Islands on the Coast

“When he was ousted from office, Porfirio Diaz boarded his yacht to Europe, turned, took one last look at his country and said: “Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!”

Porfirio Diaz also said:

“Nothing ever happens in Mexico until it happens.”

The bucket hat wearing hipster snubbed out his clove and let his opened paperback of The Savage Detectives slide down his chest.

Above him the canvas of a yellow parasol rippled in a wind coming off the ocean, the sorta yellow parasol you see Neil Young standing near on the ‘On the Beach’ jacket cover. Staring off at the ocean. A yellow Cadillac buried in the sand.

Mailer mentions this and Chiba nods.

Out the right corner of his eye, Mailer sees the thin line of the mainland across the reach, just a ferry ride away. A ferry Mailer had never taken.

Chiba just got back that morning, and Mailer asks him what was over there?

“Tell me! Tell me of pilgrimages and pitfalls, travelogues and love! Sights seen and locals fucked!”

Chiba raises a brow. He was there for two days.

“You’re a real closet-case Mailer. Fifteen and you’ve hardly been past this beach.”

True enough. The whole Key was basically a sandbar the size of three football fields with crab grass and groves of palms filling out the interior. The entire rim of the island was one thin wisp of beach.

Without a clear answer, that spiteful prankster tossed off his bucket hat, shucked outta his flower-print Hawaiian, and dove straight into the ocean.

Mailer used to think he was some kinda Bodhidharma, but only recently, more recently than he’s comfortable admitting, he’s realized Chiba was just another dropout who never got off the ADD meds his parents got him hooked on when he was in middle school.

MAILER. (I)

I stay up that night, eyes glued to the TV. Cracking peanuts and watching Retro Redux, where they show all these old and often foreign movies. That night I watch this black-&-white called Closely Watched Trains. I don’t know what the hell they’re saying, but that’s okay, because there’s subtitles. It’s about this hapless loser who can’t get laid and then he dies, but that’s okay too because the night before he gets his ass dynamited, he does manage to score. It was produced in the 60’s and on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and I’m sure there’s a lot there, but all I wondered the whole time was will he or won’t he?

“Mailer, you sleep under a sloping roof in the back of a bungalow”, bucket head pointed past the nearest dune, the other side of which is a badly graveled road and across from there: the shack in question.  

“In the mornings, you come down, breakfast with you cousin, then you shit-kick the rest of the day away.”

That’s what Chiba said yesterday.

Now, under the same yellow parasol, bucket head plops down next to him, dripping wet and smelling of sea salt.  

“Well, my little Kafka on the Shore, buy the ticket, take the ride, see you on the other side?”

Mailer looks back at the roof poking just over the line of sand, Palm leaves brushing the corners.     

Mailer nods. “Gone, gone, everyone’s gone to the other shore, becoming. So be it.”

“F-A-G. know what that spells?”

“Ah, but my name for you is best: Kinch, the knife-blade!”

“See? There you go again. How could anyone who’s spent their whole life on the beach turn out as white as you? You’re an indie movie that’s been running for fifteen years and oh, you just come with the most darling hand-picked soundtrack! If I went through your playlist, it would be all Softies, Beach Bunny… or Beat Happening.”

“I like Beat Happening. And so you know, ‘Jamboree’ was one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite albums.”

“See? Twee. As. Fuck.”

Chiba plucks a clove cig outta his front pocket. Raises a BiC and pauses.

“Fifteen years, staring at the same scene. There’s a story that Bodhidharma spent 9 years staring at a cave wall. Three more and you’ll be double the Dharma.”  

MAILER. (II)

I have a fiver in my wallet. I lift a twenty outta roll Ule keeps wrapped in a metal box tucked away in a corner of his room.

I borrow another twenty from bucket head.

“How long?”

Just for a few hours, maybe a day.

Nothing happens that morning. The ferry landing is a short stroll from Ule's shack. Mailer came down and slipped out the front door.

The stretch, empty. Mailer - as quietly as possible – sang “Fast Car” to himself during the walk. 

Where does that ferry go? Shangri-La or Shit? Gottama or gangrape?

Gatsby had a hard-on for the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Then they met again and the light wasn’t so special. 

Chiba brings out a 7” single of “Cortez the Killer” and slides it into a vintage portable player.

That day on the beach, bucket head had said something else.

There’s another story about Bodhidharma, and the story is this:

Ambassador Song met Bodhi wondering the hillside with only one sandal clutched in his hand.

Song hails him and inquires and Bodhi simply sez: “I am going home.”  

Bodhi tells him: When you reach the palace, there you will find out why I have only this one shoe. But don’t mention you saw me, or misfortune will come to you.

Song makes his way to the palace and first thing he says is how he met you-know-who on his way there. They cuff him for bullshitting.

“Bodhi’s dead and buried”, sez the Emperor.

At Shaolin Monastery, the monks make their way to a hill behind the temple where they stuffed Bodhi’s corpse and exhume the grave. There, in the grave, know what they found? A. Single. Sandal. The monks utter: “Master has gone home!”

For nine years, he remained and nobody knew him; carrying a shoe in hand he went home quietly, without ceremony.