A Strange Encounter

I don’t really know how to start this, but I have to do it fast. It’s almost midnight, and I don’t think I can keep myself awake much longer. I’ve got to get it all down before I fall asleep, because I’m afraid that tomorrow morning, I might not remember what happened.

At first, I was convinced that we’d travelled through a black hole or crossed into another dimension. But, after what Eddie said on the phone, I’m not sure anymore. He insisted that there was nothing more to it than us; that we’d changed, not the world. But, I can’t escape the nagging feeling that the details don’t really matter; that by coming here — however you understand it — we made this happen.

And if that’s true… If we did this…

Then we’re the ones who killed the world.

___

Eddie and I planned this day last weekend. Neither of us had anything going on: no tests; no assignments due; no special in-class activities. The weather forecast was good: warm and sunny. What better time for a day off than our last week as Juniors in this very excellent year of 1985?

The plan was our usual one for skipping school. Drive in for homeroom, make sure we get counted as present (so no one from the office would call our parents), and get through the first two periods, since both Mr. James and Mrs. Hart take attendance and the teachers we have later in the day do not. Go back to the parking lot and head out in the red 1968 Mustang convertible that Eddie and I bought together when we were fourteen and spent two summers working on. WLIR on the radio, a boombox and a bag full of tapes in the back seat, and Jones Beach. All the ingredients for a perfect day.  

Benji wanted to come with us. He had to make an appearance in Mrs. Krevik’s class, because she takes attendance, but unlike Mr. James and Mrs. Hart, she gets so lost in the material as class goes on that she doesn’t notice when someone leaves. Of course, Benji couldn’t do this like a normal person and just excuse himself to the bathroom and not come back. Instead, when Mrs. Krevik was in the middle of one of her weird fugues — staring off vaguely, muttering, and tracing patterns in the air with her finger — he climbed out of the window.  

Eddie and I were waiting in the courtyard below — Mrs. Krevik’s class is on the second floor — and it looked pretty funny: Benji’s feet suddenly sticking out of the window; then his ass; then the rest of his body; until he dropped down onto the grass next to us.

From there, it was easy to make it down the school’s back steps to the rear parking lot. Not that we had to sneak or anything. Our campus is open, and the rules are lax. In fact, if you’re smart about making your schedule (and a little lucky), you can set things up so that your day ends at lunch time, after which you can take the rest of the day off. I remember that David and I did that last year, and it was awesome, although we spent way too much money on Defender, Centipede, and all of the other video games we played during those long afternoons at the arcade.

After a couple of minutes, we were on the Northern State Parkway heading towards the Meadowbrook, which leads to Jones Beach. Eddie was driving with the top down, and we were singing at the top of our lungs (and out of tune) to Elvis Costello’s “Beyond Belief,” which was playing on the radio. Benji messed around with the boombox in the back, rummaging through the pile of tapes Eddie and I had dumped there.

“This shit sucks!” he yelled, trying to compete with the noise from the highway, the radio, and our singing. “Don’t you have any Maiden or Priest?” Benji hates New Wave.

Eddie made a disparaging remark, most of which got swallowed up in the wind and highway noise, and as tempted as I was to instigate, I turned around and reached into the pile. “Here, I brought Billy Idol, Rebel Yell.” Idol was metal enough for Benji.

He took the tape, slid it into the boombox and pressed “play,” as Eddie turned off the radio. The tape was queued to “Do Not Stand in the Shadows,” Benji’s favorite Idol song. I braced myself for what I knew was about to happen.

“Fuck yeah!” Benji leapt to his feet, and began playing air guitar while banging his head up and down. I stared at him glad that we were in the car and not in Benji’s room during a sleepover, when he would put on this performance in his underwear. Eddie looked like he wanted to do a Willy Loman and drive into one of the trees along the parkway, but all he did was suggest that Benji should sit down before he fell out of the car.

The drive to the beach is really cool: the parkway weaves through the bays and canals that riddle the south shore of Long Island, until you finally get to the ocean. My favorite part is the series of art deco bridges that span the canals and bays you pass before reaching the beach road. At this point, Benji was spacing out and thinking about all the girls he was going to see on the beach, so I changed the tape from Billy Idol to Duran Duran, and as we hit the first of the bridges, “Rio” came on and with the late morning sun sparkling on the water and on the gold embossing on the bridges and the yachts and fishing boats passing underneath, I had this overwhelming feeling of how good it is to be alive and seventeen.

We were approaching Parking Field 3, and as Eddie waited to make the turn into the lot, I pointed at Benji. “Listen! No metal talk while we’re on the beach. No army talk. No guns talk. None of the Soldier of Fortune crap you’re always spewing. That stuff is girl-repellent.”

Benji reacted with a combination of outrage and incomprehension. “You’re telling me this? Like you’re some kind of expert? I know how to get girls!”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’m talking about girls in this country, not foreign lands.” Benji’s alleged girlfriends always seem to be from Canada or other places too far away for anyone to verify. The argument was a phony one anyway since everyone — Benji included — knows that I’m far more successful in the girl department than he is. I mean, at this point, that’s the only reason he hangs out with me; in the hope that some of the girls I hang around with might be willing to go out with him. The truth is, we don’t have much in common anymore. He thinks I’ve turned into a pussy, and I couldn’t care less about the macho bullshit he’s gotten into since we started High School. We’ve known each other since we were little kids, though, and for that reason alone I could never bring myself to ditch Benji, even if I really can’t stand him.

The beach was packed with college students from local universities like Hofstra and Adelphi, as well as with young women and their babies and toddlers, but there also was a decent sprinkling of high school kids who, like us, had decided to take the day off.

You can always tell the high school kids from the college students. We cluster together in nervous knots, talking at an almost frantic pace, while they drift around and give off an air of nonchalance. The high school guys, especially, look much younger: a lot of them still have baby faces, and they may not even have hair on their chests or legs yet. With the girls it’s a little harder — they mature earlier and have just as good a sense of style as the college chicks, if not better — but you still can tell who’s who by the way most of them carry themselves. The college girls look comfortable in the way they stand and move, while the high school girls come off as nervous. You can see it in their darting eyes and crooked smiles and in the awkward way that they stand. So, even though a sixteen or seventeen year old girl might have the face and body of a supermodel, the vibe she gives off is of an overgrown junior high schooler.

Benji has no use for such subtleties, and since the college girls tend to wear skimpier bathing suits, his attention gravitates towards them. This time, as we crossed the beach, he made a big show of ogling a group of college chicks in string bikinis, to the point that he looked like a teenage version of Mr. Roper from Three’s Company leering at Suzanne Somers. I was embarrassed and wanted to punch him, but fortunately, the girls ignored us entirely.

We found an open spot, spread out our towels, and flopped down. It was a bright morning, and if I hadn’t been wearing my Ray-Bans, I wouldn’t have been able to see much of anything through the blinding glare that came off the sand. I was contemplating whether to go down to the water, when a beach ball suddenly landed in the middle of our spot, and a girl yelled out (too late): “Hey, Danny, catch!”

It was Jessie, one of my “semi-punk” friends with whom I’ve been hanging out a lot over the last year. Now, I’m not a punk, semi- or otherwise, but one of those people we call “floaters,” which means I don’t really belong to one group or another, but have friends in a bunch of different groups. I have jock friends; nerd friends; greaser friends; Goth friends — well, one — and punk friends.

Jessie is beautiful: tall, thin, with pale skin, and a pretty, but complex face. The truth is, she’s too good looking to be a convincing punk: instead, the punk elements make her beauty a little dangerous, which is a real turn-on. We also like a lot of the same music (Adam and the Ants turns out to be one surprising taste that we have in common), which we discovered in the conversations we used to share across the aisle in Mrs. Nardozzi’s Geometry class during our sophomore year. 

She stood in front of me, laughing, in a black Clash t-shirt and black bikini bottom. I noticed that her lips, fingers and toes were all painted purple and that she was wiggling the latter in the sand. 

“So you guys are playing juvenile delinquents too, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s us, a bunch of real criminals. Who are you here with?”

Jessie gestured behind her, where two more girls were approaching. The first was Claudia, who is a bona fide punk; the kind of girl who goes into the men’s bathroom during concerts (to avoid the lines at the women’s), pulls down her pants and spray pisses into the urinals. She’s shorter than Jessie, relatively plain looking, but with a tough, aggressive demeanor, and is way more punked out. On this particular day, she sported spiked black hair, thick black lines painted under her eyes like a baseball player, and a torn Dead Kennedys t-shirt and plaid shorts. I was sure that she was the only girl on the beach wearing steel-toed boots, and as she trudged across the sand, seething with what looked like a general resentment at the entire beach culture, I wondered how Jessie had convinced her to come. 

Bringing up the rear was Jill, who’s more of a greaser than a punk. She likes to hang out behind the school, smoking joints and cigarettes and blasting Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and has Farrah Fawcett-style hair, feathered and parted down the middle; usually wears jeans, high top Converse All-Stars, and some sort of sixties or seventies rock t-shirt. (Today she wore a halter top that ties in the middle). She also had on a blood red bikini bottom, which showed off her fine behind and long, tanned legs, and was carrying a small radio that was tuned to WLIR and playing the Hooters, “All You Zombies,” which came out a month ago and has been receiving heavy rotation on the station.

Benji has a massive crush on Jill, and the eager look that came over his face when he saw her made me dread the incompetent courtship antics that would inevitably come. Still, it meant that they would leave at some point (He would follow her around, and she would try to escape), so I could hit on Jessie without Benji ruining it with some stupid remark.  

“Hey, Claw. Jill.” I nodded to each of them.

“I hate the fucking beach,” Claudia declared, putting her hands on her hips and surveying the scene. “Look at all these fucking phonies. Let’s blow up the lifeguard tower!” She gestured towards the parking lot. “I’ve got a King-Size Tide in the car that I picked up for my mom. I read somewhere that if you light it on fire it turns into napalm.”

“Powder or liquid?” I asked.

“Powder, of course. How the fuck are you going to light liquid on fire?” She snorted in disgust. I was going to point out that gasoline is a liquid, but decided against it.

“Ah, right.” I adjusted myself on the beach towel. “So, Jessie, are you in on this violent plan?”

“I’m still catching up with the plans Claw made in the car on our way here.” She began counting on her fingers: “Spray paint the school buses with pink penises; break into the Royal Crown Players’ set room and write “You can’t spell ‘Crap’ without ‘R, C, P’” on everything in black permanent marker; and last but not least, sneak into the Principal’s office and write ‘I’M A DICK’ on the back of his suit jacket in white paint. Are you getting the vandalism theme here?”

“I’m getting it.”

“Yes, but I’m chucking all of that now,” Claudia said. “This is much more important. These people must be stopped!” Then, abruptly, she wandered off. “I’m getting a hot dog.”

“Hey, Jill! How’s it going!” Benji found his mojo.

“Uh, ok.” Jill shifted around. Looked at Jessie and me, who were staring at each other, and rolled her eyes. “I’m going down to the water.” She put down the radio and started making her way to the shoreline.  

Benji ran after her, “Can I go with you?”

“Why not?” Jill probably thought it would be more boring to watch Jessie and me flirt than to have Benji flirt with her.

Eddie rolled over on his stomach. “I’m taking a nap. You kids don’t talk too loud now, you hear?” Jessie sat down next to me on the beach towel.

We chatted for a while, about nothing in particular, and then the conversation steered to the time last year when she got mildly trampled during a Billy Idol concert at the Beacon Theater, and I carried her out of the crowd and gave her CPR on the carpet in the lobby. She always describes me as having saved her life whenever she recounts it.

“Seriously, you did save my life, you know. I would’ve died in there, if you hadn’t carried me out.”

“Yeah, though I think it was my expertise at CPR that really saved the day.”

“Uh, yeah, about that,” Jessie looked at me pointedly. “I know that was just an excuse to make out with me.”

“How can you say that? My motivations were entirely restorative.” I was wounded. 

“Restorative, right. You felt me up.”

“Those were chest thrusts…part of the treatment.”

She moved closer. “Some treatment.” 

I was inches away from kissing her, when the DJ announced the next song: “Now a little ‘ant music’, from their 1980 album, here’s the title track, “Kings of the Wild Frontier.”

Jessie jumped up. “Adam and the Ants! We have to dance to this.” She reached down and pulled me to her. We started dancing and singing.

“A new royal family, a wild nobility, we are the family!” Jessie shouted.

“No method in our madness! Just pride about our manner!” I yelled back. 

“Antpeople are the warriors!” she countered.

“Antmusic is the banner!” I jumped on her and we collapsed in the sand, laughing. I leaned in to kiss her again.

“Hey Guys!” Benji and Jill appeared next to us as if out of the ether. I fantasized about shoving his face into the sand and making him eat it.

“You’re back fast.” I tried not to sound too resentful.

“Fast?” Benji laughed. “We’ve been gone for over an hour.”

“I can confirm that.” Jill said. “Definitely more than an hour.”

“We had fun.” Benji put his arm around Jill who seemed to shrink. “I dunked Jill in the water.”

“Yeah, that part was great.” Jill picked up her radio. “Jessie, we should find Claw. We’re supposed to be at Frankie’s house in an hour.”

“Right.” Jessie got up and brushed the sand off. I watched her hands run up and down her legs and experienced a momentary surge of Benji-hate. “I bet you she’s sitting in the car smoking that joint she brought.”

“She better not be smoking it without us! Jill hurried towards the parking lot.

“Bye!” Jessie came up and kissed me quickly on the lips, her eyes sparkling. “See ya’!” Then, she was off too.

“Did I miss something?” Eddie rolled over.

“You didn’t, but I sure did.” I gave Benji a harsh look, but he wasn’t paying attention, as another group of college chicks was drifting by. Then he turned around.

“Let’s go up to the boardwalk and get some food.”

Eddie and I were hungry too, so we gathered up our stuff and headed over to the boardwalk. In a few minutes, we were sitting at one of the plastic tables, eating Nathan’s hot dogs with crinkle fries. No one said much, and after twenty minutes or so, I could sense Benji getting antsy.

“Let’s go to the bar,” he said, standing up. “I want a beer.”

I thought this was a fine idea, and Eddie didn’t care one way or the other, so we made our way across the boardwalk to the bar, which has a partly enclosed room with tinted windows and an outdoor area that is partially covered by a white awning. There was a free cocktail table with tall stools, so we planted ourselves there and signaled for the waitress.

Benji ordered a Heineken, I ordered a vodka tonic, and Eddie ordered a Sea Breeze. The waitress asked us for ID, and we pulled out the fake ones that we’d gotten just a few weeks ago, on a little adventure on 42nd street. She checked them, nodded, and went off to get the drinks, and I thought about how lucky it was that Driver’s Licenses don’t have pictures on them because if they did, they’d be much harder to fake.

The drinks came and we polished them off pretty fast, so we ordered another round. The sun beat down on us, making everything seem hazy. Benji was in the middle of telling a crude joke when we realized there was a man standing by our table. He was middle aged, maybe in his late forties or early fifties, and wore a dingy white linen suit with a rumpled turquoise button-down shirt underneath. Sunburned and wild-eyed, he looked like a Caribbean Dennis Hopper.

“Sup…” Benji muttered, trying to do a low-key brush off, but it just made the guy realize that we’d noticed him, and he leaned into our faces.

“So, you guys are hanging out, huh? Cool guys with cool brewskies!”

“Uh, yeah, right.” Eddie had the Willy Loman look again.

“This isn’t a brewsky,” I remarked. “It’s a vodka tonic.”

“Never mind that!” Dennis Hopper straightened up with a sudden jerk. “I just wanted you to know that I get it, you know? I feel what you’re going through!”

Benji looked around for the waitress. “I haven’t had enough of these to be dealing with this shit.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asked

“Good thing you should ask!” Caribbean Dennis Hopper fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a crumpled cigar. Lit it. “Because I’m here to tell you to wake up! Take a stand while you still can! Some of us out here support you!” He put a brotherly arm around Benji.

“Hands off, man!” Benji shrugged off his arm, while Eddie looked on with a kind of gleeful amazement.

Dennis Hopper got even more excited and started waving his arms. “You’re worried about me?! Are you crazy?!”

I tried to retain my composure, but Benji’s murderous glare at the guy, who was sucking meditatively on his cigar now — and seemed less Caribbean Dennis Hopper and more deranged Cuban cigar maker — was making it difficult. I raised my hand.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but what are you talking about? What are we going through? Who are ‘they’ and what are they doing to us?”

“AHA!” My question must have reinvigorated him, because he leaned in like before, but this time with a lit cigar. “What they’ve done is just outrageous! It’s a violation of your civil rights! In my day, there was none of this locked-in-the-school business and getting thrown in jail left and right for no good reason! None of this law-and-order bullshit! We could roam around as we liked! Have trysts in the stairwells! Even go out to lunch!!” This last point seemed to really upset him, because he spluttered with rage and shook his fist in the air.

Eddie recovered. “Dude, we skipped out of school at 10:30 this morning. No problem, no hassles. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but things aren’t any different now than they were when you…” he looked at Dennis Hopper dubiously, “…were in High School.”

“That’s what you say!” The wild eyed look was back. “But how do you know that’s what happened?”

“We just started drinking a half hour ago.” I was starting to feel confused. Was he fucking with us or really this nuts? Neither option was comforting, and the whole encounter was starting to freak me out.

Benji elbowed me. “Don’t talk to this loser. He’s just some fucking hippie burnout having a flashback or something.” He turned to go, but Dennis Hopper put his arm around him again, harder and tighter this time. He didn’t seem funny anymore.

“Wise guy, huh?”

Eddie was looking steadily at him now, almost like he was studying him. Then, Dennis Hopper got right up in Benji’s face, but he was talking to all of us. “And what year do you gentlemen think this is, exactly?”

Benji snorted, “It’s 1985, douchebag. Why don’t you go drop some more acid or something?  We’re out of here.” He pulled away from him.

“No! No! Don’t you see?! That’s what they want you to think!” Dennis Hopper’s tone was pleading. “That everything’s fine and dandy; that this is perfectly normal; that no one has to do anything; that we can just go on, the way things are. But, don’t you see that’s the trap? It’s not okay!” He pointed at us. “And it’s not 1985!”

His performance jarred me, and it wasn’t because I was scared (even though I was), but because I was starting to believe him; that we really were in some terrible situation and that somehow, we’d all forgotten.

Benji was unmoved. “I can’t believe you guys are buying this shit. I’m calling John and having him come pick me up. We’ll probably go hit another bar. You can stay here with Dr. Voodoo and have a wacko party.” He headed towards the restrooms, where the pay phones were, and Eddie and I were left with Caribbean Dennis Hopper. Everything had gone quiet, and I realized that we were the only people left in the bar.

I turned to the guy in order to get some clarification on what he’d said, but he’d lost interest. “Well, I can’t stand around here talking to you cool cats all day! Gotta’ go comb the beach for lost relics!” In a second, he was gone, and when we left the bar and looked around for Benji, it was clear that he’d left too.

Eddie tilted his head towards the parking lot. “I think we should go back to school.”

“What, you actually believed all that?”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but that was weird enough that we oughta’ check it out.” 

“Alright.” I was reluctant but also relieved that he was making the decisions. The beach had emptied out, and there were just mothers with little kids and old people; no teenagers or college students. We got back in the car, and the leather seats were burning hot from sitting out in the sun. Eddie started the engine and pulled out of the parking field.

I turned the radio on, but WLIR wasn’t coming in, just static. So I reached into the back and pulled the boombox up onto my lap, replaced Duran Duran with one of my sprawling compilation tapes, and pressed Play. It was queued to Wang Chung’s, Dance Hall Days. I don’t know if you know the lyrics, but they go like this:

We were so in phase 

In our dance hall days

We were cool on craze.

When I you and everyone we knew Could believe do and share in what was true. 

I said: Dance hall days