Mum loved espionage as was fast
becoming apparent! As we drove back to our Motel I asked why she felt it
necessary to confirm to Monique that I was George Michael. “Well, you look like him and you can sing”
was her reply. “She is very attractive
Jonathan, you could do well there”. Now
answer me this, what on earth was a sixty year old woman doing using the
phrase, “you could do well there?” I
asked her the same thing. “Well, she is very beautiful, obviously well
educated, has her own place and this is a lovely place to live”. So she marrying me off to a woman we had met
only three hours previously and basing her choice on none other than
the little known facts to hand. No, she
wasn’t a Jewish Mamma but the inference could be drawn.
For my part, one who was ‘heavily’ Sex driven and relationship ‘lite’, my immediate intention, far different from my
mothers of course, was to get inside Monique’s knickers as quickly as possible. Given that she believed (did she really?) I
was George; I expected that to happen with the minimum of fuss and nonsense. Far from possible marriage, children,
settling down in Southern California (I could almost hear Mum’s mind building a
tic list of objectives that would result in her having a Granny Annex at her
son and daughter-in-laws beachfront home in the sun) and a life envied by many,
I was deciding how early the following evening I could drop Mum back at the
Motel after dinner. Would there be a
need for coffee post meal? Would Mum
suggest a nightcap at another bar? Was
Mum likely to create a blocker on my amorous pursuit’s saying her health
demanded that I bid Monique good evening and take her back to the Motel,
tucking her in and lying there dreaming of what if scenarios? Far too much
thinking going on for our own good with both our heads filled with plans. One
with plans for the rest of their lifetime, the other, with plans limited to the
next night. With Mum tucked up in bed in one of her Hospital gowns now her ‘go to’ nightwear, I took a chair outside
our Motel room and sat on the walkway, glass of Jack Daniels to hand and
wondered about the day and night to come.
Eventually I retired as well, far later than normal, with pleasant
images flooding my head as I mentally removed Monique’s dress she’d been
wearing early that evening.
I awoke the following morning a
happy man, our plan for the day ahead was to travel out to Goleta Beach State
Park beyond the airport; by the University of California at Santa Barbara
(UCSB) campus. The beach forms a spit of sand between the mouth of a river
running behind it and to the south and the Pacific Ocean on the other
side. There is space for parking, a
café and bar where students would pull up in cars with loud music coming from
ghetto blasters and pile onto the beach, playing volley ball or generally
fooling around. Across the estuary the
beach resumed but was now backed by cliffs that led towards Santa Barbara. Most days we’d breakfast on the road, with
Mum taking coffee in bed, which I’d make before she rose and showered. Finding Goleta by accident, we had planned to
return and so by eleven am we were parking up and walking towards the
sand. A group of youths, both boys and
girls, had parked up by our car and were sat on their car hoods and were
fooling around, smoking and shouting, music blaring out. Mum and I decided we’d wander away down the
beach a little and settled on a plot of sand that was interspersed with knots
of grass. Towels positioned, we lay
back, Walkman on in my case, Marlboro on the go, National Enquirer and a paper
cup of coffee in Mum’s hands.
Whilst
always conscious of my weight, in fact I did very little to manage it and
surprisingly maintained a neat and trim thirty inch waist. Wearing Black Speedo swimming trunks and the
Marlboro cigarette stubbed out in an empty cup, I told Mum I was going for a
jog and set off towards the end of the spit.
The beach was not busy at all so I was not out to pose for once, and
tracked along the waters edge until I reached the mouth of the river. It was shallow the middle reaching no deeper
than my waist, so I waded in crossing swiftly and carried on jogging past the
cliffs.
As I ran I could feel the burn
of the sun on the top of my shoulders and enjoyed its warmth. I have always been more of a summer than
winter man and the climate of California was all right by me. I had developed anyway, through fair means
(sunlight) and foul (sunbed) a deep tan by that point and it felt good to be
jogging over the sand, the odd piece of wood, some seaweed and a few plastic
bottles the only hazards I needed to dodge as I ran along the seas edge. After a while I stopped and looked back to
see that I had travelled further than I'd intended, in fact I had turned
along the coast and around the headland losing sight of Goleta Beach
altogether. I tracked back around the
headland and back past the cliffs straining my eyes to try and identify Mum
against the sand, but failed to pick her out.
She had moved, probably to get some shade. As I crossed the river and rose up the sand
bank I again looked ahead and noted that whilst she was still sat where I had
left her, she was sat amongst a large group of people.
I picked up speed and eventually flopped down
on my towel quite exhausted to find her looking slightly alarmed. “Where did this lot come from then” I said,
gesturing towards the large group of people now easily identified as the group
we’d seen at the car park, plus assorted others. “They came over soon after you’d jogged away,
I’ve been quite worried Jonathan” she said.
Looking at the group more closely it was primarily made up of Hispanic
people, who were talking animatedly, smoking dope and drinking beer. There were maybe a handful of white American’s
amongst them but as a group, their ages ranged from late teens into their
thirties so I guessed that they were not necessarily from the University. Occasionally, one of them would get up and
walk back to the cars and return with more beer and I guessed that the
afternoon was only going to get louder and more raucous as it progressed, so I said
that we’d better pack up, either moving further down the beach towards the
university or leaving altogether.
As we packed up, a few shouts
came our way along the lines of “Hey, why are you leaving patron” or “Go get
me a beer el jefe” the accents and insults were much like the characters in
Carlito’s Way, starring Al Pacino!
Ignoring their requests we packed up and wandered, as nonchalantly as
possible away from them and up the beach towards the café and the car park. As we neared the café where we had decided
to sit and have a cold drink, a number of other cars swung into the car park,
music blaring, beer swilling youths and adults clambering out as soon as they
parked up. I decided that we should hang
around for a while to see what would happen and told mum, whereas she was of
another mind and would be happy to leave.
It made no difference anyway as no sooner had we swapped ideas,
than two Police Cars drove into the car park and four Policemen emerged from
them. Mum wanted to stay now.
The Police Officers wandered around the cars
parked near ours looking in the windows and looking across at the group of people
they belonged to. A number of the group, mostly men but one or
two women as well, came from the beach waving their arms, around shouting at the Officers, asking what they wanted, what they were doing, they'd "done nothing!"
The Officers remained calm and
spoke quietly out of ear shot, but whatever they were saying seemed to have
the desired affect as the shouting subsided and the women stopped dancing
frantically around the men which had been happening during the commotion. The Officers looked in our
direction mainly because the man who appeared to be the main speaker for the
group had been pointing at the Café, gesticulating with his arms, which in turn
had prompted the others to jump around in what appeared to be a war dance. Once again the Officers spoke and the crowd
stopped dancing. Mum was really interested and kept wondering out loud as to
what the problem might be? One of the
Police officers walked across to the Café, said “Good afternoon” to those
gathered around and asked for the owner.
A woman stepped forward and walked back towards the group someway,
before stopping about thirty metres from them.
They spoke to one another, and then walked across to the main party and
wild gesticulations began again, with whoops and screech’s coming from the
women. One of the Officers who had
obviously had enough of that, grabbed two women, each by an arm and frogmarched
them to the beach, the women appearing as rags dolls being dragged across the
car park and sand, where he placed them down on the ground, said something and
walked back. Not one of the men appeared
fazed by this and did nothing to stop the Officer or to protest.
Still more conversation and then
the leader said something to one of the other men, who wandered down to the
beach, picked up a bag and walked back again.
He opened the bag; a Police Officer looked into it and took out bottles
of beer and potato chips, showed them to the lady from the Café, who nodded her
head. The items were placed back into
the bag and the bag passed to the lady.
She turned and walked back to the Café muttering to herself as she
passed by what was now a substantial crowd gathered under the awning. The guy who produced the bag turned around
and was handcuffed by one of the Police Officers, whilst the others wandered
back to the beach except the leader who stood watching his compadre getting
arrested. The Police Officers placed him
in the back of a car got in as well and drove around the car park and out onto
the road leading to the Airport.
The crowd at the Café dispersed
leaving Mum and I along with a few others still sat at the tables. The owner came out and was asked by someone
she obviously knew what had gone on. It
transpired that this group had consistently raided her fridges for beer every time
they came down to the beach and she had finally had enough. The Police had
threatened to search everyone on the beach for drugs, which had set off the
shouting and protestations of innocence.
The lead Police Officer had said that if they produced the items and the
thief owned up and came with them, nothing further would happen, which is what took
place. The owner said that the crowd
were not necessarily a bad bunch, just that she was sick and tired of losing
money on them and that she felt it time to call a halt to their stealing from
her.
Mum spoke up then saying it was
disgusting behaviour and that they should be ashamed of themselves. Where were
their parents she wanted to know? Mum
calmed down with more coffee; milky coffee or Café Latte as we came to know it
ten years later. Mum said she had been
surrounded by them at one point and was preparing to give them a piece of her
mind when I came back and extricated her from her predicament. Lucky for them I thought! After such an eventful day we packed up,
heading back to the Motel and a rest.
I
needed to trim my stubble anyway, as I did not want to scratch Monique’s inner
thighs and Mum needed to sleep before dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment