When you leave California summer headed to Buenos Aires, you're going straight into winter. They're the harsher months. The months a man keeps his face unshaven to keep the cold out. A mature beard defines a man, this is true, but cowboys aren't mature, most of them ain't really. They're just boys after all. They live out on the plains and desert hills, not up in the mountains with the men. They shave, or at least put a blade to it every once in a while because they're handsome, and girls like handsome cowboys with sharp jaw-lines and a clean neck. They usually got a girl at home keeping them warm every night. The warmth of a woman in bed at night trumps any beard, no matter how manly. A man don't always have that as an option though. They got to get rough, rugged for warmth in the cold winter months. Most times the going gets lonely.
As far as definition goes in life, I don't know where I was in Santa Cruz in December. I was sleeping on a mattress in the living room of a first-floor flat at the foot of the mountains by the sea. What else does a man want, I wonder? It wasn't the desert plains and golden hills of the Wild West, and the mountains were right there, but it was a cowboy life for me that year. North Coast cowboy, in the woods, on the sea. Josh and Matty lived up on the mountain with their always healthy facial growth, but Mike, Mikey, and me kept clean down by the Great Highway.
They both had girls, Mike and Mikey. Not me though. I only had a crush on one. That's all it takes for a clean face, but this one, she was out of my league. Me and Callie caravanned up to Santa Cruz after Christmas But she wasn't driving up from San Diego. I was going to meet her on the road. In Santa Barbara. A weekend party in SB with old friends and ex-boyfriends. She has a way about her, Callie. He's incredibly well gifted at making boys fall in love with her. But there's something else too.
I met her just before sunset at the pier. I wasn't raining, but it just had, hours ago, and the storm was off in the distance over the water, down by the point to the south spread over the sky like pink and red and orange in a darkening sky, far, far away out of reach. We dined at a quiet cafe restaurant at a beachy hotel with a view of the ocean. Nothing so fancy. A small beachtown family-run place. The soup of the day was clam chowder, so I got that. Callie just ate some of the free rolls and ordered a tea with a lemon slice and some honey.
"Rough night?" I said. She looked like hell.
She let out a slow breath and the blue in her eyes came into focus with her surroundings in that magnificent dazed sort of way that she has. She was looking outside. "Oh yeah. It got real weird. And molly-y." She looked at me and it was a soft, but calculating face, mildly intrigued by my pending reaction. "I snuck out the window of Nate's room two hours ago." Wide blue eyes.
"Nice." Nate was ex-boyfriend Nate, and the window, she told me, was on the second floor. I pretended to be good at this. "How was that?"
"Ugh. Awful. I mean the sex was whatever. No, not even. It sucked kinda, I was just high. But now I know for sure. I'm over him." Prying blue eyes. "Oh! did you get a ticket for New Year's yet?" New Year's was Steve Aoki in a big pier warehouse concert in San Francisco. On the bay. I didn't think I was going, but all of a sudden I really wanted to. It was three hundred dollars. To think about it, I was fairly certain i wasn't going. After all, I was broke.
I said, "No." I felt ashamed. "Not yet."
"Me neither!" She was broke too. Mike and Eric and Kristen and Taylor and all the other meows already had their tickets, but not us apparently. "But we have to go. We have to! I think I'm just going to sneak in. Say I'm on the list or something."
"Ha, yeah me too."
"I'm serious! You should too, it's not that hard."
"I'll probably just buy a ticket," I said, although I didn't have the faintest clue how.
"They're sold out. I checked."
There goes that. "Well... balls." I'd make the most of it, I thought to myself. Maybe just hang out at a bar or a house party or something nearby until 2:00 when the show was over.
"You're coming," she said seriously.
"Yes ma'am."
"Ok, good."
We hit the road in the dark and took turns taking the lead up the 101 and texted each other sweet stupid nothings with lots of dry flirting and humor. I'm usually better at watching myself in situations like this. Actually wait, no. Maybe now I am, but back then I was still a heavy-hearted romantic. And those eyes. I could see her smiling in the texts on the dark road, through the valley and into Santa Cruz past midnight. She slept on the couch though, with the pillows kicked off, but we shared the room and a goodnight spliff and little one-off comments that got softer and airier in the early morning until we both fell asleep. She dozed off first while I laid there on my mattress on the floor with my eyes closed, trying to follow. What a fucking thing it is, falling in love. I hate it now, I really do.
