by Owen Thomas
Until then, I was content to play the part for my own purposes. I did not love him beyond the love I had for the public relationship itself. It did not occur to me that Zel Wippo still had a voice, that he had been tossed unceremoniously into the surf, and that he could not swim in those waters.
I have few memories left of Zack West that do not prominently feature the sounds and smells and surreal blues and greens of the ocean. He taught me the basics of surfing, for one thing. I was horrible at it then, as I was horrible at it for the following thirty-years on the increasingly rare occasions that I found my way back to the ocean before retiring from that sport altogether. But I have thoroughly enjoyed my ineptitude and I thought of Zack, fondly, when I wretched the brine from my lungs and people raced for the breakers to save an old crazy woman from drowning.
Zack was known for his bacchanal beach parties; grand affairs he hosted once a month at his home. Unlike my own foray into the business, Zack’s professional ascension deserved the meteoric cliché. Although he had always enjoyed the comfort of an inherited affluence, he had become extraordinarily wealthy almost overnight with three record-shattering back-to-back blockbuster action extravaganzas. The beachfront estate, which was on the far western end of Playa De Los Leones, in west Malibu roughly beneath Encinal Canyon, had been a recent acquisition and Zack put it to immediate use as a centerpiece to his off-screen reputation.
His parties were always lavishly catered events where the food and alcohol were as plentiful as the ocean view. Popular local bands, always acoustic, took turns setting up on a sprawling lawn up near the house. Zack, who had taught himself to play the bongos, frequently appeared out of nowhere, wet hair and sandy feet, wearing a pair of ratty surfing trunks, his perfect body slick with the late afternoon sun, and setting down his bottle, would proceed to accompany whatever song was in progress, regardless of whether it needed or could musically tolerate any percussive assistance. But it was, after all, Zack’s party and the guests, if not the musicians, seemed to love the apparent spontaneity of those increasingly predictable moments.
The beach parties may as well have been a movie set like any other, the place where Zack was called upon to breathe life into the recurring character of his own public image. It was as though a Zack West Action Figure – and there was, in fact, such a thing – showed up to throw a beach party for the two hundred people who, as of that particular month, comprised the Hollywood “A List.”
The Beach Party Action Figure, however, did not resemble the grimly determined, adrenaline-charged character that Zack so frequently portrayed in the movies. Quite the opposite. The Golden Boy of Playa De Los Leones sported a personal style of shallow, laid-back affability, caring only enough about anything or anyone to ensure that he could extract from the marrow of every experience a good time for himself and his friends. Famously apolitical and spiritually open to the point of emptiness, Zack welcomed all-comers and preached an ethic of unconcern, snuffing out seriousness and overly earnest, intellectual discussion wherever it was found. All of Life, he seemed to suggest, was really just a party at the beach not to be spoiled by too much thinking.
In apparent contradiction to this ethic of unconcern, Zack deliberately crafted his guest lists to include industry rivals and political demagogues so that the latest cat-fighting divas and the polemics of the Iraq war had at least some token representation around the bonfire. The gossip rags started calling these events the Zack West Peace Parties and featured photos of notoriously warring celebrities – stars and politicians and entertainment moguls – arm-in-arm in the waves, or tangled in a hammock, or toasting the sunset with full bottles of wine; people who had previously sparred, often viciously, over everything from stem-cell research to Iraq to trifling ex-boyfriends.
Those who would not lay down arms could either work it out in a game of volleyball or be tossed together into the surf no matter the attire. As time passed, the surf-tossing grew increasingly rare, perhaps because it generally proved counter-productive in shepherding people toward the light of unconcern. Some of these tragic, marked souls were indeed very concerned, since salt water is unkind to fine clothing and since the well-dressed, drowned-rat image is bad by any measure.
A few inglorious photos of angry wet celebrities and Zack’s beach parties became an anticipated and rigorously covered media event. The guest lists were routinely leaked just to sharpen everyone’s attention and to solidify Zach West as one of the more active, even if not the most important, arbiters of “A List” status.
The press, never invited to these affairs, was impossible to exclude because the large, irregularly shaped swath of sand in front of Zack’s home, while very difficult to reach, was technically public. As the sun began to extinguish itself into the Pacific, a row of round, glowing orange stains would appear along an eastern escarpment, like a line of burning cigarettes, where the telephoto lenses quietly closed the distance between the party raging below and the morning headlines.
But for all of the anger and post-party fallout that these antics generated, they worked just enough of the time to enhance Zack’s reputation. Generous to a fault, he was known as a peacemaker of curious but effective methods. His highly public affinity for marijuana and his belief that a good high was inimical to all conflict, earned Zack the dubious title of Mapotma Gandhi. The Zack of Playa De Los Leones was a man of simple but genuine priorities that left no room for stress, judgment, pessimism or conflict of any kind. He quickly became known as the good-natured surfer whose rugged, hard-boiled movie personae, was wholly at odds with the real man.
But the truth was that the real man was nothing like either Mapotma Gandhi, surfing the cosmos of unconcern, nor the hard-body gun-porn Golden Boy that grimaced through a series of flame-painted movie posters. The real man was scrawny Zel Wippo from Long Island. It may have been Zack West who cracked my ribs in a defective body harness, but it was Zel Wippo who felt guilty about it. It was Zel Wippo who called me every day, and Zel Wippo who expressed genuine anger at how such an accident could have been allowed to happen. After many years of reflection, I have come to believe that it was Zel Wippo, and not either of his famous alter egos, that had feelings for me. The Golden Boy lacked sentiment and certainly Mapotma Gandhi would not have been capable of expressing such tortured feelings of affection. Only Zel was capable of the feelings that would ultimately unravel us.
One night, midway through our short-lived relationship, we sat on a darkened corner of the beach far enough away from the house to escape the notice of die-hard revelers, the Zack-Pack, which surely would have invested the energy to find their master had they known where to look. It was late. The party had dwindled. The band had disbanded and gone home. The alternating roar and hiss of the breakers washed away the sporadic shrieks and laughter coming from the house.
Zack and I were rarely together during the parties. I spent time with my friends and Zack played his particular version of host – a surfing lesson here, a bongo solo there, pouring drinks, rolling joints, stoking the volleyball rivalries, and tossing people into the ocean. But as each party waned, so did Zack, and he often sought me out and secreted me away to the farthest, darkest reaches of the beachfront that adjoined his property. On this particular night, the moon was a thin, bone-white scythe in the sky and a warm breeze chased the sand into the water around our feet. He was thoroughly under the influence of something. I had no idea what, but it had waterlogged his mood and left him brooding.
“I hate this,” he said, burying his foot.
“Really? I like the dark.”
He looked at me like I was stupid.
“What? Well then let’s just go back. You know they’re looking for you. I don’t care as long as the music is done. God they sucked. Who vets these groups anyway?”
I started to rise but he caught my wrist and pulled me back onto the sand.
“Not this, Tilly.” He spread his arms to encompass the entire swath of planet beneath us. “I mean…this.”
“What, California?”
“No. The life. You know,” again with the gesture, “this.”
“Hmm. Odd thing for America’s number one celebrity, Zack.”
“I’m not America’s number one celebrity.”
“Close enough. Most people would kill…”
“Most people. Yes, the do-it-yourself lobotomy is all the rage these days. God save us from what most people would kill for.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well neither do I. This is not what I’m supposed to be. But it’s what I am.”
“What are you supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. Not this.”
“This is a bad trip, isn’t it? Tiki talked you into mixing again. Whatever it is, Zack, they shouldn’t go into your body at the same time. Shit like that will kill you.”
“Settle down. It’s just weed.”
“Okay, then I really don’t understand you tonight.”
He buried his other foot up to his ankle. Seawater slid up the beach with a hiss, pooling in a depression at our feet. Zack reached out to cup it in his hands. He ladled it methodically over one knee and then the other.
“I’m trapped.”
“Trapped how?”
“I can’t escape any of this.”
“You want to?”
“Yes. Like my fucking life depends on it.”
“Why?”
“Because…I don’t know. Because this is not … I don’t know, Tilly.”
We sat for a while listening in the dark to the ocean breathing. I understood only enough to keep quiet.
“When I was a kid back in New York I knew this rabbi. Rabbi Feldman. Worst breath you’ve ever experienced in another human, guaranteed. Looked like a fish with these big bulging eyes and this really pinched nose and cheeks that seemed to just kind of cave into his mouth, which itself was just a blood-red hole in a tangle of black hair. Glasses like yellowed Coke bottles.”
“Lovely.”
“Mom and I called him Rabbi Fish behind his back. Anyway, Rabbi Fish told me once that the most important identity I could ever have was to be a Jew. I’m nine when he says this to me. Nine. We’re sitting at my dining room table in the middle of the afternoon. Just the two of us. My father left us there together saying he needed to step out to buy cigarettes even though there was a new pack right there in the kitchen.”
“Speaking of which…”
“Sorry, they’re back at the house. I thought you quit.”
“I did, but it doesn’t mean anything if they’re not available.”
“Christ, Tilly.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“So we’re sitting there at the table, just the two of us, and Rabbi Fish talked away at me and I mostly listened to the big clock in the corner and watched the red hole in the hair open and close and his cheeks puff in and out and his eyes shifting and bulging inside the Coke bottle glasses. And then he comes out with this statement. He said, Zel, the most important identity you will ever have in your whole life is to be a Jew. And the way he said it was like a two-by-four across the temple. Nothing else really mattered to him. The worst Jew was better than the best Gentile.”
“I guess I never really think of you as Jewish.”
“Neither do I. And I certainly didn’t then. But to Rabbi Fish that was the only thing about me of any importance.”
“Okay. So?”
“So I asked him why, right? And he said because the Jews were chosen by God. To be Jewish was to be chosen. I asked him what would happen if I did not really want to be a Jew and he told me that what I wanted was completely beside the point since it was not possible for me to be anything other than a Jew.”
“And this is what’s bothering you at age 27? Rabbi Fish?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Really?”
“Really. Thought you were robbing the cradle? I am a grown man.”
“Robbing the cradle? You really don’t know anything about me, do you?”
“I know you’re beautiful. Smart. I know you’re different than the others.”
“Others? I thought you were a virgin. I’m scandalized. Whatever would Rabbi Fish have to say?”
“That I was still chosen by God; that it wasn’t possible for me to fuck my way out of my religion. He said I could be a bad Jew, and that there were plenty of bad Jews, but that one way or the other I would always be a Jew because my identity was not a choice, you know, like what kind of shoes to buy or something. His big deal was that a core identity was something that you simply were and that was it – like the color of your skin. There was no escaping a core identity. He said that I was a Jew like my father and his father before him and that I would always be a Jew and so I may as well be a good Jew; a practicing Jew who went to Temple and who studied the Torah and the Talmud even if my parents divorced and even if my father only had partial custody and even if my mother, who was a “neglectful” Jew, was not likely to immerse me in my father’s heritage.
“It was such a jarring idea to me. An identity like the color of my skin. I think he meant it to be a comfort. You know, no matter how far I strayed, my identity would never forsake me. I could kill a hundred people in cold blood and I would still be a Jew chosen by God. My parents could divorce and they could hate each other and they could move to opposite corners of the earth and I would still be a Jew chosen by God.”
“I guess I could see a certain comfort.”
“Not me. Man, not me. The very idea that I was stuck with an identity I did not choose and that I did not want, was kind of, you know, terrifying. I didn’t care that God chose it; I, Zel, did not choose it; that was the point. And then he started making plans for my Bar Mitzvah which was still four fucking years off into the future. And he did a good twenty minutes on the whole religious significance of the Bar Mitzvah.”
“What’d you do?”
“Got the hell out of New York is what I did. My mother was so freaked out that my father might pack me off to Israel without telling anyone that she was happy to nominate my aunt Lucy as a guardian.”
“Why not just stay with your mom?”
“She’d hooked up with this fat cat who didn’t have any use for a kid.”
“That’s so sad.”
“It is what it is. I’ve probably talked to her three times in fifteen years. I think they live in France. I don’t think she ever wanted a kid. It was enough for her that my dad didn’t have control. Anyway, Aunt Lucy stepped up and I told the judge that I wanted to live in California more than anything in the world, although for me it was the only way to keep from looking and smelling like Rabbi Fish when I grew up. Dad had pegged the judge as an anti-Semite from the start. It didn’t go so well for dad.”
“But it went well for you…didn’t it?”
“Did it?”
“Zack? You’re a star with more money than God. What the fuck do you want?”
“To choose.”
“You didn’t choose this?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“God, I suppose. Or no one. I don’t know. Not me anyway.”
“Yes you did.”
“No. I chose not to be a Jew and I ended up in Santa Monica. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted out of the world. I had no identity at all. Nothing that was intrinsically, irrevocably, indisputably me. You know? You say you like the dark, but you don’t even know darkness, Tilly. There were no stars in that sky and no light on that horizon. I was fucking lost. Totally lost.”
Zack scooped dry sand from behind us and piled it up into a small hill over our feet. A tongue of dark water took it all away again in a single lap, pulling at our ankles as it went, as if to drag us into the sea. People were calling out Zack’s name down the beach in front of the house. A woman screamed in laughter and someone yelled after her.
“I was so lonely and I didn’t know anyone out here and none of the kids liked me. I was scrawny with a weird Jewy look to me and I got the shit kicked
out of me every other day. It got so bad that one day I walked into a synagogue and stayed for four hours just to avoid going to school. The rabbi there felt sorry for me and wrote me a note that I used over and over for the rest of the school year.”
“No way.”
“Worked every time.”
“What kind of school would let a kid with…”
“Hey, giving a California teacher a note from a Rabbi is like a girl giving her father an excuse that uses the words period or tampon. They just don’t want to know.”
“Sure never worked with my dad,” I said ruefully. “‘Course, he took a perverse pride in not being affected by anything, so what can I say?”
“Well, the California rabbis know how to push the buttons of the public school system. At least, that rabbi did. He wasn’t like Rabbi Fish at all. We kind of talked about all the same stuff, but he was very laid back about all of it. It was the best I had felt since leaving New York. For those four hours I was a Jew. You know? A bad Jew, a fucked-up Jew, but a Jew, and things made a kind of sense.”
“Identity crisis solved.”
“Not even close. The more sense it made, the more it scared me.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew I was only pretending. I was acting, for his sake and mine. I was playing a part just so I could find myself on a map or recognize myself in a mirror. As soon as I left that synagogue the feeling was gone and I knew I would never go back. I realized that even my supposedly indelible Jewishness had never really been a part of me and that Rabbi Fish had been full of shit. It hit me just how much I had been counting on at least that to sustain me; the thought that at least I was a Jew who did not want to be a Jew, chosen by God. But that was all shit. I was empty. I was nothing.”