NJ Boardwalk – down the shore

I woke up. Which is the best way to start any day, compared to coming to, or found lying in a gutter unconscious? I know, I know, always with the jokes. I can never be serious, so nobody takes me seriously. Anyway, as I was saying, I woke up in my own bed alone, except for my cat Sidney. He was the reason I woke up this early. He was standing on my face, licking it. He knows I hate that, but he was hungry. So he took matters into his own two paws, and the rest is history.

As I opened one eye, a blinding light hit it, and like a laser went straight into my optic nerve and bored a hole into my brain. It was sunlight, god how I hated it. When would I make a commitment to my mental health, and go out and buy blackout curtains? So my brain would have fewer holes drilled into it.

Oh, sure you are probably thinking. Why don’t you just lay off the sauce already? Well, I don’t want to, that’s why. I like drinking to excess, waking up in strange places, and being fondled by complete strangers, and oh about a million other excuses. I could name at the drop of a hat.

But here is the real reason, and this is just between the two of us. The reason why I got snookered, tanked, sloshed, hammered, you know all those poetic terms for drunk.

Yesterday morning when I was having my ten am cocktail, I decided to take a little ride to Wildwood for old time’s sake. Wildwood is where I spent the best part of my youth. Hanging out at bars, picking up strangers, and riding the big waves that Wildwood is famous for. Ok, not renowned, but we did try to ride those big South Jersey shore waves back in the 1970s. I have the dried out, wrinkled skin to prove it. Ten years of burn and peel, I don’t have the sense now, and I had even less forty years ago.

But I digress, I was walking down memory lane, walking the boards, buying salt-water taffy, and eating ice cream. And keeping my buzz going, with a little bottle of booze, I saved for special occasions like this in the trunk of my car.

I was walking along, enjoying the fresh salty air, and listening to the seagulls, and the surf. I see in the distance a familiar, if somewhat fuzzy face. I keep telling myself, no, no, it can’t be him, but goddamn if it isn’t David, Captain Dave, my first love.

He is walking hand in hand with a little girl, cute as a button in a two-piece bathing suit with little ladybugs printed on it. She has hair the same reddish-brown that he used to have, most of which has departed. She has the same gap in her front teeth that I always thought was so adorable on him. She is the spitting image of him if he were a girl, and five years old.

I seriously think about running away but didn’t really think I could pull it off. Since I was having trouble standing upright. Well, I thought he wouldn’t recognize me. I‘m forty years older. But god damn him, he did. He is staring at me, and then he pulls on the little girl’s twiggy little arm and walks right up to me.

“Sarah, Sara,h is that you? Why I would recognize you anywhere. You look exactly the same; you look great. Gypsy, this is an old friend of mine, Sarah. We were friends when grandpop was a young guy, not as young as you. But younger then your mom and dad are now. Why don’t you shake hands with her and say hello?”

Gypsy, I‘m thinking, how could he? That is what we were going to call our little girl. God, I hated him so much at that moment. I was surprised he didn’t just drop dead from the force of my thoughts alone. Gypsy says, “Hi.” She spoke so quietly you could hardly hear her over the racket of the god damn, filthy seagulls were making.

I managed to put my big old hand out there and give her little hand a shake,” Nice to meet, you Gypsy, don’t you look beautiful in your little bathing suit?”

“Thank you”, she says with her gapped tooth smile. I could feel my heartbreaking, actually breaking in two. So this is what my little girl would have looked like?

“So Sarah, how have you been, it’s been too long since I saw you, when was that exactly, do you remember?”

Do I remember, of course, I remember? I think about it every day from the first moment I get up in the morning, and it is my last thought at night. What would my little girl have been like, would she have looked like me, or him? Would she be smart and sassy or shy and demure? She would be almost forty years old now. God, I have missed her every day of my life. Since the last time I saw his face as he waited for me outside the clinic that day, I had the abortion. The last time I saw him.

“Yes. Dave, I do remember that very well, it was outside the Women’s Center in Cherry Hill. The day I aborted our baby. I was going to call her Gypsy, don’t you know? Gypsy, just like your little granddaughter here, Gypsy. Do you remember now, Dave?”

His face reddened somewhat, and he took a step back and pulled his little granddaughter with him, “Yes, I remember that now of course, sorry I must be getting a little forgetful. It was really nice seeing you, Sarah. We should keep in touch. Gypsy and I will have to be going now, but it was great, great seeing you again.” And he turned his heels and took off, just like he did forty years ago. I guess an old dog can’t learn new tricks.