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stripe communities
Saturday, April 17 1999
Kim's visiting friend Terra had a miserable night sleeping on our couch. It wasn't the couch that was the problem, it was her boyfriend Stephen. The normally reliable, reachable, informative-as-to-whereabouts guy had suddenly disappeared from radar. He was ignoring pages, not answering his phone, and not calling anyone. Terra was worried sick and so was Stephen's mother (with whom Terra kept closely in contact). Stephen wasn't like this. Had something happened to him? Or was he revealing a new part of himself that hadn't been evident in the two months she'd known him? Terra was in such despair that she was actually saying things like, "I'd certainly rather he'd be sleeping with his former girlfriend than dead out there on the highway somewhere."
Today, though, Stephen turned up at his house, where his Dad, out on a search for him, found him sleeping alone and untroubled. His excuse was that he'd lost his pager and hadn't noticed its absence. So now everything's once again wonderful in Terra's life. Once more she's brimming-over with that oh-so-familiar super-sappy relationship-based enthusiasm that is such a bore to everyone not involved.
April has been so cold and miserable that I'd been wondering if perhaps winter in San Diego comes four months later than it does elsewhere. But today the warmth finally was upon us. There was little choice but to head to the beach. Kim and I fed our hangovers some hot Mexican smoke and headed down Cape May to the Pacific Ocean.
As we stopped to chat with Scott and friends at his place a block closer to the beach along Cape May, it occurred to me that beach communities are strongly "striped." People walk to and from the beach down the same street mostly every time they go. On such walks they're never in a hurry. It's usually the weekend anyway, during prime-socializing hours. Thus, when they encounter like-minded extroverts hanging out in the front yards they're passing along the way, there's a low barrier to friendship-formation. And every time they return to the beach, the potential to refresh these friendships is high. Not only are they meeting friends, they're also meeting their friends, most of whom live along the same route to the beach. The people in this social network all live in a narrow stripe leading to the ocean, and there are many of these stripes, all in parallel, with relatively little crossover friendship formation perpendicular to the "grain."
I used plenty of sun block and thought I was safe to spend hours slowly reading from a back issue of Wired under the bright April sun. The only interruption in this beach relaxation was when Kim and I went off to go buy a cooler and fill it with beer and soft drinks.
The best thing about hanging out on a crowded beach amongst members of your "stripe community" is the gossip. The auditory distractions are relatively few: the distant droning of a boat, the gentle crashing of the waves, the calling of shorebirds and the screaming of children. So you can hear multiple simultaneous conversations around you. You can tune into one while mentally filtering out the others, "surfing" between them as boredom sets in or interesting words poke out of the din in the other conversations you've been ignoring. I paid close attention to one conversation between two of Scott's friends. They'd both attended San Diego High School at the same time and hadn't communicated since graduation. One was a jaded, cynical alcoholic woman in overalls and the other was a bleached-blond guy with crooked teeth and lots of tattoos. They were flirting with each other conversationally, trying to impress one another with their occupations. The guy claimed to be an "artist," though it turned out his art mostly appeared on surf boards. The woman claimed to be an "art dealer," though I have a feeling that meant she was a receptionist at an art gallery. She was, after all, very proud that her GPA in high school had only been 1.7. I noticed an interesting thing about their conversation. Neither one was listening to the other. The guy would bring up a subject, then the girl would bring up another subject, then the guy would continue where he'd left off, then so would the girl. Feedback was mostly of the form, "I hear what you're saying," and "uh huh." Despite their painfully-evident miscommunication, they somehow made a connection, promising to go to their High School reunion as a couple. Based on what I heard, I think they'd have a one night stand and then be very uncomfortable with each other from that day forth.
At a certain point I noticed I was turning pink despite the sunblock lotion. So I told Kim I couldn't take it anymore. We headed home together, and she left for work soon thereafter.
I made Terra a door key at the ever-friendly hardware store down on Newport Avenue. Then I wandered around to record stores, taking in the festive energy that permeates any beach town on the first warm day of Spring.
In the evening, Terra and I had a fairly interesting chat about subjects such as the need to assert one's space in a relationship. She made all kinds of sappy declarations about her boyfriend Stephen, saying he was "the one," and a guy for whom "I've never felt this way before." I wonder if people feel this way every time they fall in love, only to suffer amnesia about this feeling late in the relationship and during the breakup. It's all about chemicals in the brain, you see, and when you're fucked up on chemicals, it always feels like you're feeling a way that you've never felt before.
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