Archived Memories – Love and Rockets and Vonnegut

I wish it was this beach.

1989.  I had just turned seventeen and I actually had a high school girlfriend.  This was one of the good calendar years of my life.  I had friends, some fun, some hope, and a genuinely decent hold on my anxiety and depression, even though I didn’t know they would be the two anchors slung around my neck for the rest of my life.

I lived in Orlando with my brother and my single mom, who had a pretty bad 1980’s.  We didn’t have much, but she worked a lot.  If I remember correctly, she gave herself a birthday gift of a week at a beach hotel.  My best guess is that it was New Smyrna on the Atlantic coast of Florida.  She wanted a week at the beach with her boys.  However, we were teenagers and had other shit we wanted to do.  But it was a big deal for mom to get away, so we went.  I didn’t like being away from my girlfriend, but a vacation was so rare that I was a little excited to simply just get away from our apartment.

I have a pretty good memory. Even so, I don’t remember much at all about that week.  Not the hotel, the actual beach, any adventures or conversations, any interesting meals.  Not much at all.  I do remember the Love and Rockets single ‘I’m Alive’ was on the radio every twenty minutes or so.  That is the song that takes me back to this important, albeit foggy memory.

One reason is, I hate the fucking beach.  The entire 1980’s was at the beach for us, and by the time I hit twelve years old I knew I hated it.  We went to Daytona Beach weekend after weekend when my parents were together.  My father loved the beach. He would park the car in the sand on a beach with no fees and simply sit and bake. He loved sitting in the sun with coconut lotion, drinking beers out of coozies or emptied-out Pepsi cans because alcohol on the beach was illegal.  My mom loved the sun, too.  We would stay all day.  From nine in the morning until dinnertime.  I was ready to go home around 10:30. We had to occupy ourselves with the ocean or whatever toys we brought from home.  I hated the sunburns and skin peeling, the sand in my crotch, and everything about being hot. My fondest beach memory is digging a hole deep enough for me to stand in, climbing down, and pulling a towel over the top. Anything for shade.  Anything to cool off.

 But, this was a hotel on the beach.  A reprieve.  Air conditioning and a break from the oppressive Florida summer sun. I knew I wasn’t interested in the beach by 1989.  However, before we left, I did make a stop to a Waldenbooks in the mall and pick up two paperback books to read.  On The Road by Jack Kerouac and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.

You can probably see where this is going.

Yeah, these were landmark books in my life, in millions of people’s lives. That’s true.  But what is significant here is that they were American, digestible, and I read them at just the perfect age. I learned that I liked to read.  I liked to be indoors, devouring a story and thinking about all kinds of possibilities and ideas and the loves of others.  And, even though it took me lifetime to confess, I liked doing that so much more than lying on a fucking beach. More than most things, really. 

You have your thing.  I have mine.

This didn’t get me started writing right away.  I wish it had.  I was journaling and messing around, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  But I did start going to the library more.  Even when I was scraping through community college, I read novels from the library in between classes. Sometimes instead of going to class, which was pretty stupid.

            I truly do not remember much about that trip.  I’m sure we relaxed, and my mother got a nice break.  But I remember those books. 

            And, I still have the same two copies.