Riptide

Riptide

by

R.L. Jones

Zuma Beach, California. Some of the best surfing in South Cali.

I nearly drowned here once. Years ago, when we were only dumb kids.

They hunkered in the sand on the beach: Fielder, Rodney, his younger brother Scabs.

I didn’t like crowds. Crowds made me nervous. Three is a crowd. I got up and faded into the roar of the waves. No one noticed.

Wading in, I lost myself to the frigid water rushing around my torso. Transfixed by the brooding purple horizon, I forgot myself. The surf ran rough, bracingly cold. Then it happened. The sand beneath me vanished, stolen by the undertow.

The world slipped away. Churning through icy bubbles, gagging on seawater, disoriented, my body flailed, twisted, and was thrust up and out of the water into a foamy valley between massive waves. Stunned. I couldn’t see land. Water rose slowly, buoying me above the waves. The beach. The sun. They appeared, vague figures, hunched and oblivious on the distant beach. So far away. So quickly. Thrashing, arms waving, I screamed, swallowing again.

Gurgling into depths. Dim sunlight shimmered, receded. Swirling downward in the jade current, struggling, burning, heaving. Darkness growing darker. Salty brine filled me. Is this going to be it? Stupid. Fucking stupid. Fuck.

Then the surge. I shot out up and out, belching seawater. Lungs on fire. Waves gobbled me up as fast as they had regurgitated me. Choking, choking, choking. Darkness. Fear. Blackness. Peace. Gone.

Then, hands clutched me. Light splintered my skull. Vomit rushed, burning my throat.

I lay wrestling in the sand, felt his lips on mine, breathing into me. Coughing seawater as faces loomed out of the blur over me.

“Didn’t you see the fucking red flag?” a man screamed.

I mumbled, incoherent. Fielder’s face came into view, worried, wet, flushed red with adrenaline.

“Red flags. Riptide.” The lifeguard glared.

I turned thirteen. Fielder turned fourteen.

I had met him in seventh grade, an awkward new kid from Bakersfield. Weird. New school, new town. Big city, Tarzana. Terror. Where do I go?

I stood in the bleach-stinky lobby, wondering where Building 11B might be. He zoomed past on a skateboard—shorts, Hawaiian shirt, Dodgers cap flipped backward. Tossing that look back as he skidded to a stop.

“Where you headed?”

“Spanish.”

“¿Señor Campos? Follow me. I’m Fielder.”

“Rupert.”

Fielder scrunched a face of doubt. “Bud,” he said, “you look like a Bud.”

Bud stuck. Fielder stuck. I made myself into a mirror of him, studying his easy style.

My crew cut grew into a mop. My Keds became checkered Vans. When he started surfing, I followed—the quieter, darker version, the shadow trailing him.

I was fourteen when my dad died. Electrocuted. A freak accident at work. He vanished instantly out of our life and into thin air. The shock rattled me.

Fielder sat with me on the back porch while I cried.

His sixteenth birthday. Fielder got the old Bronco. We drove to the beach blasting “Bicycle, Bicycle, I Want to Ride My Bicycle.”

A fraying rip in his jeans revealed the muscles of his thigh, his tan flesh, and the short tawny hairs flickering in the light.

On the beach, he stepped out of his jeans, standing brazen and careless in stark white jockey shorts while wriggling into his wetsuit. My furtive eyes traced the sweep of his hair, his chest, his arms, the impression of his sex beneath his skivvies.

Fielder glanced up. Saw me staring, gusted laughter. That look—a bemused expression. I recoiled, guilty, panicked.

“Surf’s up.”

Later, we ate sandwiches in the sand, sharing a Gatorade. Fielder fished out half a joint, squinting as he lit it.

“You ever had sex with a guy?”

I coughed out smoke and shook my head. “No!” Panic, lost in the emotional swell of being seen.

“No biggie,” he shrugged.

We sat in silence for a long time.

Finally, he said quietly, “I wouldn’t judge you.”

I didn’t look at him. My face prickled.

“You know,” Fielder began, pausing until I had the nerve to glance his way. “I have.”

My brain sizzled, stunted, and stunned by the weed and panic. A wave crashed. I got up and walked into the surf.

It hung in the air between us the rest of the afternoon, itchy and abrasive like the sand. We surfed, changed, and drove back in tired, awkward silence.

At his house, we played Atari in the basement. His parents called goodnight. We snuck out back to smoke more weed.

“Wanna stay over?” He peeled off his t-shirt as he turned off the lights. The fish tank cast blue shadows.

“Sure.” My mouth felt dry.

My eyes trailed as he sauntered to his bed. He unbuckled his belt, leaning to switch on the black light. The V of his back, the knotted line of his spine, turned purple as the band of white skivvies glowed above his drooping jeans. His eyes, strange and luminous, caught mine again, watching. I looked away.

Pink Floyd murmured on the stereo. I kicked off my sneakers. The room glowed lilac and fuzzy with dust sparkling like a dazzling cosmos snared inside the black light. He pulled off his jeans and then sat on the sofa. His briefs glowed against his blue-violet flesh. I staggered out of my shorts and sat beside him.

“We’re like Bros,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

Fielder leaned over, groping in the pocket of his jeans. In his hand was his pocketknife. He coaxed the blade out.

“Blood brothers,” he said. “Let’s make it official.”

I nodded, transfixed by the sparkle of the blade and his breathing.

He knelt on the floor, nodding for me to follow. I knelt beside him, our knees touching.

“Blood brothers.” He tugged my t-shirt over my head. Goose bumps sprouted. He handed me the knife, nodding to the meat of his shoulder. “Cut me there. Put an X, then I’ll cut you.”

I stared at him. His face hung close. The peach fuzz on his jawline glittering eerily. I lifted the knife and held his arm, pulsing under my touch. I put the tip to his muscle and let it slice the skin.

He grimaced, urging me on, “Deeper.”

I carved an X. Blood trickled.

“You okay?”

I nodded. Fielder raised the blade, gazing at my shoulder as he carved his mark. He wasn’t as gentle or as tentative as I was. I winced. He pulled me close, rubbing his shoulder into mine. A sticky syrup of blood smeared between us. I imagined his blood pulsing in my veins and marveled at the excitement in my body.

His head fell against mine. Our shoulders squirmed together, slick. My breath shuddered. He grabbed my neck and brought my face closer. My lips parted. He kissed me.

Then his hands and mouth were on me. I was swallowed in his riptide.

Afterward, dazzled stupid, I lay there waiting for what might happen, what might be said.

Nothing was said. The riptide came and went with the tides, at his whim.

We became buddies. I wanted him to myself, but girls hung around, like gnats. One day, two appeared at the convenience store. I bristled. Fielder bought snacks and rolling papers, charmed them by paying for their sodas.

At the beach, we settled between dunes. The blonde tossed a magazine she’d stolen on the ground for Fielder to roll a joint on. Playgirl. The pages fluttered, flashing hairy bodies and dicks. My skin turned white-hot. Fielder guffawed, thumbing through it with a snicker.

“Why don’t we fuck?” I dared.

“Sure,” they said, calling my bluff.

The blonde laughed, taking my hand and pulling me down. She planted my palm on her breast. I felt nothing but panic.

The mousy one led Fielder up the concrete steps to the privacy of the dune grass above.

The blonde leered at me, curious. She pulled me down onto her and guided my hand into her pants, huffing Hubba Bubba in my face. I pretended passion. Above us, I heard the mousy one groan, Fielder’s low calls. I spied them in the grass—she bent forward, Fielder behind her, his face twisted as he hammered away at her. My fingers moved mechanically, not a note of excitement registering in my coils. Nothing like what I felt with Fielder. I was astonished at his grunting heat with the mousy one. What did he feel that I didn’t?

“It’s okay, I get it.” The blonde muttered. When it all fizzled, she looked at me gently.

Her knowing look boiled me alive. She gathered her things and wandered away down the beach. I waited.

Fielder and the girl finally came down; she hanging on his arm, her face flushed. I wondered if he saw it on my face—my hurt.

“Good for you, too?” I tried to be funny but heard the acid in my words.

For a while, it got complicated. The mousy girl—Nona—and I became reluctant friends.

Then we both became Fielder’s lovers.

It was good. She was sweet. I was sweet, according to them. It was great. It was fun, and a little wild fucking on the beach, rolling in the Bronco, tripping in his basement with Nona between us. It was grand, until it wasn’t, until everyone got mad over what I can’t remember. Something stupid. Something teenage. Something silly.

Christmas came. Nona went away with her family. I found myself alone. Fielder called a few days before New Year’s.

“T’sup?” he said.

“Not much, missed you.”

“Beach tomorrow? Killer swell.”

“Storm’s coming.”

“Surf will be awesome.”

The sky glowered blue violet at dawn. Great purple waves unfurled like thundering water beasts. We shivered in the Bronco. I watched him pull his wetsuit over his gooseflesh. Wind gusted, rocking the Bronco. He caught me looking and laughed.

“Missed you, weirdo.”

“Missed you, too.” It wasn’t enough. I wanted to touch. He would be seventeen soon, becoming a man, changing subtly in front of my eyes.

He hurried toward the water. I followed, watching his body move. The spray ran fierce, stinging my face. The beach lay desolate save for Fielder striding toward the churning surf.

Then he vanished, diving into the icy water, paddling away. I hurried after him, chilled and out of shape. I felt the power of the swell beneath me and flashed back to that day in the undertow. Panic. I wanted to turn back, but we’d gone too far.

The swell rose. I caught a glimpse of Fielder paddling far ahead, skimming the surf, then standing to ride it. I teetered up on my board. For a brief moment, I balanced on the edge of the world—an eternal black sea stretching left, the California coastline sprawling right. Fielder went up, up, up, then slipped out of sight as the wave crashed down. The roaring terrified me. He seemed so small against the sea.

Rain stung my face. Wind gusted. I struggled to stay upright, saw Fielder gliding over the crest, then he disappeared into the tube. My feet slipped. I teetered into the churning waves, felt myself whipped around, and tumbled deeper. The roar drowned out everything. Then the wave belched me out. I gasped, hit the sand, and tumbled over as the wave receded.

I lay there panting, staring at purple scraps of clouds.

Fielder padded up the beach, cackling. “Dude, that swell was crazy!” He reached for my hand, pulled me upright, hugged me close. I felt him then, hard, and hot and close, breath heaving, pulse ticking the rhythm of his fired-up body.

Far out at sea, a white-capped mountain of a wave slowly rose from the depths. All the waves on the shoreline withdrew under its shadow. Fielder stared.

“Holy shit.” He hurried toward his board.

I stared at the mammoth crest looming toward the coastline, shook my head when he called back for me to follow. The wind and rain swallowed his words. I gathered my board, dragged it up the beach, and collapsed.

I knew we shouldn’t be there—not on a storm day, not with red flags waving. But Fielder always thought himself smarter than the waves. I watched him treading up the slope of the ascending crest, my fear mounting.

My heart thrashed as I squinted to track him paddling up, up, up. He struggled to stand, went back down, then finally stood unsteady but upright. He seemed a mile up against the knife edge of the wave, somewhere between heaven and earth. It paused, then broke beneath him, rolling swiftly toward the shoreline in an angry frothing boil. As it tumbled down, I lost sight of him.

He vanished. I waited, stepped toward the beach as the wave rumbled in. Foam rushed at me. I scanned the beach, frantic, disbelieving. Nothing. No sign of him. I ran, squinting against rain, searching the horizon.

He was gone. Vanished into the riptide.

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