A 52-Hertz Whale (13 page)

Hey there James,

Christmas was weird. My sis and her family weren't there, and my parents moved to West Palm Beach after I graduated because my dad got a job coaching there. He says Florida's a “hotbed for football.” It's definitely hot. I like 75 degree weather as much as the next guy, but it's a little creepy on Christmas.

My dad got all his questions out of the way the first night about what I was going to do with myself since I'm not working at Testy Snobbin. While I was getting grilled, my mom jumped in with a question about what my dad was doing at twenty-three, and after much hemming, hawing, and listing of mitigating factors—mainly that he'd lived at home and had a part-time job while he was in college, and hence his schooling had cost his folks closer to 8 Gs than 80—he acknowledged that on his first Christmas after college graduation he'd just gotten home from a “summer” of backpacking in Europe that had lasted until December. This exchange followed:

“But I was working the last two months I was there,” he said.

“Doing what?” she said.

“Being an English-language tour guide in Rome.”

“And you just quit?” I said.

“I didn't major in tour guiding!”

“You didn't major in football coaching either,” I said.

“Blah blah blargh blargety bleat spriggety 80 thousand dollars!” (Approximate translation.)

This was mellower than he used to be, though. When I was in high school and college, he basically parented me like a football coach: lots of yelling when he was mad, lots of motivational speeches (it was halftime probably twice a week at our house), and high fives when I aced a test. I'm surprised he didn't throw in a butt-smack every now and again, but luckily I never wore football pants.

After that first night, though, we had a good time. There was, of course, football to watch, and I like watching it with my dad. He's in his element. After a lot of plays he leans back, puts his hands behind his head, and says, “You see what happened there?” I usually respond by saying something cheeky like, “Yes. The man threw a ball to the other man while some other men crashed into each other.” He just ignores me and goes into this really detailed explanation of the play and why it worked or failed. It's like listening to my favorite film professor from school talk about a scene. He's so deep inside it all. But that's nothing compared to when he's actually coaching. When his players perfectly execute a play that he designed, I think that's about the happiest he can be. I hope one day to have a job that excites me that much and that I can get that deep inside of. The closest I think I've ever gotten was when I was editing my senior film project. It was a six-minute short my buddy wrote about a guy hanging out at his apartment by himself. It was exactly as boring as it sounds, but when I was trying to edit it, I'd be sifting through the takes, trying to arrange them into a story that actually made sense and said something about this guy's life, and I'd look up and see that three hours had passed in what felt like twenty minutes.

On this trip home, though, all I've been able to focus on was the one thing I need to not be focusing on: Corinne. I was doing good. I really was. But I'm pretty bored because I don't have any friends here. So I was sitting around, and because I'm an idiot, I was streaming KCRW, my favorite indie radio station from back in LA, and wouldn't you know it, they play an interview with the Tipsy Gypsies. “Who?” you ask. Corinne's band, that's who! Argh! Anyway, she was charming as usual. Here's a part of the transcript that I may or may not have made myself.

KCRW:
So, Corinne. I can't help but notice, there's something, I don't know, different about you compared to the rest of the band.

Corinne:
You're correct. Not many people notice right off that I'm the kind of person who wins in poker and all the rest of these poor things are the kind who don't.

Steven Jetton:
We just feel sorry for you on account of you having to haul that bass around all the time.

Corinne:
Well, I appreciate the sympathy. But I never take it easy on him, even when the Civil War flashbacks are messing with his sleep.

(howling laughter from the band)

KPST:
I didn't know the age difference was that extreme, but at 22, you are considerably younger than the rest of the band. How did you meet these guys?

Corinne:
Well, I'd been a fan of Steve and Emily and Bobby's playing since I was a little girl. I grew up in Oakland, but my parents were teachers and loved to travel around to bluegrass festivals all summer. So I saw all these guys play a hundred times before I ever played with them. Eventually I started bringing my bass with me on the trips. We all jammed together at a festival up outside of San Luis Obispo when I was eighteen, and they haven't been able to get rid of me since.

I know I've talked a lot about Corinne but haven't mentioned many of the particulars of the breakup. And that's mostly because I still hadn't been quite able to make sense of it myself. But hearing that interview drudged up a lot of memories, and now some of it's becoming clear. I've been sifting through the footage, trying to make sense of it. Reading that interview, I realized that I was so jealous of all the attention she got because she's such a rare creature—a beautiful, sharp-tongued, bass-playing semi-hippie in the land of plastic surgery and gourmet restaurants for dogs—that I got totally paranoid and tried to go to every gig she had because I was sure that if I didn't, she'd meet her male equivalent, some banjo player with six-pack abs and a Harvard degree to fall back on, and leave me in a second. I basically did the Gollum from
Lord of the Rings
“My precious!” thing, only with a person instead of a ring. Eventually, the (in hindsight) utterly predictable process played out: paranoia, smothering, getting dumped.

In a moment of weakness the other night, I logged onto the Book of Faces and memorized every pixel of every picture of her and her new boyfriend and had the following realization: Crap, he's not even new anymore. Been almost a year.

All right, back to the Internetwork to search for gainful employment (and not look at the Book of Faces. So. Hard. Not to. Though.).

DarrenSearchOfJob

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: January 17, 2013 at 11:21 PM
Subject: RE: Holiday In

Dear D-bomb:

I've been thinking about your email and the Facebook stuff with Corinne. Why hasn't she unfriended you? Maybe that's a good sign?

Sincerely,

Jam-in'

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: January 25, 2013 at 7:21 PM
Subject: Workin' it

Eh. I doubt it. I'm pretty sure she's either just being polite or she actually wouldn't mind being my friend. I'm not sure which is worse. I imagine that the Friend Zone with Corinne would be pretty unbearable since I used to occupy the More-Than-a-Friend Zone. If I were some sort of emotional Superman, I could maybe stand it, but alas, I'm not.

But I have some good news to report. I got a J-O-B! I was really close to becoming an insurance man with Luke, but then I stumbled across an ad for an after-school program job at this middle school in town. I started thinking about the time I spent volunteering at your school, and then I started thinking about how cool it's been getting to know you recently, so I applied. I got the job, and I have you to thank. So thanks!

I work with sixth and seventh graders, much less mature than old men such as yourself. It's hard to believe a fart could have brought me such a mixture of glee, pride, hilarity, embarrassment, and general big-deal-ness as it does the boys here, but I suppose it did. The girls ain't perfect either, but their ridiculousness tends to come out in slightly less ridiculous ways, if that makes any sense. You'd like the teacher I work with. She doesn't take any crap, that's for sure. I can be doing everything I can to get them to be quiet and it's like I'm not even in the room, and she can say two words and give them this crazy death-scowl and they hush up in a millisecond. Impressive. I've gotta work on that death scowl. Anyway, it's good to have a little income coming in, and I don't have to get coffee for people or get sore shoulders holding a boom mic over my head for hours.

It's a tiring gig, though, for sure. I'm WIPED when I get home. But I'm still carving out time to watch docs and cast about for what would be a great subject for one. I have a notebook full of ideas, but none of them are quite singing to me yet.

Keep it breezy,

Darren aka Mr. Olmstead

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: January 27, 2013 at 3:40 PM
Subject: RE: Workin' It

Dear Mr. Olmstead,

Things have been nuts here. I heard that someone (read: Coxson) started a Facebook page in my name (“Whale Boy”) as a joke—complete with a picture of me at Smith's in the yeti costume and a doctored version of my school photo where I have a blowhole on the top of my head and baleen teeth. I can't confirm any of this as I am not on Facebook because I've never cared to waste time reading about who is “in a relationship” or what music people “like.” I'm pretty sure that the Facebook page with my name was started as a joke and the goal was to make sure that I had ZERO friends.

I guess that kind of backfired because my page has gone viral (at least according to this kid in my Advanced Calc class) and now I have something like 1,000 “friends.” At school, it's like I'm a celebrity—fist bumps, high fives, even the occasional butt smack. Any other kid would be in his glory. But I wish I could just float through the hall like plankton. Like before.

Sincerely,

Average James

FEBRUARY 2013

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 1, 2013 at 8:20 AM
Subject: Wax Floors

Hi Peter,

Is it ok if I wax the floors in your office since you're out of town? How's FL?

—Stanley P. Duckett

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 1, 2013 at 8:21 AM
Subject: Out of the Office

Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office until 2/6/13 and I will have infrequent access to email. For immediate help, please contact Steven Kauffman at [email protected]. I look forward to speaking with you upon my return.

Best,

Peter

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 1, 2013 at 9:31 AM
Subject: RE: Wax Floors

Dear Stanley,

You might want to hold off on waxing the floors. I might be back sooner than I thought. I was supposed to meet my sister last night at a local crab shack for dinner. In my backpack, I had a gift-wrapped vegan cookbook and a bracelet inscribed with: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” The bracelet was silver—which always looked so good against Elsie's pale skin—and the woman in the store told me that the inscription was part of a serenity prayer, something that former addicts say in recovery. I also took the shells Elsie sent me in a little box. My plan was to give them back to her so that she could use any money from selling them to take a college class.

So I waited at the crab shack. Had one beer. Two. Three. After two hours, Elsie still hadn't showed. I walked over to the harbor where she told me she keeps her boat/house docked and asked around. This guy cleaning a fishing boat knew her. Called her Angel. He said she and her boyfriend made regular drug runs down to Mexico, and that they never came back from the last one in January. There was a Coast Guard search, but it didn't turn up anything. He said that no one knew she had kin or else they would have gotten in touch. I tried to tell him that his story couldn't be true. That I'd talked to her on New Year's Day and she said she was enrolling in a community college to take classes. I told him that she collected shells and helped her boyfriend fish for a living. That she'd been sober for eleven months. That she was a vegan yogi, for Christ's sake. He shook his head sadly and turned back on his hose. The water gushed so loudly onto the boat's deck that I could barely hear him. “She's a sleepwalker,” I think he said, injecting an invisible syringe into his arm.

Best,

Peter

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 3, 2013 at 7:00 AM
Subject: New Job

Darren,

Congratulations on the new job, son. I don't have any advice that you're not already sick of hearing, so I won't bother. I know you can be successful at whatever you put your mind to.

Dad

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 4, 2013 at 7:21 PM
Subject: RE: New Job

Aw, Dad!

Dang, that was like the sweetest thing I ever did hear! Thanks! I will make sure not to waste this opportunity.

Big things in the offing! Would tell you but don't want to jinx anything.

Darren

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 5, 2013 at 4:27 PM
Subject: Room on the Couch?

Hey there Sash,

What's the good word—or shall I say verse? Much as I love the left coast, I'm considering a trip back east the first week of March. Got an idea for a film project. My folks moved to Florida a few months back, so I was wondering if I could crash with you since I'm gonna be shooting in Philly.

You still carting around aristocrats in those rolling black behemoths, or is poetry paying the bills now?

Gimme a call. I broke my phone a while back and lost all my contacts.

Talk soon,

Darren

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: February 5, 2014 at 5:31 PM
Subject: PLEASE CALL

Dear Elsie-