Punchline

I first realized that God has a sense of humor on August 30, 1988, day one of my senior year. I was standing against the wall of an overcrowded classroom with thirty-five other kids, waiting for Ms. Zerby to assign our seating in the dingy space that would be our homeroom as we sprinted toward the daylight of graduation and freedom. I always hated when teachers assigned us desks, instead of letting us pick our own seats. Especially at a school like Long Beach Poly. There were so many thugs and tough-guys in the population that picking the right seat in a class could make the difference between sailing under the radar and getting noticed by someone that would spend a year making a sport out of my misery.

As such, I'd been looking around the room at the cross section of human misery not ready to face Algebra II at 7:45 in the morning, and had already identified a half-dozen guys that I knew would be trouble. My feral survival instinct as a 98-pound whiteboy at an inner-city school would have been to let them pick their seats and then sift myself somewhere in between the ones I was trying to avoid. Instead, I’d be stuck sitting next to whomever fate had assigned me the misfortune of sharing an alphabetical association with. Aces.

Matt Dillon, Outsider

In spite of all the questionable characters in the room—ranging from neophyte gangsters to truculent bruisers racing toward expulsion and a career under correctional supervision—I’d singled out the guy whom I’d decided was the absolute worst one. The competition was stiff, but I’d winnowed it down to the honky with the Elvis sneer, black boots, ripped jeans, white T-shirt, and a black leather motorcycle jacket. He looked like he’d stepped right out of The Outsiders, as though he belonged in 1950’s Poly instead, ready to menace Melvin Poindexter, my 50’s counterpart. Out of the wretched hive of scum and villainy that made up my plethora of shitty choices, why I picked Sean Blake from among their number, I’ll never know. But when Ms. Zerby called his name, I thought, “Thank God, he’s a B and I’m an E. That should put plenty of distance between us.”

Ms. Zerby the insane

Then she started directing the students where to sit in the bizarrely laid-out room, and the impossibility of predictions became clear. Instead of a standard class layout—with the teacher at the front and the desks all facing toward her—the room was divided in half, with rows of seats on the left wall and rows of seats on the right wall, both sides facing the center of the room with a wide aisle between them. Ms. Zerby’s desk was on the third wall of the room by the blackboard, in line with that aisle. Thus, the students all looked across the room at each other, but had to turn their heads to see the board or Ms. Zerby. This idiotic layout complicated things, so my mental calculus went into overdrive, one jaundiced eye on Sean the whole time.

Even with the unusual arrangement, I assumed that—like any sane person—she’d start with the first seat on the first row closest to her desk and assign people A, B, C down that row from the center aisle back to the wall. And so on, until she’d filled that half of the room and then move on to the other half across the bizarre center aisle. Given the proximity of B and E to each other, I thought I’d likely wind up on the same side of the room as Sean, but several rows down from him. However, as I was soon to learn, Ms. Zerby was an insane person. She began seating people right to left along the back wall and working in from that wall toward the center aisle. So the rows marched parallel down the wall, and inward toward the center, ninety degrees from the direction that I'd been expecting. What kind of a fucking psychopath thinks that way? One that puts on a sock and then a shoe, then the other sock and the other shoe, no doubt.

As I watched each person trudge slowly over to their seat, I was trying to estimate just how close a B and an E could be to each other when plotted along this cartesian cross-section of Ms. Zerby’s madness. I was suddenly filled with a dawning certainty that I’d wind up in dangerous proximity to Sean. He took his seat the second tier of rows in from the wall, and I watched seats fill with glum souls like I was watching a fuse burn inexorably down. 

“Blake… Bueller… Calhoun… Calibuso… Chu… Cordova…" I closed my eyes.

"Dacosta… Dao… D’angelo… Dorsey… Duarte… Echevarria… Eimer…"

Elliott.

Poor Lynelle

When I opened them, I saw that I’d be sitting next to Lynelle Eimer… and directly in front of Sean Blake. Sweet, fancy Moses! What were the odds? I trudged over to take my seat, resigning myself to a year’s worth of Wet-Willies, Flat-Tires, and Indian Burns, already feeling him flicking me on the back of the ear and demanding “Yo, dork! What’s the answer to number four?”

As it turns out, the first words Sean Blake said to me were actually, “You have to perform the functions inside the parentheses first, then go left to right through the equation.” Despite my expectations to the contrary, he didn’t sound anything like Biff Tannen from Back To The Future. He also didn’t have any tattoos, keep a pack of smokes rolled up in the sleeve of his white-T, or listen to Slayer like I assumed. And of course, he was noticeably better at Algebra II than me. So the year unfolded in ways unanticipated and unplanned, as they ever have, as they ever will.

It turned out that Sean and I made a sport out of Lynelle Eimer’s misery instead, by playing on her revulsion with spiders, squishy bodily noises, and the word “moist.” She gave as good as she got though, and cast us in the role of lovers desperately pretending to be straight, with our displays of machismo and boorish behavior. Eventually, I went on to tutor her in Chemistry in trade for her teaching me how to do the Robocop dance so I wouldn’t make a complete ass of myself at the Spring Formal. Or so I’d at least blend in with all the other twits making asses of themselves by doing the Robocop at the Spring Formal.

As the days passed, Sean and I discovered the many commonalities that we shared outside school. We both went to church, listened to Simon & Garfunkel incessantly, wanted to learn to play guitar and form a band someday, and enjoyed a good debate session for its own sake. He was from the wrong side of the tracks, or the river actually. The LA “River” was really just a massive concrete culvert we called the flood control. It bisected the city, functioning as a fifty mile long gutter, and there was definitely a right and a wrong side of it to be on. On the East Side, we had pockets of crime and gang activity, on the West Side, gangs were in open control of huge swaths of territory. So Sean’s West Side tough-guy demeanor and adornments served him well as a camouflage, but a peek under the hood revealed a kind guy, with an incisive mind and a nimble wit. Sean was a Junior, so we only had the one math class together, but we slowly built bridges each day toward being actual friends, as opposed to the at-school-only variety.

The day came that we crossed over when Sean said, “So, who you basin’ on, dude?”

The Los Angeles "River." We just called it Flood Control.

My mind instantly went to work trying to decipher by contextual clues what “basin’” was, so that I didn’t have to appear uncool or lacking in street-cred, which was an actual thing back then. I took a stab at answering the question, based on the assumption that he was asking who I was trying to date. I couldn’t really answer because I’d become embroiled in a cold-war love-triangle with my best friend and his girl. I couldn’t admit it, and I couldn’t move on, so I offered up a different truth.

“Yeah, I broke up with this girl over the summer, and I’m kind of bummin’ on chicks right now. What about you?”

“Heinous, dude. Sorry to hear it. I’m kind of into this fine-ass chick, Paulyne.”

I got a sinking feeling and said, “Wait. Not Paulyne Blanco?”

“Yeah, man. You know her?”

Unfortunately, I did know her. “Hate to say it, chief, but that’s the girl I broke up with this Summer.”

At this, Lynelle jumped in and said, “Drop the act, boys. No one’s falling for this. Just kiss and make up, no need for all the drama.”

Sean in ROTC uniform

In unison, Sean and I grabbed a pinch of cheek on our faces, wriggling it rapidly it in an out creating a gross, squishy sound that we knew was like nails on a chalkboard to her. She quickly plugged her ears and turned away, going “La-la-la-la-la,” to drown us out. Sean and I fell out laughing until Ms. Zerby shooshed us, as she’d gotten in the habit of doing. Turns out that our quadrant of the room was way more trouble than any of the so-called bad kids, who just kept their heads down and actually did their work, like a buncha losers.

Toward the end of class, when we’d been good for almost a half-hour—which was an accomplishment for us—Sean said, “Well, I’ve only been talking Paulyne up for a minute. I was gonna swing by and see what she was up to at lunch, but I could check in with my ROTC crew instead. We got us a couple of hotties over there, too.”

Paulyne

And that was that. He veered off of Paulyne for good, and never said another word about it. For which I was grateful, because I’d been a terrible boyfriend to Paulyne, cheating on her because she was a good girl who wouldn’t give it up and along came a girl that would. As well-deserved payback, Paulyne had no compunctions about flirting with—and dating—people in my circle of friends. So I had no doubt that Sean, with his confidence and charm, could easily have caught her interest, but he chose not to for my sake. No mean feat that, because Paulyne was smokin’ hot. And so Sean and I crossed over.

Ms. Zerby “retired” at the semester break, which I assumed was a euphemism for a recall to the factory to have her bolts tightened. It got us out from under her almost-human ministrations, though not quite soon enough to prevent Sean from seeing Ms. Zerby at the beach in a swimsuit one unsuspecting Saturday. The struggle was real, people. We all wound up in a new classroom with Ms. Wolfe, and life moved on.

Leighann or Winona?

Sean and I decided to take guitar lessons and start that band, so we found a course offered in the evenings at Long Beach City College. A washed-up old hippy taught us to play and sing some easy folk songs like “Tom Dooley,” “Leaving On a Jet Plane,” and “Feelin’ Groovy,” which obviously made us a band. We named ourselves Sir Lawrence of Blake Street, aka SLOBS, which was apropos if you’d seen either of our bedrooms. While we were taking the class at LBCC, Sean ambled up to a girl on the quad one evening and introduced himself, a skill I never mastered, or even really attempted. Her name was Leighann, and she looked just like Winona Ryder. I was always jealous of Sean’s ability to walk right up to girls and just start basin’ on them, shrugging off any rejections to bounce right back. I always took everything so personally that I would never venture out to initiate anything that didn’t occur organically. Sean could base on anyone, anywhere, anytime.

After the guitar lessons, Sean and I started doing more and more stuff outside of school together, which was a much-needed sub-plot to counterpoint the developments in the cold-war love-triangle of the main storyline of my life. Sometimes I would go and visit his holy-roller church, where everybody wore jeans and flip-flops and went to the mall after to share the Good News with all the boys and girls. That was another “other side” facet to our friendship, since my Church-life was governed by slick shoes, button-up shirts, and all the somberness that implies. My Church’s Calvinist Cadet Corps had taught me to build a fire, read a compass, and shoot a .22, but we didn’t share our faith, and we certainly weren’t allowed to play syncopated music the way Sean’s tribe did. Don’t even get me started on the heresy of their drums!

Having Sean as someone outside my main circle of friends was good for me in ways I couldn’t have predicted. He didn’t listen to the Cure or Depeche Mode, or obsess over Goth chicks. He didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself or ponder his navel. My nails were painted black, while his often had engine grease under them because he was fixing up a Honda Civic himself, paying for all the parts out of his wages from the frozen yogurt joint he worked at down on the shoreline. He was in ROTC at school, part of the rifle-drill team and they were seriously impressive. His room was all books on art, theology, and philosophy, stacked up on cinderblock furniture next to a weight bench. He listened to N.W.A. and Bob Dylan, Sinatra and Joni Mitchell, Metallica and Keith Green.

My Dad was an Elder in our Church, so I had a skeleton key that let me in pretty much anywhere on the premises. Some nights we’d break into the Youth Room at the Church and kipe root beers, play ping-pong, and lounge in the bean-bag chairs strumming on the guitars that Youth Pastor Dan left there. Other times we’d go to the community racquetball courts at the University, or the smoky pool halls downtown to play 9-ball, or the Laser-Floyd shows at the Planetarium. As the year wore on and school came to a finish for me, Sean fell tragically in love with a girl from his Church named Michelle. Meanwhile, my secret love for my best friend’s girl, Amy, came to light in the worst possible way, blowing everything to smithereens.

Although I’d graduated by then, Sean and I were joined at the hip, and we mooned over lost loves together, all bravado and basin’ aside. I’d ride my bike down to Shoreline Village—where he worked at Heidi's Frogen Yozurt—so I could mooch a half-gallon of Fro-Yo and an avalanche of sprinkles off of him. We’d sit out on the bench in front of the shop, eating fro-yo and hatching plots that had no chance of succeeding. Then we'd go and execute them with military precision. How in the world we got two guitars past security at LAX and into the international terminal to serenade Michelle into not moving to New Zealand is anyone’s guess. It went about like you'd expect.

For a minute there, Sean really owed me one for that last-ditch public proclamation in song. But then after my first breakup (of many) with Amy that Winter, he paid me back by letting me moon all the way to and from Knott’s Berry Farm on New Year’s Eve, listening to “Trip Through Your Wires” and “With Or Without You” on countless repeat as I lamented like only a besotted teen boy can. Which had the effect of negating all the rage from the Christian punk rock concert we’d gone to see. I can assure you, even the thrashings of the quintessential Christian punk band One Bad Pig are no match for teenage angst and self-pity. We drove home down the 91 at 20 mph in the thickest fog I’ve ever seen, Bono serenading us incessantly. Talk about taking one for the team.

Sean soon caught up with me at Long Beach City College, where I was already a campus fixture on the quad with my acoustic guitar, playing Jim Croce and White Lion songs. Much to my chagrin, rather than joining in with his guitar, Sean went another direction for his campus life by rushing a frat called THOR. He got in by successfully swallowing two live goldfish, so I’m not sure if either of us could really lay claim to being the big man on campus.

My main main, Red Floyd.

After I purchased my very first vehicle—a scrappy, red fixer-upper VW Bus named Red Floyd—I hit Sean up for repair advice constantly. When the clutch plate shattered into a million places on the last day of exams, he wrangled his dad over to my house to walk me through replacing it step-by-step. His dad was a gruff Vietnam Vet with a bum leg, so he could only instruct from a distance and point to things inside the engine compartment with his cane. He was an impressive mechanic, if a bit brusque and impatient at having to explain it to a couple of novices rather than do it himself. Under that crusty exterior, I think our admiration for his skills was satisfying to him in a way he couldn’t let show.

Amy and I at the Prom

Over the next year, I had an on-again/off-again love affair with Amy that produced more angst and heartache per pound than any other teenage melodrama in history. It necessarily came to an end when I was forced by economic circumstances to follow my parents to a nowhere town in rural Washington State. But while my parents moved up in May of 1991, Sean invited me to stay at his house for two months so that I could take Amy to her Senior High Prom, and have one last dance to say goodbye. I took him up on it, and we became roommates. 

Just like that, I was suddenly from the other side, too. And walking those mean streets that Sean had grown up on was an eye-opening experience. Seeing the gang-tag graffiti scrawled on sidewalks, stop signs, and fences, then learning to decipher their arcane scrawls to reveal the explicit death threats they contained, was more of an education than Poly ever gave me. I immediately felt the urge to trade the head-to-toe black gothic-ware, black fingernails, and Robert Smith-lite hairdo that I was sporting for an Elvis sneer, black boots, ripped jeans, white T-shirt, and a black leather motorcycle jacket.

Although Sean and I were both gone with work and school most of the time, we were still crammed into a 10 x 12 room together, with me on a futon on the floor. You never really know someone until you live with them and literally know what their shit smells like. Thunderdome! Still, we survived, making it all the way to P-Day. Predictably, my Bus broke down one more time on Prom night, so Sean and his dad got in up to their elbows to fix it so that I didn’t get grease on my tux or under my already black nails. I picked Amy up in her white dress and went to the Anaheim Hilton for our last dance together. As we parted the next day, Amy’s proclamations of love followed me down Broadway from her balcony.

Surprisingly, even after the months of living ass to elbow in his room, Sean still volunteered to go with me into the badlands of Nowheresville, WA, a thousand miles up I-5. So we headed out on our first road-trip together, mechanical problems dogging us the whole way. After a nightmare journey where both of our guitars got stolen, and a cultish backwater town filled with children of the corn almost cannibalized us for lunch, we arrived in Kingston, WA. My bus promptly died in the driveway, never to start again. Still, the fact that ol’ Floyd had sprinted a thousand miles across three states while essentially being on fire the entire time earned him a place amongst the honored dead in my eyes. After laying eyes on Kingston, I kind of envied him.

There were fewer people in the tiny hamlet than in just my senior class at Poly, and I felt like I was being marooned for all eternity. To make matters worse, during lunch down at Drifters—Kingston’s only restaurant—I called home to Long Beach, even though I’d promised Sean I wouldn’t. Come to find out that even though I’d only been gone two days, Amy had already hooked up with one of my best "friends." That was the day of my 20^th birthday. So that’s how that went.

From Long Beach, CA to Kingston, WA overnight. A bit of culture shock, to be sure.

After those months as my very first roommate, Sean could read me like a book, and could tell I was growing morose and beginning to spiral. Ever the optimist, he put on his cruise-director hat and began to manage my re-entry and decompression in Kingston, which I think had been his real intent in going with me on the trip to begin with. An old family friend of his named Eli lived about ninety minutes south, and when Sean got off the phone with him I had a job interview with Eli’s family-owned landscaping company. Not to mention tickets to see Crowded House in Seattle with Eli two weeks later. Then he took me by the scruff of the neck and drug me across Puget Sound into Seattle to meet girls.

My heart wasn’t really in it, but we found a scraggly waterfront dive called the OK Hotel Café where Sean chatted up the locals about the happening scene and where a sailor new in town might go to find a good time. Nothing materialized, but it weren’t for lack of trying on his part. On the midnight ferry ride back “home,” the ship was ghostly quiet, and I was feeling deflated. I was mulling over how I, a 20 year-old man, might run away from home and return to Long Beach to live in my van down by the river. Preferably on the East side, obviously. Although, really, if the Insane Crip Gang would have me, who was I to turn up my nose? But without Sean or his dad to bring Floyd back to life, how would I even get there?

Even though Sean was taking the train back to Cali first thing in the morning, he went balls to wall right up to his last minute in Washington. So when he saw two girls sitting kitty-corner from us in the empty main lounge of the ship, he decided to get up and go base on them. I could not have been more exasperated with him, but true to form, Sean came back with the two ladies in tow. He’d already been talking me up, and they came over all smiles and suddenly we were in business.

The lovely and talented Nicole.

The first girl was named Nicole, and she was a willowy brunette with gorgeous brown eyes and curly hair. Her friend Malia, however, was another story, and not a happy one. They could not have been more diametrically opposed in terms of their affect, and since Sean had done the leg-work—and was all confidence and smiles, while I looked like the poster child for a suicide hotline—I assumed that I’d get stuck with Malia. I've since learned that Malia is Hawaiian for either "of the sea" or "bitterness." One look at her and I knew exactly which one her parents had in mind. Or should have, anyway. The state I was in, it felt like a punishment, but I should have known better. Sean got the conversation going between Nicole and me, then turned and promptly threw himself on the grenade.

By the time Sean left at O’Dark:30 the next morning, I had a job interview, tickets to an amazing concert, and a date with the lovely Nicole to watch her strut down the catwalk at her very first modeling show. He’d been in Kingston for a total of 16 hours. Naturally, all of it went horribly wrong the second he left, but that’s on me. If Sean been the one marooned there, they’d be calling the place Seanston today. The term ‘wingman’ wasn’t really a thing in ’91, but as far as I’m concerned Sean Blake invented the job and then immediately broke the mold. To this day, when I remember what was going through my head the first time I laid eyes on Sean, I think it was the best joke the Almighty ever played on me.

Decades later, the punchline still has me rolling. Badump-kssh! 

All the young dudes.