downed a sip, but immediately had to spit the sip back into its cup. "The coffee here sucks," I told Helen.
"Wanna go somewhere else?" Helen said.
I nodded. Helen doesn't know diddly about my man or about proper caffeination. If we were to become friends, perhaps we needed to veer from any more paths leading to Shrimp discussion or consumption of bad coffee.
We left money on the table and wandered outside along Clement Street, my favorite street in The City, a long avenue of Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese restaurants mixed in with Irish pubs, produce markets, coffee shops, and bookstores. My legs are many inches taller than Helen's, but I could barely keep up with her. Clement Street is like the way I imagine a street in Shanghai or Hong Kong: narrow and noisy from buses and delivery trucks, teeming with pedestrians and bicycles and grandmas pushing strollers with apple-cheeked Chinese babies so adorable that you just want to pick them up and smother them in kisses. Helen walked down this street like she owned it, barreling through the hordes of people and never bothering to wave back at the store owners who obviously knew her and were waving at her.
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I was eyeballing the Sanrio store but Helen stopped her march to turn around, waited for me to catch up to her, then pointed to a Chinese restaurant across the street. "Mind if we go in there a sec so I can drop the sketch pad off? I don't feel like carrying this thing around."
I followed her inside the restaurant, which was dingy as could be--plastic tablecloths, fake plants standing in the corners, paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling--but was packed with diners, most of them Chinese. Sid-dad says San Francisco is full of great Chinese restaurants, but the great ones are not the tourist traps in Chinatown but the dingy ones out in "the avenues" in The Richmond and The Sunset, and the best way to figure out which are the best restaurants in either of those neighborhoods is just to walk into one that is filled with Chinese people.
I stayed behind Helen as she shoved through a line of people waiting to be seated, followed her as she marched through to the middle of the restaurant where tables were filled with bowls of noodles and dumplings and veggies swimming in soup, and seriously, the smell was so good I almost pulled up a chair at a stranger's table to join in. Helen stomped to the end of the dining room and back to the kitchen. I was following her up a back staircase when a scream that sounded like a banshee (at least the way I imagine a banshee would sound; I've never actually heard one) came from behind us. 'AIIIYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Helen... ," followed by an incomprehensible stream of Chinese words that I hope were curses because if so, then the yeller was doing a really excellent bawl out.
Helen stopped on the stair ledge and turned around to face the screaming woman standing at the bottom of the
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stair landing. The lady was wearing a pair of hot pink plastic dishwashing gloves on her hands and waving a bok choy like it was a murder weapon.
The lady ranted at Helen in Chinese for a good minute, gesturing to her head and banging the bok choy against it. When she finished, Helen snapped, "Get over it, Mom." Helen stomped up the stairs and I followed her. A door at the top of the apartment stairs opened to a huge San Francisco flat--a home taking up the whole floor of a building. I followed Helen into her bedroom, where she slammed the door so hard the floor shook.
Talk about a case of déjà moi. Just because I live in a Pacific Heights close-to-mansion doesn't mean a scene like Helen and her mom's, quadruple squared, hasn't played out Chez Cyd Charisse.
Helen's bedroom had clothes and belts and boots lying around all over, like a cyclone had passed through her dresser drawers and closet, depositing their contents randomly throughout the room. Her bed was unmade and surrounded by artwork on the walls everywhere, with random Warhol and Diane Arbus and Dali prints mixed in with artwork that looked like Helen's Ball Hunter man style. The back of her bedroom door was plastered to every last inch with Wonder Woman pictures: old comic book covers, Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV show shots, bubblegum cards, colored pencil drawings.
I didn't even have a chance to respond to the room-- much less to ask What just happened downstairs? --when the Wonder Woman door flung back open. Helen's mom waved the bok choy at Helen again. She said, "You know the rules. Friend upstairs, door stays open." Then Helen's
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mom finished whatever she was saying in Chinese. Her mom was tiny, she seemed to drown under the smock she was wearing over her shirt, and she had long black hair like Helen's used to be, but with lots of gray at the roots and pulled back into a bun held together with two Chinese sticks.
Helen rolled her eyes. "Fine!" Helen said. "But I'm not getting rid of the shave cut. I don't care if Auntie is coming over." Helen's mother sighed--oh, it was just like my mother, just brilliant--and went back downstairs.
Helen sat on her rumpled bed. "Sorry about that," she said to me. "My mom is freaking over the new hair. I just got it done today on Haight Street, and she hadn't seen it yet. She can't do anything about the almost-bald shave, but my life is so over if I don't dye the copper hand out."
I had to commend Helen's mother's keen taste. Helen's buzz cut was cool, but the copper hand is just a fashion NO, a nice idea in theory but too much in reality.
I said, "How come she spoke a little in English to you, then the rest in Chinese?"
"Because the English part--about leaving the door open--was for you to hear and understand. The rest-- about the hair and the shame if her sister sees her daughter looking like this--was just for me to understand."
"How come she wanted me to hear about the door being left open? What, does she think I'll have nightmares of Wonder Woman?"
"No, my mom doesn't want my friends upstairs since she walked in on me kissing another girl. It's amazing she even let you upstairs. Guy friends aren't allowed upstairs at all anymore. Give my mother a few more months and pretty
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soon I won't be allowed in my own room anymore."
Muy interesante. 'Are you a lesbian?" I asked Helen. With her shaved head, combat boots, and buxom proportions of hips, stomach, and chest, Helen did have kind of a butch look.
"Way to stereotype,
Cyd Charisse. God, that's a mouthful of a name. Can I just call you CC?"
I am all about new identities, plus that's what my brother Danny in New York calls me so I said, "Okay. But really, are you a lesbian?" I have known lots of gay men but never a girl who was gay.
"I'm tempted to say yes because being one would really piss off my mom. But I haven't decided either way."
"So what are you, one of those lesbians until graduation, until a guy comes around?"
"I would never be some hypocritical asshole like that. I like kissing girls and I like kissing boys. I just like kissing. Right now I'd say I'm bi, but I haven't experimented enough on either side yet to know for sure. Make sense?"
Totally. Being bisexual is probably like being bicoastal, like me. Like being part of two places--San Francisco and New York--and loving them both the same, happy to be in one yet always yearning for the other.
Helen tucked her sketch pad under her bed then glanced at her watch. She said, 'All the hot Irish guys will be finishing their soccer league games over at Kezar Stadium about now and just hitting the pub. I've got at least two hours until the dinner rush downstairs is over and my mother starts getting on my case about school starting up tomorrow. Let's get outta here. The soccer guys have the sexiest Irish accents--I swear you can barely understand a
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word they say. And they wear these soccer shorts with these World Cup uniform shirts so tight, you'll wish you're like blind and you could read the guys' pecs in Braille. You think Shrimp is hot? Come with me early one Saturday morning when they show the satellite games live in the pub and all the Irish guys are sitting around, screaming at the TV over their Guinnesses. I might have convulsions just thinking about..."