My Only Friend La Croix - Chapter 7

The chilled can slides down through my clenched fingers, perspiration acting like laborers rolling stones on a log up a hill, fighting. Down we fall, My Only Friend La Croix, but I certainly shall catch you. Not a drop to be spilled in this bath water.

I spent much of the late spring and early summer contemplating if San Francisco was the place for me. Some dates here, a little climbing there, and a lot of work spread between.

I walked to the gym under the great green trees bordering Harrison Street with their fresh orange-red poufs: delicate floral arrangements of slowly-shedding needles. My mind was blank with nothing to call them. This struck me with sudden realization and longing towards my prior, familiar home, coupled with a sense of foreign betrayal to my new home. Alienation from this place: I deceptively consider it home, but how could I exist here and not know the names of the trees?

In Arizona, I came into spring knowing of the imminent but temporary coats of gold which envelop the Palo Verde. I would go out into the yard and step upon seed pods dropped by our mesquite with its three-foot wide trunk and spindly arms. My dad would go out in a large hat and leather work gloves and a sweat-stained, long-sleeve shirt to collect them into a five gallon bucket so he could mow the grass. He would gripe about the labor of having such a tree, but it always provided shade under its great branches for our backyard, keeping us cool in the southwest heat.

I remembered the Mexican Bird with its delicate flower pods that I would go out and squeeze to uncover their unborn pedals in an early morning before a trip to Saguaro lake along the Salt River. I would watch the bees collect pollen from the orange bush with buds that burst into flowers and their collection of spindles from which the bees hang like little pole vaulters. The spindles buckled under the weight of the bees until they flew off to ease the load and move onto the next. The fruit of the Prickly Pear, the crowns of the Saguaro, and the arms of the Agave which reach towards the sky. My favorite of all was the creosote, with its rich, waxy dew scent that comes after rain.

I don’t know all of the trees and plants in Arizona, but I recognized the inherent, taken-for-granted familiarity which stemmed from being born into that environment. Now I was without such a grounding.

I crossed Harrison Street past 18^th and made my way toward Mission Cliffs. A slender woman approached from the south, walking the opposite direction, carrying a case of what I perceived to be Coors Banquet. As I got closer, I realized that I was mistaken, and that she carried none other than My Only Friend La Croix in her right hand. Limoncello can be deceiving. How wrong was I to assume the more sinister—My Only Friend La Croix makes for a better choice than Coors in the early morning.

She did not look at me as she passed. I was still growing accustomed to passers-by staying on guard from catching the crazy-eye of the strong stranger. It was dangerous to acknowledge and associate yourself via eye contact into this skewed society. The social phenomena struck me fully when I was once side-eyed by a baby in a stroller. Best to keep to yourself. Still a suburbanite, I was slow to adopt the case of paranoia and hyper-vigilant behavior as status quo.

I climbed for a while. My heart was not in it. I walked back home and talked to old friends on the phone.

I lazed on my leather bench trying to absorb as much sun as possible. I pulled out my phone, looking up the name of the trees in San Francisco with red flowers. “Red flowering gum tree,” it was. I romanticized the name as I tried to romanticize the city, despite the coming melancholy that the “summer” was bringing. I did not see the melancholy to be ephemeral—no, this was forever. What struck me so deeply, putting out my fire like a good boy scout at camp, smothering any hope of resurgence to the bright, hot fire and passion which warm the spirit? I chose to linger on this melancholy. To stifle it was one option, but so was to lean into that hollow feeling which granted me a foreign exposure to a sense with which I was not intimately familiar—a sense meant to be savored and explored, purely on the basis that it was inexplicable.

It became easy to forget that wallowing ought not be forever. I tried to recognize this feeling as fixed to a place and time, which I would soon leave behind in its limbo, like the half-sleep that prompts a call for five more minutes of rest. I knew it was best to get up and move; the waking world had much to offer with the day. The sun might only be out for a moment.

Painting was dull. Everything I made felt sub-par so I was dissuaded—perhaps my skills were left in Arizona. Perhaps it had always been luck from the start.

Saturday was passing quickly. I sat at my desk and caught myself looking through the aperture of the close houses on Sanchez into the western hillside past the point where Market Street became Portola, comprising a sliver of Twin Peaks, envisioning that within one of the houses facing me was a subliminal figure which was only a speck out on the patio. I imagined the prospect of this speck waving out to me, acknowledging my presence from afar, despite either of us being able to make out the figure or the details of the other. I imagined that if we were caught at the right moment, we would cherish our mutual, yet indistinguishable presence.

The fog cascaded over the houses unique to each day. I forgot where the top of the hill truly sat with my vision obscured. I perceived a narrow slice of the hill. It caught me off-guard to realize my memory had lapsed—where were those peaks?

I hoped that my imagined figure and I were connected, even if obstructed by the fog. Yet never did I go to Twin Peaks in search of this apparition. Why should I? It was simply the whimsical expression of desire; I wanted for nothing more than to have a lover so close that I could reach out and grab her, but my mind played tricks on me—I craved a connection, not too close, but not too far.

The fog remained light wisps in my apartment that day. I laid on the bench and felt the sun and sensed a minor sweat. La Croix beckoned from the other side of the apartment.

“Oh, La Croix,” I said to him, “you can never get away from me that easily.” I savored the sip. The carbonation had left the can so the sour flavor of coconut was more prominent. I turned again to face my painting, leaned back against my stool, and stared into the work. I rolled invisible money between my fingertips, feeling for leftover oil, peering down at my flesh. The sun was nearly setting and I was alone in my apartment with dim studio light. I set La Croix down so that we could ignore each other while I focused on my painting, knowing that I would need him in a moment.

The canvas sat in front of me, unfinished. I couldn’t remember how the piece had begun, but it was growing near completion. Gentle yellow and golden folds sat atop a deep purple—profound purple like an especially bizarre dream. Sharp rolls of black, infused with streaks of a brighter purple, rolled and twisted like waves on the canvas. I inspected it some more and noted the spots which did not yet have the necessary slice of oil in place. I made a note to fix the vacancies, hoping to apply the perfect slice of oil at a later moment, but My Only Friend La Croix was calling.

I took another swig of La Croix and set him down to face the canvas—perhaps he would give me some choice words about what to do next. I washed my hands then sat at my desk to write.

How is it so easy for My Only Friend La Croix to remain so still? Whenever I come looking for My Only Friend La Croix, I find that he remains in a peculiar, inhuman state: unperturbed, waters calm and without ripples. My Only Friend La Croix does not make any attempt to evade me, but how dare he! He does not reciprocate my calls when I begin to search for him, yet I suppose he does not need to—I can feel his presence at every turn. It calls in the back of my skull, and I know that My Only Friend La Croix is out there, echoing, “drink me.” Oh, Poor Only Friend, Poor My Only Friend La Croix. He lacks exactly what I can offer him, what he instills in me; for only together we can stir the waters and rock the boat, shaking things up and inducing a reaction of such fuzzy bubbles.

Never truly sure what I was talking about. Perhaps I was reading too much Proust. I fondly remembered reading Proust aloud to Dee the last time that we stayed together, strewn out along my low bed. I did my best with the French pronunciation and stopped every now and then to explain obscure vocabulary.

I missed her immensely. No one compared despite the fact that I tried my hardest to assimilate to a new life in San Francisco; she and I both knew that it didn’t make sense for us to be together from afar, and neither of us had the expectation that one would hold out for the other. Still, I had never met anyone like her and I knew that I didn’t want to be with anyone else.

I considered my little idiosyncrasies from the last time that we spent time together—my annoyances at her excessive use of toothpaste and leaving the sponge wet in the sink. Problems of my own mind, not real issues. I found a lack of alone time to paint. I had awaited my reunion with My Only Friend La Croix; I needed the time to get into the zone. I never was compelled to paint with Dee around. Those activities with which I center myself have been put aside; new acts have taken their place. Still, I need time and space for my own hobbies.

I distracted myself with a walk. I zipped up a jacket and slipped on my Vans and took La Croix out the door with me. I did a block to the east and two to the north, then came down Sanchez back to my apartment.

I caught a glimpse of the same house in perpetual construction up the hill. Every time that I’d walk south down Sanchez, just between 16th and 17th, I had an unobscured view of one of the houses up there—maybe up on Liberty Drive—which always looked to me that it was still just rafters. They hadn’t put in the windows in the months that I had been here. Maybe poor supply chain, maybe a shortage of labor—who knows?

I thought back to Jared doing labor for the woodshop that did specialty doors. They built these beautiful custom doors with walnut or cherry or mahogany. Jared used to describe these doors like they were made of solid gold—he said they’d swing on their hinges, hundreds of pounds heavy, fitted perfectly to the frame on a house created for high rollers. He mentioned Shaq as a client: imagine the grandeur needed for any standard-stature rich person, then multiply that by the factor which amounts to the massive former Suns player.

Jared would always talk about the guys doing the labor for these doors and how they were paid reasonably well, all things considered, but it ultimately amounted to peanuts compared to the revenue generated on a sale of these custom doors. Thus Jared wasn’t worried about taking the occasional piece of maple or birch or walnut to bring home to his own shop that he had constructed for our Phoenix house with those scraps.

I thought about the discrepancy in pay—Jared was talking about these guys, Willie and Rocky, how they were the type of working-class man you’d find at such a place and that their cut was really a pittance. I stared at the house and thought about that: how do you make sure you’re on the right side, peeling away from the competition so that you’re the one with the labor and its fruits?

Jared enjoyed the labor of working at doors for his stint. I could tell it was grating on him eventually, despite how he praised the advantages. He was building a solid core from carrying around tools and doors all day. Jared told me about the camaraderie of being in the shop with Willie, who would deeply and immediately echo out a stout “fuck!” every time that he heard someone else curse in the shop. This sounded a hell of a lot jollier than sitting and pecking at a keyboard, diagnosing why an asynchronous method wasn’t receiving its passed parameters.

I came back into my apartment and glared at what I had done to the canvas. I threw the empty La Croix can into the recycle bin. I thought back to the simplicity of life in Phoenix and the connections that I had.

I grabbed a tangerine La Croix and went to fill the bath.

My Only Friend La Croix exists as the line between silence and static. I sat in the bath, soaking my body. I cracked into the La Croix. The sounds of the vicinity of my apartment seemed duller than before, verging on true silence. There were sporadic gusts of wind which felt to be above me and the world was otherwise quiet. It was one of the most quiet experiences I had felt in a while. Shit, it might have been one of the most lonely experiences I had in a while as well. I was in a closed room inside of another room, and if I was to have a stroke, no one would have found me for weeks. The only way that they would have found me is if my family grew suspicious after not having hearing from me for a while. The closest person who really knew the inner workings of my life was maybe my aunt in the East Bay, who might have come to attempt to check on me in my gated apartment complex. Maybe Snake would have grown curious if I never responded to him, but that seemed unlikely given our relationship at the time.

I heard the fine line between silence and static. Small popping bubbles were the only thing to break up the absence of any sound. I stared at the orange exterior of My Only Friend La Croix and smiled, for it was a good day to not die alone in the bathtub.

I have listened to you quite well, My Only Friend La Croix, I thought. Your presence in my life is ever-growing—you have captured every corner of my psyche, and, well, you’re right, My Only Friend La Croix. The simple elegance which you exude has stricken me and I see your point. But it’s easy for you to say, My Only Friend La Croix, as you are born of a perfect form and you recognize the impermanence of life. My Only Friend La Croix, once you’re gone, you’re gone, but that was your purpose all along.

Oh, My Only Friend La Croix, how you are surely misunderstood. To have an existence straddling the line of transient and disposable body along one which satisfies and socializes me so must be impossible—meaningful and meaningless. To add insult to injury, My Only Friend La Croix, I know you must understand that you are misunderstood. Yet surely you remain nonplussed—nothing gets into your crisp aluminum skin. You stand still, unfazed, La Croix. Still, never unfizzed.

I toweled off and put on shorts, cracked the window by the street and let the chill air roll in. I needed the ventilation to paint. I never ran the heat, for it would be a waste with an open window, so I was forced to upregulate. I found it better to wear just a pair of shorts while I painted and let myself be so cold as to tell my body to make its own damn warmth.