6 - Trouble in Paradise

Sometime that fall, Aunt Cathy took me to the beach.

I don’t remember where we went. Hollister is less than 30 miles from the ocean, halfway between Santa Cruz and Carmel-By-The-Sea. Somewhere along that coast, there’s a beach that is magical.

Aunt Cathy was in her twenties, young and beautiful. She had great taste in music and books. (She would introduce me to Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Wizard of Earthsea trilogy). Books became a lifeline for me, a chance to escape into a different reality – one with happy endings. Her husband Ken taught me to throw a frisbee and body surf.

That day was amazing.

…I remember the sand, the waves, swimming until I was exhausted.

…I remember laying on a beach towel, my teeth chattering as I warmed up in the late afternoon light, the setting sun slowly sinking into the Pacific.

…I remember the feel of dried salt on my warm skin.

…I remember Chili Cheese Fritos. I had eaten potato chips before, but never anything like this. I remember the orange residue they left on my fingertips, the way they made me thirsty (but still wanting more), the way the sand found its way into everything – even the chips.

…I remember seagulls screaming just a few feet over our heads, begging me to share.

To this day, Chili Cheese Fritos take me back – back to the beach, back to that afternoon, back to when my heart hurt so bad I thought it would burst, but I tasted something so good and beautiful in the water and the waves and the sand and the sea that I couldn’t help but smile and laugh and feel happy again.

Even if only for a few hours.

Maybe that’s why Cathy took me to the beach.

Grandpa Don bought me my first dirt bike.

My new friend Eddie lived around the corner from our house. His mom taught at our school, and his dad sold Amway out of their garage. Eddie and his older brother David both had bikes.

My bike was back in Montana. Which was probably for the better, since it was an old Schwinn with a banana seat – fine for kids, but I was in fifth grade now. Still, it’s hard watching your new friends build bike jumps in the cul-de-sac while you sit idle on the curb.

Grandpa Don noticed.

“Hell, Chris…” he said (puffing on his pipe in the garage). “Looks like you need a bike!”

So we got into his truck and trundled off to Sears.

Sears had all sorts of bikes, but the one that caught my eye was black and silver – a dirt bike with handlebars tilted rakishly forward, and foam pads on the crossbars, to keep you from busting your nuts or cracking a rib when you went off huge jumps or did tricks.

In the moment, I wanted that bike more than I wanted anything else in the world. (Even more than having my mom back. Isn’t it strange how the desire to belong will affect us? Or how we think things will fill the ache in our hearts?)

“So whaddya think?” says Grandpa, chewing on his pipe.

“I like that one!” I say, pointing to my prize.

“Well, how are you going to pay for it?” asks Grandpa.

I am puzzled and confused. I don’t have any money. I’ve never had to purchase anything in my life.

“Hell, Chris,” says Grandpa. “They don’t just give bikes away! You’ve gotta pay for them. What’s your plan?”

That bike was $125.

“How much you got?” he asks.

Now, Dad probably put me on that plane to California with a twenty-dollar bill for food and contingencies. Which means I probably had fifteen bucks left to my name.

“Tell you what,” says Grandpa. “I’ll buy that bike for you. I’ll take your $15 as a deposit, and we’ll put you on a payment plan.”

“But how will I pay you back?”

“Well…” says Grandpa. “We expect you to do chores around the house; I’ll pay you a weekly allowance for that. And we can find some side projects for you to earn extra. It’s going to take work, mind you. And discipline! But I think you can pay that bike off.

“We’ll track it all in a little book, so you’ll know what you still owe me…

"Whaddya say, Chris?”

Hell yes! is what I say (on the inside).

“Thanks, Grandpa!” is what I say out loud.

So Grandpa bought me my first dirt bike. And I started growing up.

Grandpa saved me from getting beat up in his garage, too.

Since Eddie and I were the same age, went to the same school, and lived next door to one another, it was only natural that we became friends. Sometime during that year – it’s hard to remember when, because the weather felt the same all year long – Eddie and I got into a fight. Not with each other; with some kid down the street.

We’ll call him Moe.

Moe was a thug. (That was our narrative). He went to a different school. He was a few years older than we were. He had a reputation. So naturally, we felt justified in disliking him.

One day, Moe rode by on his bike and made some disparaging remarks. Eddie and I weren’t about to put up with that sort of crap – we might only be fifth graders, but we weren’t little kids – so we made some remarks of our own right back at him. (We were like desert thunderstorms: full of thunder, light on rain).

Well, Moe circled back around.

And so it escalated.

Back and forth, back and forth – him riding his bike and hurling insults, us hollering back and daring him to put his money where his mouth was. (We were very full of ourselves.)

“Fine,” said Moe. “I’ll be back… at sundown.” (I kid you not; this really happened. Anything can happen in California.)

Eddie was worried. “Look,” he says. “Moe is big. And he’s mean. I heard he beat up some guy a few blocks over last week. I think we’re in trouble.”

“Nonsense!” I say. “Moe is a bully. Grandpa says bullies need to be stood up to. And I say, the bigger they come, the harder they fall…” (I was so very full of myself.)

Then I pulled out my secret weapon – a wrist-rocket that I’d imported from Montana. (This is a high-powered slingshot, with a special forearm brace so you can pull the band all the way to your ear for extra power. Mine was the deluxe model – it folded up, so you could stick it in your back pocket, all incognito like. We might not be able to afford orange juice, but Dad didn’t skimp on weaponry.)

Eddie gasps, “Stuff like this is illegal in California!”

I say, “Every kid in Montana has a wrist-rocket.” (You can see where this is going. At the end of the day, I suspect we’re all just farm kids trying to prove how tough we are. The Bible says even a fool is thought wise when he is silent. Me? I just plowed on…)

“…but not every kid has this.”

Then I pulled out my bag of special wrist-rocket ammo – genuine bullets, collected from the rifle range back in Montana. Dad would do the shooting, but when they called cease fire to go check your targets, I’d dig through the dirt backstops for spent slugs. They make great slingshot ammo, because they pack an extra punch.)

So not only did I have a sling shot – I was shooting lead.

Eddie is in awe. “Moe doesn’t stand a chance!”

Yeah, that’s what we thought.

We walked back and forth in Grandpa’s driveway – the garage door up, so we could stand there in the light and see if Moe would turn up. And we puffed our chests and we talked real tough, and I had my slingshot on my wrist with real lead ammo…

But deep down I was scared. I’d never been in a fight before, and if push came to shove, I wasn’t sure if I’d be brave.

Right as it got dark, a figure flitted by on a bike.

It was Moe.

Taunts were exchanged. One thing led to another. Before we know it, Moe was sprinting up the driveway, Eddie was jumping in the bushes, and I just hauled back on my wrist-rocket and…

THWACK!

I shot him full draw in the stomach – at point blank range.

I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe not David vs. Goliath (out-cold-so-I-could-lop-his-head-off)… But I expected something to happen. I thought he’d fall over, double up in pain, beg for mercy, cry for his mother. Something.

Nope. He didn’t even flinch. (To this day, I wonder what kind of welt or bruise that slug made – it had to have hurt. Bad!)

But Moe was tough. He ran right through our defenses and started raining down blows on my head. So I just curled up in a little ball, while Eddie ran into the house yelling, “Grandpa Don, come quick – Chris is getting beat up in the garage!”

After that, Moe skedaddled.

No one wanted to mess with O.D. Cryder.

I wasn’t hurt – no bruises, no bloody noses. Just shaken up. My pride was wounded, though; my slingshot had let me down, and I wasn’t as tough as I’d hoped.

Mostly, I just worried what Grandpa would think…

Grandma and Grandpa took me to Sea World, too.

I remember standing outside a massive glass aquarium. Inside, we could see all sorts of exotic fish swimming by. But in the tank, the largest creature by far was a ginormous whale – twenty or thirty feet long, at least.

It is the biggest living thing I have ever seen.

It is swimming laps, and as it swims, it is accompanied by smaller fish attached to its sides. (By fifth grade, I have read enough books to know all about remoras, or suckerfish.)

But one suckerfish seems peculiar.

All the other remoras align with the whale – heads upstream (just like the whale), tails downstream (just like the whale), flowing with the current as the whale swims around the tank.

But this particular remora is different – its head is attached about two-thirds of the way back along the whale’s body, and (wonder of wonders) it is over two feet long, and its tail is pointing rigidly upstream, straight into the current!

Even a fifth grader can see something strange is going on here.

“Grandpa,” I ask, pointing at the whale… “What’s that?”

Grandpa Don is silent (smoking his pipe, just watching the fish).

That’s funny. He must not have heard me. So the next time the whale swims by I try again.

“Grandpa,” I say again, pointing at the whale’s midsection… “What’s THAT?”

Once again, O.D. is silent (chewing his pipe, studying the tank).

Clearly, he must be deep in thought. The third time around, I practically shout (definitely loud enough for others to hear):

“GRANDPA… WHAT’S. THAT. THING?!?”

I point emphatically, repeatedly, right at that strange, odd, rigid, straight-upstream, wave-at-the-crowd, wrong-way suckerfish.

Grandpa hears me this time. He takes his pipe from his mouth, thinks for a second, and then he says…

“Hell, Chris… that’s his dinger!”

I was so embarrassed. But I grew up a little more.

Grandpa Don taught me other things too, maybe without meaning to. Through him, I discovered both pleasure and lust.

The pleasure part seems fairly innocuous.

Grandpa and Grandma had a hot tub out back in the yard behind their bedroom. It was an old-school affair – the kind of thing that feels like it belongs in California in the ‘70s. It was small, wooden tub, just big enough for three or four friends. It had wooden benches inside to sit on, with water jets to massage your back. The water was 98 degrees. I was free to use it anytime I wanted. Surrounded by tall thickets of bamboo, it was very private.

“We don’t need swimming suits,” said Grandma Ruth.

Fine by me. I had read about Huck Finn skinny dipping in rivers; having my own private hot spring sounded as good or better.

So the hot tub became my nightly ritual, twenty minutes each evening before bed. I could lean back, look at the stars, dreaming about how Mom and Dad might get back together again.

It felt good to escape from reality.

But it didn’t take long to discover another kind of pleasure. I found that if you leaned up against the side of the hot tub, in just the right spot, facing just the right way, the water jets worked their magic on a whole different part of you.

I was amazed by my discovery, and gradually figured out how to prolong the experience to five minutes or more – first by backing off, then by leaning in, then by backing off some more, until at some point, all you could do was lean, lean, lean.

I had no idea that what I was doing was in any way sexual.

I was just sad, and very lonely. The hot tub offered pleasure and solace.

But without realizing it, I was cultivating an appetite.

The lust part was more insidious – I discovered pornography.

It wasn’t entirely Grandpa’s fault. Fifth grade boys are curious; my grandparents were empty nesters, so the house was no longer “kid-proofed”. Besides, both of them worked, and that gave me plenty of time on my own each day after school.

It was a perfect time to explore. And explore I did.

It turns out Grandpa didn’t just swear like a sailor; he had the tastes of a sailor too. I discovered his stash of Playboy and Penthouse magazines, hidden around the house. Once you knew what you were looking for, they were easy to find – tucked away on a high shelf out in the shop; hidden behind other magazines in Grandpa’s bathroom.

Breasts, cunts, sex. It was all there.

I even read the articles.

I was hungry for carnal knowledge. I devoured it furtively, compulsively, (instinctively) taking great care never to be caught. And little did I know it, but that appetite would follow me, haunt me, dog my steps, for many years to come.

Without realizing it, I was cultivating an addiction.

What do you think of me now – was my lust harmful, or harmless? Is this something to be ashamed of? Or is it just human nature?

In all my life, I have had sex with just one woman (my wife). We waited until marriage (barely). I have never touched, kissed, or foisted myself another woman (although I’ve come close). So it would seem easy to write off pornography as harmless, just part of growing up.

After all, what’s wrong with looking, right?

But if I am honest, lust has tainted almost every friendship I’ve had with women – pornography taught me to objectify the woman around me: breasts, cunt, sex.

And it began all the way back there, in fifth grade.

To be clear, at ten years old, I had not yet connected pleasure in the hot tub with my appetite for illicit images. I didn’t know I was experiencing orgasms. I didn’t know that’s what sex felt like. But that connection would come, soon enough. And those desire would escalate – it doesn’t take long before you don’t just want pictures; you want the real thing. (And even when you get it, you still want more.)

“What would it be like to fuck her?” That’s what you think.

(If you are piously offended here – “My goodness. How can he be thinking that!” – then you don’t know men. Or women. And maybe you don’t even know yourself. Aren’t all of us more primal than we’d care to admit – Grandpa? Me? Mom? At the very least, we owe ourselves the dignity of being honest about it.)

So my grandfather’s addiction became my addiction.

And that thirst has followed me throughout the years, bringing with it much shame, regret, and destruction. That’s why I’m telling my Story – to discover where these things came from; to acknowledge where they have taken me; and to ponder what has brought healing (and what hasn’t).

I have found my lust neither trivial nor harmless.

But this is my Story, not Grandpa Don’s. In the end, I think he did the best he could with what he’d been given. Yes, he could be hard and demanding and unforgiving – I know Dad feels like he was never good enough for O.D – but he was only ever kind to me.

I wish I could show him who I’ve become.

We didn’t go to church when I lived in California – but I said my prayers each and every night: God, please bring Mom back!

She would call me once a week, to see how I was doing. One time when she told me she had big news. My heart raced.

“Guess what?” she said. “You’re going to be a big brother again!”

I wanted to puke.

Dad came to visit that Spring. He had gotten promoted – which was good! But he brought along his new girlfriend – which was not.

I wanted to puke some more.

I kept hoping that somehow Mom and Dad were going to get back together; that we could go back to being a happy family again. That the bomb would un-“go off”. That we could put all the pieces back together again.

But sooner or later you realize that’s not going to happen. And then you’ve got to grow up even more.

There is one more thing – a girl named Stacy.

Stacy is in my fifth-grade class. She is nice, she is cute. I have a crush on her, and I suspect it is mutual. We hold hands in the hallway, but we never kiss. But oh, I want to!

I think about her while sitting in the hot tub, looking at the stars.

(Can you see my sickness, already at work?)

This will become a pattern for me – a deep thirst for relationship, which inevitably manifests itself in the physical. But even when I get that, it’s never enough. It’s like I’m looking for to fill up all the emptiness inside, to staunch the bleeding.

I don’t recognize any of this at the time, of course. These are just the beginnings. But the seeds we sow inevitably bear fruit.

Stacy invites me to church, we attend a Sunday evening service together. For some reason, I feel compelled to go forward at the altar call. (Is it guilt? Is it God? You decide what it means…)

At the end of the school year, right before I return to Montana, she asks me to write. I promise I will.

But I never do.

(Actually, I did write the letter; but I was too embarrassed to ask my stepmom for a stamp, so I threw that letter to my first sweetheart in the trash and just moved on. It is sad what shame does to us.)

This remains one of my great and lasting regrets.

Goodbye, California. Hello, junior high…

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