Ocean People
August 15th, 2004 | Posted by Shannon
I dreamed about my ex-boyfriend Chris this morning. It’s been a trillion years since we were together, and I don’t think of him too often any more. I’m not sure why I dreamed of him, but maybe it was because I am going to Hawaii soon and I spent alot of time in Hawaii, with Chris. A trillion years ago.
OK, so maybe Hawaii is not the reason. Whatever. Just the dreaming of him takes me back to the time I knew him, and how that time empowered, and at the same time, wrecked me. There is nothing so heady as being nineteen and tan and also, somewhat intelligent. My pink running shorts and blue Vuarnets and Chris’s faded blue jeans and weird East Coast sports jacket, Chardonnay and cocaine and Steely Dan and Prince and, well, puking up crab dinners. These are what the early eighties were made of.
Seriously though, I learned to cook because of Chris. He nurtured that part of me which had been totally neglected, mostly by me. I hated to cook before I met him. He loved to eat though, and I was a young girl in love. I cooked Dungeness crab in a sea of butter, whole cauliflowers drenched in olive oil, and within months, Thanksgiving for 35 people. We drank martinis by the bucket. I was 19 and in that space where a pound of chocolate had no affect on my body. Chris was eight years older than me and between the butter, the wine, and the cocaine, he got sort of fat and unhealthy. I got skinnier and sniffeled alot. It was the eighties, after all. Though I think maybe I got older, but the times stayed the same.
I started up with Chris just hours after I turned 18 and ended just after I turned 21. He made a huge impact on my life. He taught me about things I never would have even thought twice about at that point – jazz music, for instance, and it was he that brought me to San Francisco and made me fall in love with it and eventually, I would leave the man for the city. By way of a Chilean waiter named Luis. Who was very short-lived, I might add.
Between the meeting and the leaving, though, there were a couple of trips to Hawaii. Chris and I liked it there, the tropical hedonism of it all. Strange things happened there, like one day, we met Joe Zawinul at snack bar in Kauai. Chris was a musician, and knew alot of people, but snarfing fishburgers with one of the guys from Weather Report made a fairly big impression on him.
It’s strange to think that this all happened 20 years ago. While it doesn’t seem like yesterday, it also doesn’t seem like a trillion years, either. I am going back to that place on Wednesday. Probably I have changed, but the place has not. No, the place has changed, but I have not. Whatever. The importance of those Chris years will never change. Creativity, and destruction – I wish I could go back, but my body would never let me.
