Son: Surfing, 8-27-08

HA! I totally wrote this in English class today.

--------

The beach.

He was leaning back against his board, his feet buried in the sand his his knees drawn up to his chest. The sun was going down, and the silence of human noise -- this moment was shared mostly by lovers and romantics and the lonely hearted -- was punctuated only occasionally by the sounds of an incidental tourists' child or passing cars. Paradisio.

He stroked his surf board lying behind him. It was a relatively new skill he had acquired but found easy. He liked guiding the board across the wave, carefully balancing the forces of the water against gravity, constantly in danger of falling over and introducing his head to one of the many rocks that dotted the coastline.

It fit his personality.

"Margarita, baby?" asked his beautiful Samoan woman -- Keku -- as she stepped over the mini-sand dunes caused by foot traffic and wind. Full hips, large breasts, soft skin, and dialectic English that he found engorging.

They had met on a business trips. He been slumming it one evening -- drab Hawaiian shirt and shorts in a dirty local bar, complete with palm frond ceilings and a 300-lbs Pacific Island bartender. The drinks had been cheap and the lies had come easily.

He was looking to move here, he told people. He didn't work, the yarn went, and he was seeking the sort of personal greatness only the Bohemian crowd around him at the bar that night would appreciate. He was a star, and left with the promise of a job and with Keku on his arm.

That was nine months ago, when he had made $100,000+ a year, had a quaint house in the suburbs of a big city, drove a nice car, had a beautiful wife, and was awaiting twins. He was climbing the corporate structure. But he knew that his past was beginning to catch up with him, and when he got here, he knew it was time and the balancing act at "home" had become too treacherous. So, he left paradise for the suburbs, and immediately set about a plan to fake his own death.

A motorcycle accident. Over 50 people had been killed or seriously injured. His body was missing, and he was listed as "presumed dead." He had watched his own funeral from across the street, and he saw the cops there. They had caught wind, suspicious of who the dead man was and trying desperately to connect him.

But, like so many before, the local cops dropped it as "it doesn't matter, he's dead now." Always so easy, just don't get the FBI involved.

This was the third identity he had taken on; he wondered sometimes what happened to the handful of kids he had fathered and left behind. It was that first one -- Anna -- whom he had loved so much and whose unabashed adoration for him had so embarrassed and scared him, and shamed him into feeling his own humanity -- that made him run. She would be eight now.

Keku's belly was growing, and the questions had begun. He felt the past coming upon him.

The plan would be easier than ever, than any time before. He had been idly working out the details while she walked up and offered him a drink. "Sure thing, darling," he had affected a West Coast accent here. He didn't remember what his original voice sounded like.

She reclined back on the board, she was not skinny by American standards, and her stomach had begun the pooch of a pregnant woman. He ran a single finger across her stomach and down her legs.

"I love you," she said.

He grunted. This was the hard moment, when he realized, too, that he loved her and would have to give this us. "They say hurricane season will be rough this year -- good waves, starting any day now."

"We'll invite my sister and her kids -- you can show them how to surf. They just adore you."

He signed and laid his head down on ehr stomach, ear down as if listening. She entwined her fingers into his hair affectionately. For a moment, he was comfortable, and he thought, here, here at last he would stay, and screw whatever may come. He wanted so bad, then, to just be here for ever here in paradisio.

"Papa," she whispered, dreamily.

Or not.

----
I had problems with writing this one, so I thought I'd share the list of "free association" words I wrote down while I tried to brainstorm ideas: Surfing. Channel surfing. Television. Couch potato. Starches. Carbohydrates. Fat. Obesity. Diabetes. Loss of Feet. Foot-less. Footloose. What a feeling. 1980s. Bad hair. One-sie. Bikini. Minnie Driver is Preggers. OBGYN. Planned Parenthood.

Just so you see where the idea came from. :-) Literally, this is the sixth or seventh attempt at writing this; the rest were blah. Interestingly enough, I even went on Urban Dictionary and tried for two definitions they have there for Surf: 1) Stuck-Up, Rich F*ck; and 2) vomiting out a window of a moving car while drunk.

Neither of them did much for me.