Sieben

“Just step up.”
I pause.
The bright, high desert sun is beating down upon me.
My heart is racing within me.
“Common. Just step up.”
I think about it, but doubtfully so.
“Joshua Green!” It was more of a command, but with a slight hint of a girlish giggle that somehow manages to bounce lightly off of the granite and sandstone rock walls around me. “Take your right foot, put it on that little jib lip and just step up.”
I start and then pause again, which isn’t helping because blood is rushing to my forearms to help my fingers maintain their death crimp on two miniscule, almost invisible projections of granite rock that wouldn’t even be visible from more than five feet away. I’m inches away and my mind stalwartly refuses to believe that either one offers enough purchase to help support my weight while I “just step up” to the next equally and stupidly small foot hold. God bless Boreal and their proprietary rubber soled climbing shoes. They’re sticky. My fingers, not so much.
Presenttly, I’m about two thirds of my way up a climb sardonically called Road Rash in Joshua Tree National Monument. Joshua Tree is a breathtakingly beautiful park located in the high desert of Southern California’s Mojave, located somwhere north and east of the sprawling hellish, shallow expanse of the LA Basin. To the south, the Chocolate Mountains separate it (and me and my shaky forearms) from the upper Morongo Valley and the Salton Sea flats that lead down to Palm Springs. To the west are the mountain resorts of Big Bear and Arrowhead, where the desert gives up its aridity to the fragrant pine forests of the San Gabriel Mountains. To the north and east, the world effectively ends, turning sandy, brown, ugly and eventually leading to Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas.
Nuff said.
I’ve heard tell, but have yet to confirm, that the earth turns green again somewhere near the fabled, rumored land known as Arkan-sauce, although I remain skeptical.
But Joshua Tree is strangely beautiful. Large clumps of granite rocks that look like huge piles of boulders form interesting citadels of shade in the surrounding desert, where enormous and ancient Joshua Tree cacti point their middle fingers upwards towards the heavens as if to say “Thanks, God. Thanks a shit-ton for making these goofy-ass bipeds come climb rocks in my scenic wonderland. We need these polluting undulates like we need property developers and/or rectal polyps, but then I repeat myself.”
God doesn’t often listen to Joshua Tree cacti, at least I don’t think so.
The climb I’m pausing on is a mere 5.9 rating—a low intermediate rating in the parlance of rock climbers and nothing worthy of so much trepidation and hesitation. I’m normally a solid mid-range 5.10 climber in the gym, but as any rock nerd will tell you, the gym, like all man-made artificial realities, is a piss poor substitute for the real world. The cacti, meantime, like Beth, are mocking me. In this case, Road Rash is so named because of the quality of granite that forms the building-sized Paleolithic boulder that the climb is on. All climbs are named—an honor generally bestowed upon the first person to standardize the route—and many if not most have simple, adolescent names that reek of youthful exuberance and the hubris of young adulthood. Names like Poo-In-Your-Britches, Ass Whooper, Lurking Fear and Butt Munch come to mind. Thus, Road Rash is a more subtle reference to the possibilities offered therein. You can easily hike up the back side of Road Rash to set your anchor atop. You can then simply toss the rope back down, hike down and around, and set about to climbing the Rash while your partner belays from below. It’s a simple top rope problem. No, really, that’s what the guide book says. Guide books never lie.
Mostly.
The problem, it seems, is that 100 million years of nature haven’t yet managed to dull the infinitesimally small and countless crystalline granules of the granite extrusion that eons of water flow eroded to look like a large boulder. The silly bitch has the texture of rough grit sandpaper. While that makes for good friction against the sticky rubber soles of climbing shoes, it also makes for not-so-good friction against one’s exposed skin should one slip and tumble down. The danger on this climb is not from death due to falling or cranial avulsion or anything quite so easy and/or pleasant. Rather, it’s the excruciating flaying of one’s flesh while scraping and grinding against the wall as the belayer’s anchor catches. Granite when polished makes for grand countertops, but it enjoys its revenge against us for such an inglorious use by shredding the skin off of goof-ball climbers. Thus the climb’s name: Road Rash. The cacti watch with their eternal patience, no doubt hoping the goofy kid, namely me, puts on a good show.
I pause again. Beth at least, doesn’t want my blood. At least I hope not. She’s impatient, but she won’t say or show it. God bless her. She—like all climbers of merit—secretly cheers for others in the hopes that they will not only send the climb (send—verb, transitive: climber parlance for kicking rock ass and, more importantly, not flaying the flesh from oneself) but will also prove the line up the route, thus providing the visual cues as to where to go when it is her turn, clues known in climbing lingo as “beta” (beta—noun: climber parlance for “you go first and see if this silly thing makes you bleed”). I’m doing a poor job providing said beta, but my forearms are looking rather Popey-esque. Neato.
“You’re doing great, Josh. Take your time and step up when you’re ready. I’ve got you.”
Thanks, my love. Do you, by chance have a new set of forearms for your man? Now I’m looking around in desperation. There’s a philosophy in outdoor climbing that you have to develop trust in your shoes. Whereas the rock gym provides man-made, plastic and appliqué-textured walls upon which to schmear one’s shoes, the great outdoors provides an endless variety of conglomerates, granites and other crystallized stone alloys upon which high tech, modern rock shoes/boots/slippers gain incredible purchase. A skilled climber, in fact, can virtually dance up most 5.10a climbs and less without so much as the occasional balancing hand hold. Tragically, I am no such climber, and as I ponder my next step up (it’s all in the feet, you know) while my forearms and calves prepare to rip free from their confining tendons and ligaments such that they might bludgeon me to death in their utter frustration at my lack of spinal fortitude, I look around in even more desperation.
I know that large cacti 100 yards to the left is positively convulsing in laughter, at me rather than with me, I might add. I also notice a rather conspicuous coyote, looking equally bemused and apparently rolling its beady eyes at the stupid biped. Great, the flora and fauna are all friggin’ critics, it seems.
I’m hoping to find a nice hidden ledge upon which to rest for a spell. That’s the silly thing about granite rock. The crystals somehow align themselves so as to form a natural camouflage of sorts. It’s almost as if about a zillion years ago nature said to herself, “Self, someday there will be this horridly dorky critter named Mankind who will do stupid things like bungee jumping and rock climbing and NASCAR Racing and Really Big Belt Buckle Wearing. Therefore it’s my duty if not altogether my holy responsibility to design things such as tensile breaking points, gnarly, sharp granite, redneck alcoholism and lightening to take care of such problems lest this foolish creature destroy my lovely planet.” I always thought that she was a bitch, even if I envy her sardonically dark sense of humor.
No ledges though. And, much to my chagrin and annoyance, a spry, lithe little climb monkey has mounted the rock base beside Beth and proceeds to free climb the rock as if he’s dancing his way across a ballroom floor. Granted I’m a hefty 175 pounds—positively gargantuan by sport climbing standards—but this little elfin prick weighs a buck twenty at best. And he’s free soloing, which means he’s got no ropes, no anchors, no belays. And he zooms right up to the point that’s taken me over 30 minutes to haul my lame ass up to, huffing and puffing. He’s not breathing, the freakish little rock vampire, his blonde locks flowing down from his oh-so-chic poneytail. In a little over a minute he’s equal to me.
“Gutentagen.” How ever the shit you spell “hi” in Kraut.
Great, I think, the master race.
“You are delaying too long, meun freund. Just stepenze oop.”
And with that, he deftly dances his way up and over the next lip about ten feet above me and disappears high above. This is, no doubt, Lil’ Rock Hitler’s warm-up for the 5.14b he’s going to try to redpoint later (redpoint—noun: climbing parlance for “don’t even think about it Josh”). And suddenly I become enraged. My pituitary and adrenal go to work and I lunge forward and upwards with a newfound strength that propels me towards his imagined foot, which I imaginatively grab and hurl him to his death below. In stead I find the next hidden ledge, this one a generous one inch deep and haul myself up another five feet.
“See, Honey,” she giggles from below, “all you had to do was just step up.”
Did she call me “Honey?” Dunno, because as quickly as it hit me, the adrenaline goes away and suddenly I’m shaky again.
“Hey Josh?”
“Yeah, Beth? Just taking another little breather.”
“Did you talk to Gunther?”
“Wha?…”
“That guy who just sent beside you?”
“Oh, him.” My arms are resting and my calves are starting to shake now.
“Yeah, the German guy. Gosh, he was sure cute.”
Sonofabitch. Surge number deuce and suddenly I’m positively sprinting my way up the rest of Road Rage. Either I climb this bitch, I fall and skin myself silly, or I catch the prick and grind his uber-mensch face into the granite. And then I’m on top, chest heaving, forearms pumping and belayer hysterically giggling down below.
“Off belay,” she laughs, and I laugh too. It worked.
Okay, let’s consider the score. She asked me to a long weekend at Joshua Tree, just the two of us in a two person tent. She called me Honey. She used jealousy as a means to get something she wanted, namely me off this stinking route, presumably so that she can climb some before we return to Hidden Valley Campground, our tent and, most importantly, our cooler of Tecate beer. Hmmm, this could prove to be a promising start to a glorious weekend. Now I’ve just got to down hike off of this pig of a rock with legs made of warm jello. Nice. But Beth waits below, and that’s motivation enough.

One would think that the American punk rock movement of the early to mid-1980s was predicated on anger, angst and hatred. All I wanted was a Pepsi and such. As opposed to the music genre’s origin in post-60’s England where the thematic message was one of arrogance combined with obnoxious anti-social behavior festooned with really skinny neck ties, the American movement that came of age during the first Reagan Administration (ironically enough, the same time as me) seemed far more angry and aggressive than it’s oh-so-gitchy-anti-establishment roots. It’s simple, really. Compare the Sex Pitsols with anything by Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys or the Meatmen. Sure, Sid might have had that whole self-mutilation, kill the chica thingy going, but can anything he and the lads did really compare with “We’re The Meatmen And You Suck?” What did John Rocker possibly have on T. Boone? Did the entirety of the Buzzcocks lineup weigh-up to the same beefy standard of Hank? Nope.
Don’t get me started.
More importantly, don’t get me wrong. I’m not goofing on the ancestral roots of the seminal musical genre of the 1980s. For the record, the Big Hair Metal movement was not seminal. Semenal perhaps. Glitzy and glammy definitely, but not seminal. Winger will fall into obscurity as will, with any luck, EnoughZEnough. Bad Religion, Husker Du, the Ramones and Oingo Boingo, however, endure. Thank the powers that be for that. Yes, we’ve already hashed through my monotonous lifestyle and upbringing, and yes, we’ previously discussed my nonsensical ravings on Kiss, Rollins and my musical meanderings. Frankly I don’t expect any of you to agree with me or, more importantly, to understand. This is MY story after all. If you don’t like it, suck up the amount you’ve read, chalk it up to the opportunity cost of doing something else with your time other than rotting in front of the idiot box, and put the story down. Go ahead. Better yet, you could do yourself a favor and listen to the brilliance of “Chemical Warfare” or “Clean Sheets.” Think about the sublime message contained in one sentence, so much said with such profound economy: “Clean sheets mean a lot, for a guy who sleeps on the floor.” Get it? Read it again, slam back a quadruple uber super mega late, throw down a machaca burrito or two and listen anything by Descendants or Fear or Mojo Nixon or the Beatfarmers.
Nevertheless, the object lesson contained herein is that the American Punk Rock movement is/was not about violence. The latter was a byproduct of tight-assed, no-hair-having, swastika-wearing goons who glommed onto the subject matter. The material itself was not about hate or violence, self-hatred maybe but not about hurting others.
For a while, a long while, you know, I was all about violence, both internal and external. It occurred none too long after IT happened. For that period of time, violence consumed my soul, my essence and my purpose of being. Kind words and deeds by benevolent strangers on Fiesta Island notwithstanding, most of my time was spent, either waking, sleeping or breathing in a constant state of rage. Most of the time it was silent, a pent-up aggression that led to countless waking fantasies that included torture, beatings and occasionally evisceration. I was able to focus that inward violence, and my work productivity soared. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when appropriately motivated and when you have nothing to go home to.
Unfortunately, sometimes my anger took the form of naked, raw, out-in-the-open rage that seethed forth until I had to let it out. I always felt it coming, mind you, and I was typically astute enough to hop in the car immediately in order to drive somewhere to vent. Mostly I spent my wad in the car, screaming until I was horse and often banging the steering wheel until the entire column shook with each blow. In retrospect, I cannot fathom how I didn’t have an accident or lite-off my airbag. There’s a nice endorsement for my car, my coping mechanisms not so much.
More often than not, the rage hit on my way home from Arcadia. It’s funny, really, because I would have thought myself completely spent after another Friday night sitting beside her headstone, carrying on conversation with and declaring my love for someone far beyond my reach. Like darkness oddly seeping and oozing from an open door into a lit room, I could often feel the rage flood into my soul as I realized that I would never again hear her lovely, girlish voice nor ever again feel the brush of her soft blonde hair against my cheek as she hugged me goodbye every morning before I went to work.
The dragon would growl, roar, recoil and attack. It would typically build, gradually at first and then faster and more chaotically until I inevitably found myself somewhere at the side of the road in the middle of the night, lost on a side street off of Interstate 15 in the Inland Empire screaming, physically screaming, standing beside my car until I thought for sure my head would explode or my heart would rupture. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed. And it would always end the same too. Me huddled at the side of my car, engine still running and radio still blaring some sort of fast tempo’ed American Punk Rock. The coyotes that always seemed to linger just beyond the edge of ambient light, I’m sure, wondered who the insane biped was who was shrieking into the darkness of the night and pounding his foreheard into the dirt, for they, or it, were/was always there, staring with odd intensity as I played out my weekly passion. And there I would kneel, worshiping at the altar of angry, violent realization of lives lost, until at last my thoughts would return to the living and I would hear her voice telling me how foolish the goofy Jewish kid from Texas must look, Ramones blaring “Somebody Put Something In My Drink” while his forehead oozed blood. “Get up, Sweet Josh,” she’d implore within my aching head. “You’re very sweet, but this is foolish. My husband should not be sitting in expensive dirt on the side of the frontage road off of I15 at 3 a.m. on a Friday night.” I never listened to her in those moments.
As always, though, the sobs eventually slowed and finally stopped. Empty, no more gas in the tear tanks. And then I would begin the long drive home to Ocean Beach, hoping that I didn’t get pulled over by the California Highway Patrol for drunk driving (which I wasn’t) or for wholesale self-pity (guilty as charged). The violent thoughts, however, remained.
Thus, it came to pass that during a rare daytime rage that on-set while I was driving to Arcadia rather than from, I kept driving. I got on the 60 to the 210 until I joined the 10, upon which I drove east until I passed the huge windmill power farm and made the offramp up, past the Morongo Valley up and into Joshua Tree. And somehow, the rage, the violence and the profound sadness subsided as I watched the shadows of the boulder cities grow long in the setting sun of the high desert sky. In the distance, little points of light became visible as camp fires lit in Hidden Valley and the other sanctioned fire-safe areas. The multiliths of the San Gabriels to the west grew into large, dark masses with a hint of ochre in the sky behind them. And the rage subsided. Joshua Tree, it seemed, was a place of peace, a place that her ghost and I could both enjoy. It was truly sublime, and the tiniest inkling of hope crept into my tabernacle of hatred, and for a moment the hatred subsided. But I was still without her, and while Joshua Tree had soothed the fire within, the park nonetheless reminded me of what had been, the promises of love and friendship, and the stark loneliness of the high dessert took me back to that trip where I had bested Road Rash and forged memories with my soul mate. Memories and experience, after all, are the only things that we truly posses.

Five hours later it’s night time and Beth and I are sitting around a fire we’ve built in the approved fire pit that the National Park Service provides for campers. Now, if only the NPS would also provide kegerators full of Dos XX Lager. Still, we’ve got a lot for a last minute camping trip to Joshua Tree. The park is frequented nearly all year long, save for the hottest months of late summer. People come from all over the country, but mostly from California, Arizona and Nevada to climb, to hike, to mountain bike or perhaps to simply get away from things for a while in order to commune with Nature as a means to get in touch with oneself. Me? I’m hoping to get more in touch with Beth.
Now, lest you brand me a dog, a maggot or a player merely in quest of a quick piece of ass, I need to qualify a few things about myself. You see, in spite of all of my prior ramblings about normalcy and the Really Big Belt Buckle/neo-punk doldrums of Josh’s life, I was never—never ever—a player. I was by most standards a late bloomer, not really dating until midway through high school, and even then favoring the outcast girls. While they were the antithesis of pure punk, I nonetheless dug the goth girlies with a passion. Something about pasty pale, morose girls dressed in black and festooned with far too much black eyeliner finally piqued my curiosity in the fairer and, in this case, significantly more neurotic sex. Even then, however, I was anything but a player. Sex happened (as it often does at that age), and it was awkward and foolish and messy (as it often is). There wasn’t nearly as much animal passion as I had been lead to expect after years spent watching late night soft core pornography on Cinemax. I dabbled in it from my junior year of high school onwards, but more as an occasional pastime rather than an adolescent obsession. It’s often said that it’s better to be lucky rather than good; tragically I was neither. Player? Not on your or my life.
College? Yeah, I dabbled in “it” there too, but I seemed to spend more time draining the keg and sleeping off the after effects in-stead of chasing skirts. Flight school? That is, ostensibly, a target rich environment, yet I was busy immersing myself in things like the Federal Aviation Regulations Part 91, or Vertical S-1 instrument patterns rather than partaking of Pensacola’s seemingly endless supply of southern belles all searching for Navy husbands. Whereas “An Officer and a Gentleman” might have been geographically misplaced, the cliché of Navy town girls hunting for aviator husbands was still true. Fortuitously, I was skilled at avoiding them. Besides, P’cola is in reality the other LA—Lower Alabama—and the girls there, much like those in Texas, were into Really Big Belt Buckles. I was into Hawaiian shirts. The two don’t readily mix except in fission/fusion explosions often resulting in bar room brawls.
That’s another story.
Anyhow, I finished my purgatory sentence there and moved to Southern California—the Green ancestral homeland. What I found shocked, amazed and delighted me. Here the women were natural, deeply tanned, definitively athletic and eschewed anything relating to line dancing, mullet tossing or Really Big Belt Buckles. Still, I was anything but a player, much to Chuck’s eternal disappointment. I was loath to “jump on the grenade” on his behalf when we went out hunting in pairs. How does one explain at the end of the date, when one’s partner has hooked up and departed, that one was really only talking to the other girl in order for the guy friend to hook-up with chica nombre dos? One doesn’t when you’re Josh Green, although on a rare occasion I was surprised to be told “it’s okay, I don’t mind, can I spend the night with you anyway?”
Okay, I might not have been a player, but I wasn’t daft. Sex is still nifty no matter what, and it’s even better when it’s with somebody other than myself.

But I digress. Like I was saying, at this point it’s not my goal necessarily to hook up and have sex with Beth. The stirring in my naughty bits aside, I am as content to hold her hand as I am to kiss, and both seem to elicit the same response down under. In stead, I’m simply looking for an excuse to get a little closer to her, to establish This and Something Special and perhaps even Exclusive, although to tell the truth, I’ve been exclusively hers since that first evening at the rock gym. Great, she’s turned me into a sap. Love, perhaps?
Our campground is fairly nice as far as Joshua Tree campgrounds go. By that I mean that there’s a paucity of large-fanged tarantulas, which I always figure to be a plus on most dates, and to this point nothing has exploded nor have any flesh eating zombies tried to feast on our brains—also things that benefit dating decorum. So I figure I’ve got that going for me. In addition to that, we’ve managed to snag a Hidden Valley camp site that has a fire pit and a fresh water spigot. Fires, by the way, are typically disallowed at J Tree, no doubt due to the extensive lobbying by the cacti and the gila monsters. But, since we were intuitive enough to play hookie from work and come to J Tree on a Wednesday rather than the weekend, we’ve found ourselves alone in the beautiful desolation of the high desert. Hidden Valley is mostly ours tonight, and in the distance we can see the camp fires of a few other mid-week climbers, all no doubt delighted by their/our collective decision to ditch work in favor of the grandeur of nature. Remember what I said before about California? It’s all true. Texas not so much.
I’ve brought with us a large cooler, lots of camping gear, a pair cold weather North Face sleeping bags for the two of us, one tent (an important point when one is on a camping date), food, a case of Mexican beer, a couple of Mexican blankets, two Crazy Creek camping chairs that can also be used as bivy pads under the sleeping bags and a portable stereo including several Kiss and Bob Marley CDs. What I didn’t bring were condoms (remember, I’m not a player but I am a realist), Cheeze Whiz (contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have a purpose in every occasion) or extra sleeping bag pads.
That last point might seem somewhat obscure, particularly compared to the sublime nuances of Cheeze Whiz, so please allow me to explain. The thing is, it’s generally thought that a person camping in cool or cold weather should have no less than two inches of padding between their sleeping bag and the ground. The issue isn’t one of cushion; rather, it’s one of insulation, for without a sufficient amount it gets bone-numbingly cold at night even in a 0 degree sleeping bag. And therein lies my brilliance, or so I think. It’s going to get very cold tonight at Joshua Tree, perhaps as low as 30 degrees. I didn’t bring enough insulating pads for both of us, but I did bring those blankets which I plan to spread on the floor of the SINGLE tent I brought, after which I intend to suggest we put our sleeping bags so close that we’ll be touching in order to share our warmth. See? I’m not a player, but I am a devious, sneaky little bastard.
I put a CD in, Kiss’ “Smashes, Thrashes and Hits” (one has to pack judiciously when being devious), I pop us a couple of Dos XX Lagers and I cut two slices of lime while Beth cooks the weenies that she’s skewered on two sticks over the fire. The first song, humorously enough, is “Let’s Put the X in Sex.” I blush and it’s good that it’s dark.
“Hmm. Interesting choice in music, Josh.” She’s grinning in the fire-light’s dancing rhythm and blushing too, but I can’t see the latter. I hear a coyote howl in the distance as I look up to see Beth’s award winning smile.
“What?”
“The Kiss, I mean. Is one of those for me?” she points in the fire’s glow at the two beers that I’m holding.
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Actually, I was going to put these out on a rock over there to satisfy Quetsapoochie—the ancient tarantula god—so that we won’t be bothered by creepy crawlies in our sleep tonight. Well, that and I figured on double fisting for a while or at least until you get my weenie cooked.”
“Okay, Flyboy, I’ll cook your weenie alright, but I also guarantee that it’ll be all shriveled and blackened. Not much good between two buns, you know.”
“Whoa. That’s a pretty convincing argument Beth.” I hand her a beer.
“Quetsapoochie?” she smiles as she takes it.
“Yeah, well, that’s my poetic license again. ‘Sides, it sounded good on the spur of the moment, donchathink?”
“Something like that.” She says warmly. “Now about this song….”
“I thought you liked Kiss.” The coyote howled again.
“Oh, I do, but I’m curious about your choice in music, Josh. Incidentally, I don’t think the wildlife approves.”
I take a drag on my beer. Hopefully this sounds convincing. “I had to pack lightly and couldn’t bring a ton of CDs. This seemed a good choice.”
“Uh-hu. I might believe that. But I don’t.” The coyote howled yet again. “She most certainly doesn’t.”
She smiled again and I blushed again. Paul wailed his innuendo. Vinnie Vincent wailed the guitar (this was post-Ace Kiss, you know). Thanks guys.
“Nice try, though, Flyboy. How about this in stead? Let’s play ‘Let’s put the T in Tequila?’”
And with that she produced a small bottle of Sauza and a shaker of salt from her backpack. “You cut the limes and then we’ll do a couple of shots, but we’d better hurry before your weenie shrinks. ‘Sides, this should help us warm up.”
Trust me. Believe me. There isn’t anything shrinking on me at present. And I’m positively on fire.
Two shots go down quickly and we chase with our Dos XX. Joshua Tree incidentally sits at about four and-a-half thousand feet above sea level. The air is arguably rarified here, but I think I can make a safe and fairly convincing argument that the ozone and pheremones that Beth and I are oozing are displacing more than enough oxygen to help speed the liquor on its way. She pours another shot, cuts a slice of lime and sprinkles some salt on her hand.
“Come here Josh.” I kneel in front of her. She holds her hand to my mouth. “Suck.” It’s a command that I obey. My naughty bits feel heavy. “Drink.” Another command as she lifts the shot glass to my mouth. The fire in my gut hardly matches what’s down below. “Suck.” God bless this woman; she puts the lime backwards in her mouth and leans into me. Again, I do as commanded and her tongue pushes the lime into my mouth following closely behind. For a very brief second I enjoy the beauty of the moment, our mouths locked together, her hands pulling my head to hers while her fingers run through my hair. And then she somehow knocks the lime slice down the back of my throat and I choke. Literally. And hack and cough and probably turn a bright shade of crimson although it’s hard to see in the fire’s glow.
At least she has sense enough to whack me hard on the back, and I spit up the lime slice, which lands in the nape of her fleece pullover somewhere in the region of her breasts. She’s laughing hardily and I can’t help but join her. The coyote, I swear, is also laughing in the distance.
The other reason I was never a player? I’m a clutz and a goon. This entire scene is sooo Josh the Toad.
“You’re weenie’s on fire, Josh,” She laughs.
It’s still not the only thing on fire. Trust me. “Yeah, well, you got your boobies wrapped about my lime, Beth.”
“So it is. So it is,” she giggles. “Maybe if you’re a good boy I’ll let you go a huntin’ later. In the meantime, let’s eat that weenie.”
Somehow, someway, in that moment I miraculously manage to not spontaneously combust, melt into a gelatinous puddle of goo and/or explode. I’m not a player, but I’m playing well enough. Perhaps sincerity has something to do with it.

APIS6

Flash forward with me, back to the closer-to-now rather than the pleasant summer dream time of evenings past with a beautiful woman who would habitually alternatively either call me Tex, Cutie or by my given name.
It—she—was a reality that was defined by the lightness of being and happiness of the soul. She was a warm ray of sunlight, a vibrant flower bloom, a brilliant sunset in the ocean-sky as the sun leaves the day behind on a warm summer beach. She was the green flash; all elusive but enthralling while briefly experienced. It was short lived period in my life. Way too short, and while it had profound impact and the ripples in the pond that it started have yet to fully spread from shore to shore, I nonetheless cannot linger too much there lest the emotions overwhelm my defenses and the tempestuous waves of horrific cataclysm set the gunwales of my meager defenses awash. I nearly foundered last time, and it’s my hope to serve Her memory by being brave and strong and able to cope with all things living having taken to heart the lessons that she so lovingly and selflessly imparted on me during our existence together.
Yeah, whatever. Something the fuck like that. Wine is fine, liquor might be quicker, but a bullet to the forehead stops the pain permanently.
I’ve thought about it, believe me I have.
Regardless, I cannot stay there. I’ve said that; I’m repeating. I know the all-too-familiar sound of my mantra of these past months. It’s a survival issue, you see.
Thus, we find ourselves somewhere else, although still in San Diego. It’s closer to now, farther from then. I’m back at work, slowly rebuilding. I’m racing again, and training, and seeking the solace of endorphins and the emancipation of pain. Am I really living? I doubted it then as much as I do now, but it was a start, and all things must begin somewhere, even the Rebuilding Aftewards.
Beth would have wanted that.
So, I buy new running shoes and take intricate care of my bike. I run, swim, bike, lift, and, most importantly, consciously remember to breathe in each moment of every day. Baby steps and shit.

I am on my bike. I am in the water. My soul might have been drowning, but my cognitive abilities remain acutely aware of everything around me, as if in my death throws I was granted preternatural omnipresence and clarity. Here are my thoughts from that time.

The edges of the map of the human condition are, unfortunately, marked with a simple, ominous warning:

Here there be idiots.

Tragically, there are many, so many of us who fall prey to that bitter, cynical law, and I’ve been no exception. Efforts to the contrary be damned, I find that my behavior has often been less than what is expected of me by nature, by my friends and by myself. One can easily play the nobility of loss such that you ostensibly become the better person, forged anew in the crucible of agony. It’s never quite so romantic, however, and time, if anything, serves only to remind us that we are a faulted critter indeed. It’s a sad, sad testament to the frailty of humanity that the weaknesses of the soul that can spread like cracks in a windshield. I discovered how stark things can be on this day even if the storm had already passed.
It was Thursday and Memorial Day Weekend was fast approaching. I decided to start it a wee bit early since I still wasn’t back on the flight schedule per the Flight Surgeon’s suggestion to my Commanding Officer, my CO. I couldn’t blame Fist, the doc, really, since he was charged with the heavy task to being both doctor and psychologist to our squadron. If he said I wasn’t ready to strap-on an airplane, then he was most likely right. After all, it wasn’t just my ass and a $20 million aircraft if my distraction caused me to put it in the water, since my heart-sick distraction would also take three other people to the bottom. Major trauma equates to no flying.
What else is an aviator to do? Play hooky, that’s what. So I thought to strap on my bicycle in stead. The race season was in its infancy for the year and the events of the past year had left me bedraggled, beleaguered and bereft of the fitness—emotional and physical—that I was accustomed to. I had lofty goals that included at the very least my first Ironman and an Eastern Sierra summit or two.

Mere survival? Notsomuch.
I took advantage of the leeway offered me by the CO and afforded me by my band of brothers and sisters; my squadron. I took a personal day, slept in, showered lazily and savored a bagel and a steaming mug of the sacred juice before donning my Coolmax and Spandex. It was warm and sunny—a grand day indeed to spin the gears and knock the dust off my bike, my quads and my rattled sense of reality alike.
I headed out of Ocean Beach along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, across the San Diego River bridge, pausing only briefly to look at the fog swirling like a gray, opaque wall not even 500 feet from me, threatening to engulf my corporal presence in the same cold, wet funk that pervaded my soul.

“No, don’t linger here,” I thought. “Keep charging ahead. It’s the only way through.”

Typical aviator’s stubborn resolve. I blazed through the traffic, pumping and spinning, turned right onto Ingraham Drive and started around Mission Bay towards Fiesta Island, into the bright sun light.
Here it was warm for a change and the air pollution courtesy of Los Angeles was casting a strangely alluring hue over the city, whose downtown was plainly visible to the immediate south and towards the ocean too, which lay to the west of the bay. In short, it was a perfect day for ditching work, ditching the burden of Everything Else, and for seeking the solace of a Softride Powerwing 650 triathlon bike in resplendent banana yellow. I felt noticeably lighter until, that is, I turned onto Fiesta Island—a man-made garbage heap turned overnight beach bonfire spot in the middle of Mission Bay—and cruised along the rough pavement to the second hidden cove beyond the screaming of the seagulls and the screaming of the Jet Skis alike.
I noticed as I rode along that people with recreational vehicles and campers and station wagons were beginning to stake out and claim portions of the shoreline in preparation for the coming long weekend. Fiesta Island allows bonfires and overnight camping. In fact, the entrance road closes at sunset, sequestering the campers and rabble-rousers who take keen advantage of that fact and turn the Island into a festive albeit debaucherous testament to pagan drinking and screwing rituals that somehow have grown to accompany America’s holiday in supposed tribute to its fallen heroes.

Some things are best not understood fully, you know.

Families were gathering with cars, personal watercraft, tents, food, and music every 50 yards or so. What caught my attention, however, was a single car parked inconspicuously between two widely spaced family tribal units. As I rode by, I noticed the car’s apparent owner: a very large woman, sitting on a beach towel in the sand beside the car’s open door. She was sitting Indian style with a hunched back and a down-turned head, and every so often she would languidly throw a dog toy of some sort into the water for her chocolate lab to fetch. What really struck me in the brief instant was the combination of her posture, indicative of utter defeat, combined with her gaze, which was pointed about a thousand yards beyond her feet, through the sand and deep into the earth. She was extremely obese, so much so that health problems were a “when” rather than an “if,” but the most striking and halting aspect of the scene before me was the look of profound sadness and loneliness on her face.

She was fat. It was Memorial Day Weekend. She was alone—most likely again.

And that’s what got me. Out of the sun and back to the darkness.
Her dog didn’t seem to mind so much, though, as dogs never judge based on looks, further proof that they are in fact a far nobler species than we. It charged repeatedly into the water, retrieved the fetch toy, and returned it to her with a wagging tail, an ear-to-floppy-ear grin and plenty of gratuitous licking and furious body wiggling. It was happy yet she still sat there staring through her feet and the sand into the depths of inner space.

She was fat. It was Memorial Day Weekend. She was alone—most definitely again.

Mind you, I noticed this in a rather short space of time as I approached, slowed briefly and rode by. Time compression, the phenomena is called. Still, somehow I managed to take it all in, perhaps thanks to my heightened senses at the time. I don’t know. Several hundred yards later I slowed, stopped and straddled my bike while I thought about what I had just seen as several things occurred to me. I shivered in the cold of my heart.

First, in spite of all of the injustices and prejudices that still exist in this land, I think that none are as simply mean spirited as our institutional ostracizing of the obese. Nothing is worse in our fluffy, silicon and collagen implanted society than being fat, except being fat in SoCal where the fluffy silicon and collagen implanted live in droves, gorging themselves upon the utter shallowness of pop culture and nearly impossible unnatural standards of so-called physical beauty.

(My Beth was beautiful—stunningly so in every neo-classic sense of physical standards. And it was all natural, all her. But it was that which defined the facets of her inner diamond that showed the true fire within that shone so brightly in her. It’d be romantic indeed to presume that so many of the glam pop-culture elite of the LA Basin would have stood in awe of such light, but that ultimately gives those fuckers far too much credit wherein self and situational awareness are concerned. Fools, all of them.)

Second, I came to the clear conclusion that we as a nation are the loneliest people on the planet, a strange paradox given our undisputed lead in instantaneous communications technologies and voluminous information exchange.

Combine the two, I rationed, and life—those of others and not just mine—must be pretty bleak in spite of our best efforts to convince ourselves of otherwise. We construct vast walls and chasms to separate us from each other emotionally and intellectually, and then we develop artificial means to re-establish communications provided, of course, that those communications are conducted only at our convenience and only to our liking. I stared at her a little bit longer and then sped away on my bike, intent on putting the scene behind me that I might get on with my day and not be overwhelmed by the vast consequences of my realization. More darkness I most certainly did not need, I figured.

“No, don’t linger here. Keep charging through. It’s the only way to survive.” But the thought persisted, punctuated only by the dragon’s growl deep within.

Hollow. And empty. I stopped again.

My thoughts returned to her and to even more self-recriminations as if that was possible at the time. My chest was heaving but it wasn’t due to oxygen debt. I personified the nation’s problems, and I knew it.

We (I) are alone among a sea of people.

Herein lay the rub. While this may seem an esoteric, obtuse argument to champion, I was seeing it every day in every facet of my life, particularly given my heightened sense of societal loneliness. How quaint. Lost within, I still retained the ability to note that society was lost without. Irony is a bitch.

It’s not that we, America, lack the basic resources to be involved, active, and satisfied by our interactions with those around us. On the contrary, like I’ve already mentioned, we have perhaps the most well developed tools at our disposal than any other culture on earth. Digital wireless technology. Satellite communications. Pagers. Personal Digital Assistants. Email. Voicemail. Snailmail. Bit-streaming music and pornography over the office local area network. Ours is a culture rich in the basic resources and necessities of communications, much less the advanced aspects that only the richest, most powerful nation of earth can have. So why then do we use those devices to shut ourselves out and off from the world and, more importantly, the people around us?

It’s a paradox of advancement, I suppose. Then again maybe we’re all just pricks. I wasn’t sure, and my chest was heaving harder and my eyes were stinging. I could still faintly see her in the distance.

Need proof about our isolation? I had been recognizing the symptoms of our shared selective isolationism as each day passed. As I sat in my car and burned dead dinosaurs in tribute to CalTrans and the ever-present quest for more lanes, I took the time to take stock of my surroundings. I looked around at the people in the other cars, and bear in mind that is not a task to be taken lightly since seemingly innocent eye contact on Interstate 5 can easily be a prelude to violence. Nevertheless, I bravely looked around at the other people and I noticed that without fail everybody was either talking on a cell phone pretending to be interested to the disembodied voice on the other end of the line; or they were staring blankly into inner space, unaware of and disenfranchised from their surroundings. Of course, there were always a small number who would make better use of their time, digging fingers deeply into their noses in quest of mucoid treasures (I never understood the curiosity that drove them to look at the treasures they recovered), but I tended to discount them since they were the people no doubt listening to Billy Ray Cyrus on the car radio and watching Jerry Springer on the idiot box at home.
The selective isolationism, I figured, didn’t end when they got out of their cars either. How many people were walking from the parking lot, cell phone strapped to one ear or PDA firmly grasped in hand? No eye contact with passers-by. No “hellos” or “good days” for anyone. It was as if we sought and/or created technologies that delivered us from the need to interact with society at large. Meanwhile, we steadily retreated/retreat into a land of cyber-reality where we could effectively shut out the real world and interpersonal interaction in favor of introversion, down cast eyes, and isolation from one another.

Now, lest you misunderstand, I wasn’t advocating the abandonment of technology. I harbored no intentions of moving to a powerless cabin in Montana, nor did I own large amounts of ammonium nitrate and blasting caps. I freely admit that I enjoyed web surfing yet I still enjoyed the sublime barbarism of reading a book (gasp!). I owned a cell phone which, incidentally also had games on it that were ideal for playing while on the crapper. Some people read whilst taking a shit; I play Tetras.

But that is more than you need to know.

The point of my observation was that our quantum advancements in technology have only made it that much more critical to seek out and foster communications with the outside world. I feared that humanity was in grave danger of becoming Bill Gates’ Boys From Brazil—shut indoors, strapped to our DSL-equipped computers with no physical links to the outside world save opening the front door for our on-line orders from HomeGrocer.com, Housecalls.com, OnlinePlumber.com, Hookersonthenet.com, etc….. We should not allow these tools of the modern age to supplant our basic human needs to talk to those of the same species—in person. We have to interact with people and, yes, we have to look up and say hello. Unfortunately it seemed that we were doing that less and less, and in my despair I feared that humanity was terminally ill with morasmus, dying due to profound sadness.

Anyhow, I slowed my breathing and got things under control. It was a scene that I was becoming accustomed to repeating throughout the day when little things—a smell, a sound, a thought or memory—would open the door and the dragon would escape. I thought back to the lady faintly still in sight behind me. Should one be audacious and brash enough, I figured, to be overweight or suffer from some sort of physical malady or difference, than the world surely becomes a much smaller and lonelier place. What a sad, sad testament to human advancement. My father had always been an avid science fiction fan and was an ardent believer in the utopian perfection of the world of Star Trek, where there was no war, no hunger, no unhappiness. At that moment, I knew better. Our future was not Star Trek, it was Blade Runner.

Three weeks came and went. Summer took over from spring. I began flying again, finally cleared but still under the close scrutiny of other senior pilots. I wasn’t getting much better, but I was becoming quite adept at hiding the grief, the rage and the shock. People lauded me for getting on with life. They didn’t know that my Friday nights were spent sitting beside a gravestone at Forest Lawn in Arcadia, 100 miles north, talking with a ghost.

But my days were spent coping or at least pretending to. And, I even managed to ride my bike, run my shoes worn-through and swim countless laps across the La Jolla Cove. Thus, on an otherwise un-noteworthy Saturday afternoon I hopped on my resplendent banana yellow bike again and rode to Fiesta Island, opting for a shorter sprint workout rather than my usual leisurely spin up the coast. The island was deserted, and I enjoyed pushing big gears in my aero bars, savoring the burning in my quads and my lungs, lost within like the rest of our pathetic society. How utterly fucking quaint.

I rounded the corner to the hidden cove on the east side and there she was again. It suddenly flooded back. The dragon was loose and reeking havoc in an instant. I wobbled, momentarily lost my balance, caught my front wheel in the sand beside the asphalt and tumbled over my bars into the sand.

I lay there dazed momentarily until I realized that I was okay and not simply awaiting the onset of the pain associated with broken bones or dislocated joints. I sat up, and I looked at her. She was there again, but she was up and moving, playing with her dog and showing a hint of a smile. Did she steal a glance in my direction? No, she kept playing fetch with the lab. Or did she?

At first, I thought she was happier because it wasn’t a holiday weekend and there were no visceral reminders of her aloneness. Yes, I figured, that might have something to do with it. But there was also something else, namely that the dog didn’t give a shit. He romped to and fro, tail wagging and tongue hanging out. He was having fun with the human he loved, and he loved her because she was his human, his pack mate and his companion. He loved her regardless of her physical limitations and he didn’t require her to log onto an instant messenger to make contact. His contact was a stick, the bay and a furiously wagging tail. She smiled back, no mistaking the facial expression. He—the dog—was her link to life. “Hello, how are you” she was saying in her soul, courtesy of real interaction and not via the filters of technology, facades and/or defense mechanisms.

I stared dumbly, sitting in the sand having just taken what should have been a horridly painful bicycle accident. Sometimes pain can be mitigated by experience.

I once read a book by Dean Koontz where he postulated through the eyes of his main character that dog rather than man was surely made in God’s image. It suddenly seemed pretty damned close to the truth. And then the dog ran up to me, the goofy, damaged-goods sitting in the sand with a busted helmet, skinned knees and elbows, and the dumbfounded look on his face. He sniffed only for a moment, judged me no threat and ran over to coat my skinned knees with gentle licks.

“Ohmygosh,” she said as she puffed up a moment later. “You’re a bloody mess. Are you okay?”

I kept staring at the dog, and then I looked up. Hello. How are you? “Uh, yeah, I think I’m fine; just caught my wheel in the sand and endo-ed. Thanks.”

“Well, you don’t look fine, Silly. Does it hurt? I’ve got a first aid kit in my trunk. Why don’t you wait here a minute while I get some Bactine.”

I couldn’t answer because she shuffled off to her car. The dog stayed by me, licking, whining just a bit and wagging like only a lab can do. I scratched him between his chocolate ears. And then the stinging commenced.

She returned. “Here, let me help you.” And she did. Bactine, by the way, hurts, whether you’re a kid or an adult; it’s just that adult sensibilities allow one to appreciate the latter ramifications of staff infections. I only winced a tiny bit.

“You’re very kind.”

“Chester likes you.” She motioned towards the lab that was grinning and creating a half a sand angel with his tail. “That’s a good sign of character, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have noticed you.”

“He’s got good taste in bloody bikers then.” I giggled just a bit.

“Sorry, uhm, does it hurt much?” She was using some gauze to clean off the excess Bactine, blood and sand from my right knee.

“Only when I breathe.” I smiled back. Hello. How are you? Me? Yes, I’m fine. “You’re awfully cavalier for a guy who just face planted into the sand, you know. My name is Callie, by the way.”

“Hi Callie, mother of Chester, I’m Josh. I’m bleeding.”

“Yup, you sure are. Hold this gauze on your knee. Do you do this often?”

“Bleed? Well, I try not to, but I find it a good way to meet new dogs.” Chester, being a typically intelligent lab, wagged even harder (as if that was possible) and licked me in the face.

“Well, Josh, you seem like you’ll be okay. Can I give you a ride home or anything?” She was nice and her voice, it sounded like…. No.

“Uuhmmm, no thanks, Callie. As long as my bike is okay I’ll limp my way home. I only live down in Ocean Beach.”

“OB? That’s five miles away, Silly Josh. Throw the bike in the trunk and you, me and Chester will go for a ride.” Silly Josh was a jolt to the heart that she must have recognized given her stiffening posture and immediate unease. I thought to disarm the situation and set her at ease, but bleeding more wasn’t the appropriate response. I accepted Callie’s gracious offer.

“Well, okay. Thanks.”

And with that, I staggered to my feet and picked up my mangled bike. A quick shake of excess sand and I followed Callie to her car. Chester stayed between us, eyeing my not-so-resplendent banana yellow bike with doggie suspicion. Surely, he figured, this was the thing that hurt Momma’s new friend. That can’t be good in a dog’s sensibilities.

We loaded the bike into the trunk of the sport ute and she drove me off Fiesta Island, towards home. During that brief ride Callie and I spoke and laughed and shared a stolen bit of human interaction. It was disarming and, well, nice. She was, it turned out, an attorney working for a local biotech firm. She had lived in San Diego since graduation from law school and Chester was her family. They lived in North Pacific Beach, up the hill towards La Jolla, in a house that she purchased with stock options.

She learned a little bit of me. Mostly I sat and listened and bled a bit and flapped my arms a bit from the stinging. Chester barked at passing cars. We pulled up to my bungalow.

“722 Naranganset?” She said. “This is a familiar address.”

I paused. She couldn’t have known Beth. God, I hoped not, as the color drained from the day.

“Isn’t this where that gal who worked at Immunogenetics lived before she was…” she saw my face.

“Beth, Beth Green.” I breathed heavily and composed myself. “My wife. I was wondering if maybe you knew each other, working up on Torrey Pines and all.” Torrey Pines was the heart of San Diego’s biotech district.

“God, Josh, no I didn’t. I mean I didn’t know her but I knew of her, and I didn’t mean to, well, uhm, you know.”

“It’s okay, Callie. It still hurts if I dwell on it.” Actually it hurt every second of every minute of every day. “Mentioning it just let the door to open a bit more than I usually allow, that’s all. Nothing to be sorry for.”

She didn’t look like she believed me. In fact, she looked terribly sad, but for me rather than herself.

“Callie, it’s OKAY. Look, you just gave a complete, bloody stranger a ride home in your nice truck. And you got to torture him with Bactine while your trusty dog barked at his bike. Take the day for what it has been—fun for the two of you and funny at my expense after my crash. You earned a fair bit of karmic credit today too.”

Another pause, but her face brightened a bit. Chester woofed in approval.

“Okay, Josh the Bleeder, that’s fair enough.”

I thanked her again and we got out (me gingerly) and unloaded my bike. Chester got a well-deserved rub between the ears. I looked at her in wonderment. Here was a tremendously obese woman who had been arbitrarily ostracized by society and had suffered horridly at its arrogant fickleness, yet she hadn’t succumbed at all to the pain inflicted upon her. She could still find the power to give aid to a goofy-ass bloody stranger in need and she could still empathize with the pain of others. She was far advanced compared to the rest of us.

“Alright, Josh, if you’ll be okay. Hey, Chester and I go to Fiesta Island most Saturday mornings. Please stop by and say hi next time you go riding by. Just be sure it’s a proper stop.”

“Deal! Count on it, Callie. Thanks again.” And then I did something wholly uncharacteristic for me—I leaned forward and gave her a long hug. It felt strangely good. I lingered for only a moment and released her. She beamed back.

“Okay, then, see you sometime on the Island of Bloody Knees.”

And with that, she got back in her truck, whistled to Chester who barked once and hopped in beside her and drove off with a wave. I stared, knees stinging and scabbing but chest no longer heaving. The color returned to the day, and I thought about the sublime powers of simple interaction.

There might be idiots, but there are also human beings left here, and that makes all the difference. Hello. How are you? Me? I’m fine thank you. It was nice talking to you, friend.

The sun warmed my back, even if only for a short while.

Five

APIS5

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Gandhi

How and or where could I tell of my beginnings without painting the landscape of the life that grew to define my own in so many ways beyond those planned and or anticipated?
Wow, there’s a thought. I’ll leave it for now, though.
Let’s speak in stead of an inner light that shone forth on the world around her as a measure of true balance with her own environment held in sublime balance with that which she valued in not only her life, but in the lives of those around her.
Lacking both ability and resolve within, I’ll fall back on her strength to allow this part of the tale, in stead relying on her potency of engagement and intensity of living that I can still feel coursing within me from time to varied time, not only allowing me to keep the dragon at bay, but also sometimes empowering me to fight him back into his cave. Her love, her presence were like that. I’m talking about an inner light that is so rarely encountered in our cynical world, a strength that was never used for self but, in stead, was given freely to all around her, particularly me. It’s emboldened with that strength, then, that I feel able to tell you some about her As She Was rather than What Befell Her. That part will come later. For now, I feel warm and, armed with a smile that today she still empowers, I ask you to join me on this briefest of detours in order to share the beauty of a soul more noble, more intricately crafted than any master artist could endeavor to paint. Beauty’s name was and continues to be Beth.
Beth’s story begins the same year as mine, only in Arcadia, California, where things remained until collegiate education and Other Things Involving Josh stole her away to Ocean Beach/San Diego.
Along came Beth, or something like that.
In the photos her mother has shared with me over these precious years, I’ve seen many black and white artistic images shot of Beth’s mother holding a tiny baby with tow blonde hair, stunning light eyes always open and taking in the world around her, and hands up stretched as if trying to embrace the very essence of the world around her. Beth was engaged from her very beginning, her mother and father often told (tell) me, remaining quiet at birth, but looking very seriously around her with wide opened, clear eyes as the mid-wife handed her down to her mother’s chest. Beth didn’t utter a sound, in stead reaching out two impossibly tiny, chubby hands to touch her mother’s face. It was a moment, they both agreed, that they first glimpsed an inner light that shone forth as if provided by a higher power manifested deep within the soul of their only daughter.
Neither of Beth’s’ parents, mind you, were (or even are, given What Transpired) particularly religious. Still, as they’ve oft recounted with undiminished love, adoration and, perhaps most touchingly, admiration, Beth was touched by something far beyond herself even at an early age. Not many of us can lay similar claims.
Let’s forward a brief period of time. Early one morning Beth’s father came to her room to kiss her in her crib before leaving for work. A tiny toddler with white blonde hair looked up at him in the morning sunlight and, in a small child’s voice, very distinctly said “I saw butterflies outside” while she smiled all gummy and partially toothed and reached her small arms for her father to pick her up. As he still recounts with fondness and a smile that burns through the thickest glaciated ice: “And so it began, the talking was like a switch that turned on in Beth’s soul, and after that she never let up.”
I saw butterflies outside.
Not Dada, Poppa or any other such nonsense. My Beth, their Beth, was engaged in the world about her from the very beginning. Experience was the essence of living, part of her being from her earliest times on this rock. Wow. By way of comparison, I’m sure I wailed mournfully at birth and probably said little more than Mamma in the beginning. But, again, this part isn’t about me.
Now, lest you assume otherwise, I’m not trying to impart the image that the clouds parted, rays of celestially divine sunlight bathed her, and angels and cherubs sang for Beth. Not at all. By normal conventions, there were standard issues of childhood and adolescence including bed wetting, tantrums, scabby knees, power struggles, and whatnot. Rather, Beth possessed from the earliest a keen insight into how the very act of living affected others, and she attempted to act upon it in order to improve the conditions of those within her sphere of influence.
Her mother told me that around the age of three, Beth asked her rather solemnly one night as she lay down to bed “Mommy, if I have Teddy, who do the bears have to keep them warm at night?” Cute, quaint and all that, I know. Still, when you magnify that over the course of her life, such that it was, that degree of empathy and sentiment echoed in that one tiny question became a blueprint for a soul that was most at home when engaged with others, seeking to share her power with theirs, particularly when they, whoever “they” were, needed it.
Some of us muddle through life in a semi-catatonic state of semi-lucid engagement and/or higher degrees of self-absorption. We shuffle along in life barely engaged within the context of realization of ourselves, yet alone those around us. Beth? Nope. Who do the teddy bears have as teddy bears? That about sums it up, but the catalyst or seminal event that defined her will be told shortly.
On a humorous side note, there was apparently a development with the introduction of her adult set of teeth that beset upon her a lisp as she stood upon the threshold of puberty. Already a head taller than the other kids, her father still laughingly insists that Beth entered a brief period of chrysalis awkwardness. “It lasted less than a year. She lisped her s’es, and she briefly seemed to be all elbows and kneecaps, toe head notwithstanding. Then, Josh, one morning she staggered into the kitchen for breakfast, and there were boobs on her chest (I tend to blush on her behalf when he tells this part of the story), her legs were shaped like a woman’s and her lisp had given way from something akin to Cindy Brady into something that you’d, uhm, well, hear on late night cable television.
“I remember staring at her slack-jawed, wondering how this barely pre-teen had shed her cocoon seemingly overnight when, all of the sudden, this stunningly beautiful blonde looked out the bay window over the sink while grabbing my arm: ‘Look, Daddy, there are butterflies outside this morning.’
“Butterflies indeed.”
He was long over tearing up at that story, in stead remembering things as they were that day with obvious warm fondness. His voice trailed off, lost deep in thought and memories with a faint, dreamy smile on his face. I can never muster such resolve, however, and even now as I type this I feel a lump in spite of the strength she provides...
Butterflies indeed.
That children grow up all too fast while their parents lag behind is a reality of life, I’m certain. I had so hoped to experience that with her. Still, there was something indefinable in Beth’s nature from her earliest that hinted at an old soul, already rich with experiences and wisdom far beyond her years.
“When she was eight,” her mother told me once, “Beth was very late returning from playing in the neighborhood one afternoon. Needless to say I was a nervous wreck and was all but demanding that we call the FBI, the Coast Guard and Interpol to begin an immediate search.
“While her father and I tried to hold ourselves together, the front door opened, and Little Blondie walked in carrying a box that seemed twice her size.
“I ran to her, crying and beset with anger only to be shushed away by Beth with this truly remarkable seriousness. I was too instantly taken back to realize that the box had three small puppies in it. Beth was imploring me in a lispy whisper to be quiet, lest I wake them. I stood there incredulously, not quite knowing what to do, so I knelt down to ask what had happened.
“She gingerly set the box down and took my hand, her little ones trembling as she obviously worked for all she was worth to keep from crying.”
“I found them,” Beth said, seeming so very small at that moment, her mother said. “There were two others, but Momma, they were dead.” Her little chest was heaving but even still she was trying to be brave, looking down at the small, snoring puppies. “They were in the dirt field behind Mr. Nakamura’s house. I dug a small hole and put them in there, but these three were still breathing, so I went to Mr. Nakamura and asked him for a box.” (Note, I doubt she even bothered to tell the kind old neighbor what she wanted the box for, yet he gave it to the block’s Little Blondie. She was known for asking neighbors for odd things, never for herself, and, thus, the neighborhood knew to indulge her requests.)
“I put them in the box and slowly walked home. Momma, their eyes aren’t open yet, and they cry a lot. They’re scared and cold and hungry.”
Her mother paused, a tear streaming down her cheek as she relayed the story, years, mind you, Before. “Momma, I don’t know where their mommy is, I couldn’t find her. I looked and looked and looked. They were crying, and I had to stop looking, Momma. I knew I needed to bring them home. I couldn’t find their mommy.”
This is the point where the resolve of an old soul apparently broke down and a small girl began to cry, still holding her mother’s hand tightly but looking with such sorrow at the small pups as to break even the most stoic heart.
“I couldn’t find their mommy and the other two were dead. I took the box and walked home, Momma. I couldn’t find their mommy….” She broke down into quiet hysterics, by now clutching tightly to her mother’s neck and sobbing into her hair.
Again, how many eight year olds do things like that? Get a box from a neighbor, burry the dead puppies, ensure the remaining ones’ safety and then look for what must have been several hours for the mother dog, presumably dead—that much you and I and Beth’s mother could easily figure out, but Beth’s eight year old mind only knew that they little puppies needed their mother, and she was determined to find her. Only she didn’t.
Again, an off track aside. I remember hearing this story for the first time, the weight of young Beth’s actions sinking in but the outcome nonetheless hanging in the air above our heads while Beth’s mom trailed off, lost in the flood of memories.
“What? What happened?” I asked breathlessly, also clutching her mom’s hand as if equally young and in terrible need of adult reassurance.
“Oh, that!” Mrs. Johannsen laughed, suddenly breaking the breathless stillness. “Well, poor little Bethy cried so quietly—she was afraid to wake the puppies—but we managed to call the ASPCA. Unfortunately, they told me a female yellow lab mix was found several blocks away, hit by a car. I didn’t tell Beth that part. In stead, her father and I assured her that the ASPCA would continue to search for the mommy. In the meantime, we took Beth and the pups to the local vet, who pronounced them healthy and gave us explicit instructions about caring for three week old puppies.” She trailed off again while she sipped at a steaming mug of chamomile tea and stared at, apropos to Everything, butterflies in her purple trumpet vines outside.
I sat breathlessly again. “And?”
“And.”
“Ohmygosh, tell me what happened for the love of pete!?”
She laughed and mussed my hair, what little the Navy allowed me to have. “You are cute, Josh. I see what she sees in you.”
Dare I say I needed closure? Do Naval Aviators need such nonsense? When puppies and the loves of their misbegotten lives are at stake, you betcha they do. “What-happened-to-the-puppies?”
She threw her head back laughing, her sandy brown hair swaying gently while she patted my hands in hers. “Oh, you are too much, Joshy. We nursed all three back to health and adopted out two of them when they were eight weeks old.”
“You kept one?”
“Yes, a little girl that Beth named Butterfly.”
“Oh,” I said with a knowing pause, “naturally.”
“She was with us—mainly Beth—until her final year in high school. Butterfly loved that girl fiercely and slept with her every night.”
“Dogs are like that. Dog is God spelled backwards for a reason,” I said.
She hesitated with a smile on her face while my observation sunk in. “Indeed. That’s such a sweet thought, Josh. You are a sweetie; she’s right.”
“I am not. Aviators are not sweet,” I said with mock indignation.
“What then, what are you? Oh, here, have another cookie….”
“Fierce?” I slurred my soft ‘c’ due to a mouthful of oatmeal chocolate chip.
“Riiiight, fierce, then. Here, have some milk. Anyhow, Butterfly got very sick when Beth was 17, and we had to put her down. It was a horrid experience, but she was so strong on behalf of that dog. My gosh, we took Butterfly to the vet that last morning and Beth actually rocked and sang to her while the doctor administered the shot.”
I said nothing, staring slackjawed with a mouthful of cookie. I didn’t have pets growing up, but the image of that event was clear as day in my mind’s eye.
“Sweetie? You’re gonna drool on yourself, and that’s hardly a way for a fierce aviator to behave.”

Sigh. You know, I could go on and on about that conversation. But I won’t. Suffice it that I learned more about my wife-to-be that afternoon than I could have anticipated, all the while falling more in love with her as each parent shared a story with me. Somewhere years ago I read some poem about something called the Rainbow Bridge where all dogs wait in heaven for their humans to arrive. Butterfly met Beth there, that much I’m sure, and that provides profound comfort such that I can hardly articulate.
On an afternoon in the late 1980s, when Beth was an aspiring but still as of yet undecided undergraduate in college, Beth was driving along Interstate 5 in San Diego, heading north to her Cardiff-by-the-Sea apartment presumably after a long day of classes and studying. She witnessed a fender bender not far in front of her and pulled over to provide assistance. Whereas these events are every day occurrences in Southern California’s meandering Interstate system, it is nonetheless rare when a witness pulls over to render and/or offer assistance. Then again, Beth was rare in and of herself.
The person who was hit from behind was an elderly lady, and Beth initially went to offer assistance to the lady, only to be met by a stream of obscenities. Beth calmed her down, assuring the lady that she was a witness and was there to offer her testimony once the Highway Patrol arrived. The old lady calmed and thanked Beth, but continued to make rude remarks about the man who had hit her from behind. It was then that Beth turned her attention to the car behind. Something didn’t look right, and Beth felt the compelling need to walk over.
So she did. Once beside the driver’s window, she saw a young man, possibly in his early 30s, shaking and twitching without control but with a steady pattern that seemed far stranger than what little Beth knew of Parkinson’s, much less inebriation.
“I’m. I’m. I’m not drunk,” the man said, shakily handing a card to Beth through his open window, tears welling in his eyes.
Beth took the card and read: Hello. My name is Stephen Blankenship, and I have Huntington’s Disease. I am not drunk. Huntington’s is a progressive neurological disease that affects movement, speech and cognitive ability. If I’ve given you this card, please alert medical responders and call the San Diego Chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America at (800) 473-4014. Thank you.
She looked down at Stephen and saw that he was quietly, patiently crying even as the twitching increased in intensity. The suffering of his soul, his adult sense of self was palpable. Beth placed her hand under his chin and brushed his tears away.
“Are you alright, Stephen?” she asked.
“I’m n-n-n-n-ot drunk,” he said, unable to look up at her while he cried. “I d-d-d-d-din’t hit her on purpose.”
“I know, Stephen, I know. It’s alright. My name is Beth, and I’m a biology student, and I know a little bit about HD. I’ll show the police your card and explain things.” Beth wasn’t, you know, at least not before that one seminal moment. In that moment, though, she experienced something particularly rare in our world of disaffected disinterest; she found her calling. Stephen, she told me years and years later, was a good looking man, one whom she figured was in the prime of his life when this horrid affliction made its presence known to him. His shame, his pain cut her to the quick, and in those moments before the police arrived, Beth heard and heeded her calling. “You’re going to be okay, Stephen. I’m with you.”
“Th-th-th-thank you. I won’t get to drive any m-m-more,” he said as the tears stopped even when the tremors did not. “I’m not independent any m-m-more.”
“Look, Stephen,” said later told me she said, wanting nothing more than to ease his anguish even as she was then unable to ease his suffering. “The wildflowers beside the road. There are butterflies. They’re lovely, Stephen. I want to you look at them, and I’ll tell you about their genus and species while we wait for the police and Huntington’s Society. I’m not leaving.”

Butterflies indeed. Neither she nor obviously I know what became of Stephen Blankenship. I have to assume with sadness that he left us years ago, and I hope that Butterfly was able to greet him to, wherever/whatever happens After. But, in that event, Beth took her life’s direction and focused it into something keenly unique. Within four more semesters, she had finished her undergraduate studies in molecular biology, carrying 24-27 credit hours. Her focus was laser sharp and defined with a sense of urgency punctuated only by sport climbing, cycling and volunteering at HDSA events in San Diego. The rest of her career I’ve either told you about or soon will. For now, I hope you understand a little more of her soul, and her sublime ability and, perhaps more importantly, willingness to engage with the world around her.
Beth stayed active with HDSA long after she met me, and, yet again, taught me to give of myself to others in need in order to learn more about myself. She was eventually voted the chapter sponsorship director and continued her affiliation until she, well, until she went to be with her dog. And, I suppose, Stephen Blankenship, who I hope greeted her with a smile and a big margarita.
For once I can say this, to tell this with warmth and light rather than cold smoke and dragon’s breath. Why? Beth. It’s really that simple.
Butterflies indeed.