Beach Boy Blood In My Veins

In My Room

In March 1987 my father develops carcinoma of the throat and mouth. The cancer grew aggressive and finally attacked his lungs, this probably due to smoking both cigarettes and reefer for forty years. By September he is dead. He was fifty-five. I was twenty-two

My two older brothers and I are in my upstairs bedroom reflecting on life with father. It is here that I am offered a thick marijuana joint. They wanted to get high to numb the pain of just losing our dad. I had never smoked pot before but believed that in lieu of a toast, and in honor of Dad’s love of the weed, a small toke would do just as well. I am vulnerable. My defenses are down. I wanted to know him. I accept it readily.

As I smoke the joint, imitating the distinct hissy draw that I heard every day of my life from my immediate family, I quickly feel my mind expand and my perceptions alter. Not only do my thoughts unfold, but by body appears to enlarge as well. I begin laughing uncontrollably, hunched over careful of bumping my head on the ceiling of my room, which is now as small as a doll's house. My bedroom is no longer my own, with the familiar autographed poster of troubled pop icon Brian Wilson scowling down from the paneled wall, or the framed autographs I had collected from minor left of the dial pop singers, or the canvases of some of my more recent paintings. It quickly grows dark, and I feel as if I am in a Turkish opium den, where the only light to be seen is the blue strobe of a thirteen-inch television flickering in the corner and the orange firefly glow of the joint moving from my brother’s mouth to my own.

After joint turns to roach and another makes the rounds, I am completely stoned and out of contact with myself and everyone else in the room. I am alive but only in my head, where Captain Kirk on the TV is suddenly profound and the music that accompanies his fight sequence is akin to a Wagnerian musical drama. I am captured like a prehistoric insect in amber. My feelings of embarrassment melt away and I see my brothers eye each other as conspirators. They enjoy watching me get loose. They always saw me as uptight, which was rare for an eccentric artist, but all too true for me. I will never forget this moment, not for the dubious achievement of it being my first high, but because it is the first time Mom would see me high.

As she enters my room, I almost want to embrace her, saying, "Now I know why you smoke, Ma! Now I know!"

Wouldn’t It Be Nice

November 1989. I lay asleep in the rear upstairs bedroom of my house. Feeling the presence of someone standing in the room watching me, I open my eyes. There, in the center of the room stands an unexpected, uninvited but very welcome Anya-Marie. She’s a young Filipina artist and dancer I recently met and got close to while attending classes at NYC’s School of Visual Arts.

Wearing a beautiful smile on her sun-shaped face, her eyes radiate a benevolent gentleness. Anya's blouse is a simple black knit worn over a long, billowy rustic print dress. The zenith of pleasure in my once over of this lovely girl is achieved when I notice she stands there before me barefoot. We had talked earlier about my intense foot fetish, and I was grateful for the little show I received with this wake-up call.

We look at each other for a long moment. It appears she must have been standing there for a while, watching me sleep. I figure my mom must have let her in and sent her up. I am filled with shock, delight and embarrassment. Not knowing anyone was coming, I didn't have time to clean up. The place is a wreck. I am a wreck. But Anya-Marie just stands there, curling and uncurling her pretty toes in the shag rug and smiling sweetly. Everything is alright in the world.

Although my hair is a mess and my breath probably stinks, I beam brightly from my bed and outstretch my arms to her. Anya-Marie eases onto the bed and under the covers with me.

She says, in her teasing little voice while moving close to my body, "Let's tanday, would you like that?"

"Tanday? What's that?" I ask.

"In my language 'tanday' means cuddle", she answers, warming me with her arms.

"You see? Like this..." and Anya presses her small, soft body as close to mine as butter on warm toast.

"Ummmm, tanday", she moans. "Say it", Anya says softly.

"Tanday", I oblige.

"Ummmm, tanday", she repeats, rubbing my body tenderly but with a definite passion. It is obvious this is more than a word, but a feeling and she is basking in its beautiful meaning.

As we hug, I tell her how pretty a word I think it was. She continues moaning lightly while rubbing her feet up and down my lower legs. This drives me insane with lust. I want to make love to her but make no moves to do so. I don't want to spoil the beauty of the moment, the "tanday", at least not so soon, by embarking on an animalistic, ego-driven endeavor. Instead, we kiss lightly and continue to cuddle.

Just then my heart melts when Anya-Marie coos in my ear "Mahal kita". I don't know what I just heard but she makes it sound so gentle, so loving.

"Huh?"

"Oh, that means I love you", she answers, then repeats, sweetly, "Mahal kita".

I speak the word incorrectly in response and Anya-Marie repeats, syllabizing slowly, "Ma-hal-ki-ta". I answer back correctly this time. She smiles so pleased and perfectly that I almost can't believe this is my life producing such an innocently touching and sincere moment. Anya-Marie kisses me again and, as I bury my face in her long, silky hair, I feel oddly like I am part of some sensual exchange student program. It is the first day of class and Anya-Marie appears happy and proud to be educating me on the must-knows of a Filipina/American relationship.

Laying on our sides facing each other I stare deep into Anya-Marie's eyes as she says "Mahalni, mahalni, mahal kita. That means I love you very, very much." I repeat the new phrase. She is delighted by how quickly I pick up on my new love language. We lay in bed for a long while. Our tanday is tender, yet passionately so. Time passes while Anya and I embrace in bed, talking while the television chatters in the background. Neither of us interested in the broadcast.

Anya-Marie suddenly sits up and says, "I brought some music I want you to listen to." This couldn't please me more.

With over one thousand albums in my own collection, I am delighted to have someone turn me on to something I haven't heard and do the same for them. It is even more thrilling to share an afternoon of music listening with a girlfriend. In doing so, Anya-Marie will be given access into a sacred corner of my life that I don't get to share often.

Anya-Marie pulls up her bag of records, eager to play them. I turn on the receiver and turntable. First up was some very atmospheric pop from Enya. Anya-Marie listens for a moment, then gets up to dance. It looks like she went to the Stevie Nicks School of Gypsy Dress Twirling, yet she carries herself like a petite ballerina. She is enchanting to watch. After a while Anya motions for me to join her in a dance. I gave her an "aw shucks, no" shrug that I hope will dissuade her, but she persists. Grabbing my hands she pulls me from where I sit on the bed and draws me towards her.

"Come on!" she shouts excitedly over the music.

I think about my past excursions of late-night dancing while high on grass in this very room. I think about how bizarre it all was when I dressed to perverse perfection and danced for hours by myself while the music blasted in my ears. I think about how sick that behavior is and how I no longer want to be sick. Throwing caution to the wind, I begin to dance with Anya-Marie. At first it is awkward because I realize I have done very little dancing with women before but soon I find my rhythm. I thought I'd be embarrassed but I am ecstatic, “sailing away”. Anya-Marie is opening me up to an experience I had missed. She is showing me life, vitality. By the third song we are dancing close and dirty with each other. Anya is unlocking one of my "lost" selves.

I am so moved by the events taking place that I break from our lover's clutch and run to the rear bedroom. I thumb quickly but purposefully through the spines of my large album collection. It doesn't take long for me to find that one special selection.

Re-entering the front bedroom I remove the new age/Celtic songstress from the turntable and put the diamond on a time-tested classic. Anya and I sit on the floor. We listen as minor pops and scratches give way to the melodic tinkling of a celeste and then BOOM! "Wouldn't It Be Nice"...

I choose the Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' because it captured the hopes of young love and the angst of young adulthood.

"This whole album really should tell you how I feel," I say to Anya-Marie. And so, it does.

From the opening track to "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)," "You Still Believe in Me," "That's Not Me" and "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times," Brian Wilson's odes to insecurity, innocence and unconditional love hit home more than ever at this particular point in my life. As she sits in silence, I am afraid Anya-Marie will think my playing this "oldies" album by the notoriously super-white Beach Boys is a shamefully unhip and corny thing to do. But I let the LP play to the end, justified by its relevance to the moment. Nothing else in the house or the world is appropriate for my life's soundtrack as this LP right now.

As the sound of a dog barks, the bells clang and the freight train rumbles an end to the LP, Anya-Marie leans over and kisses me tenderly on the lips. Our kissing becomes heavier. Anya's tongue dances in my mouth and mine sloppily in hers. I caress her bosom, and she responds hungrily.

As the needle rests in the grooves, replaying the LP, Anya takes my hand and guides me to the bed. After almost two months Anya-Marie and I are finally onto something that was bigger than the both of us. Unfortunately, due to my persistent mental illness our relationship will crash and burn by the end of the week.

Sweet Insanity

February 1990. See B.S. television dispatches more Christ-watch bulletins disguised within the program dialogue and commercials. I am visited by the presence of two former girlfriends. Scarlett officiates the evening’s haunting. Missy’s cries out from the distance like a carnival barker, "This ain't no free ride."

I hear familiar voices from the TV speaker. Though the faces on the screen are of famous people, they speak in the voices of women I've known. Women I've bedded. One by one, and then in conversational groups, these women give testimonials to my shallow lifestyle as a non-committal playboy. From my first girlfriend as a teenager to all the hit and runs I've had in my relatively short carnal career. The gang's all here. Their voices surround me, only I am not coddled and informed of my imminent greatness. Now, I am slammed hard with anecdotes and sound bites conjuring all the wrong I'd done in the ways of love. Scarlett leads the march down misery lane, twirling the barbed baton in my Hall of Shame. Though all of these women come and go like ethereal wisps of smoke, Scarlett's presence lingers, like a stone suspended by a string. Maybe because our relationship was the closest I'd come to achieving mature, healthy contact with someone of the opposite sex. Swept up in reliving my past and fearing the future, I drop to my knees and beg forgiveness, blubbering to all of my exes, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

What was an ersatz reunion of former flames blossoms into a star-studded party of the mind. All of my idols, past and present, everyone who I ever wanted to know makes an appearance as if stepping from behind an imagined velvet curtain. Scarlett remains as the hostess, introducing each celestial celebrity guest with the playfully cliché, yet appropriate question, "Do you recognize THIS voice?"

Most of the guests Scarlett escorts out of the ether are long dead painters and an incongruous assortment rock and roll recording artists, people whose work I've respected most.  Prince struts out with Missy on his arm. He gives me a knowing wink. She giggles. Scarlett smiles at my reaction to her bringing out the big guns.

"I thought you'd enjoy that. There's someone else who'd like to meet you," Scarlett says, disappearing momentarily, returning with the presence of another. My head swivels to face a large, framed poster of troubled Beach Boy genius Brian Wilson. This poster was autographed and personalized to me.

"Did you get your shot?" Wilson asks.

"Brian!" I exclaim, as if reconvening with an old, dear friend.

Since childhood I’d admired Brian Wilson's musical acumen and grew up feeling tremendous pity for his psychological ills and addictions. After my breakdown I empathize and share a kinship with him, seemingly understanding the link of "creative genius" and pain. Wilson is referring to the tremendous opportunity offered to amend the under-achievement that plagues my life. I could now do something wonderful and important. As the man who would be king, I accept the challenge.

God Only Knows

June 2025. One of God’s Angels sent to Earth is Brian Wilson. Just ask him. Why do you think the voices have been tormenting him since 1963?

He received the download and knew Christ will call soon. Brian is scared.

“The audience knows, but it’s okay,” His middle brother Denny smiles.

“Yeah, Bri!” younger brother Carl cries out.  “Ya coming with us, Den?”

“Nah. I’ll stay down here in Hell and keep Charlie, the Mind Fucking Demon and their three headed dog company.”