5—The Pink Monkey

Tethered to the flatbed truck rounding the corner was a three-story-tall pink-vinyl King Kong bobbing away on a helium high. At the four corners of the flatbed were floodlights aimed upward at the pink monkey to bring tidings of the Grand Opening of the new Rebel Gas Station and Mini Mart.

As the flatbed angled its way into the parking area behind the new gas station and mini mart, I rolled down the window of my pickup and called to the hard hat, “Isn’t there some kind of zoning law against pink monkeys?”

“You’re in Las Vegas, babe,” he shouted back.

Not for long, big boy, I shrieked at him in my mind, after which I whipped out the assault rifle from my imagination and blew off his hard hat and the hard hats of his hard-hatted buddies. As they fled the site, I turned my weapon on the environmental atrocity. As the pink monkey fizzled to the ground, I sped off in my trusty Toyota, never to be seen again in the town of cards...

•••

As I described the fantasy to my therapist, she scribbled notes on her big yellow tablet. When I’d finished, she looked up and asked, “Have you given any thought to taking that vacation we discussed last week?” 

I wanted to smack her. 

“I’m unemployed,” I said. “Unemployed people don’t take vacations.”

Following our session, I turned over the ignition in my pickup, sat with my foot on the accelerator, and contemplated the cement block wall at the end of the parking lot. 

But the cats. Who would take care of the cats?

Back in my apartment, I sat staring at my checkbook. 

Any trip would require dipping into my emergency fund. 

“You’re in Las Vegas, babe,” I said to myself. “And you have to get out.”

But where? And what would I do when I got there?

Then it occurred to me: 

What I missed most about the desert was the space. Nearly every day after work, I would ride my bike out into that wide open space. In that space was a stillness that had the power to absorb all the bureaucratic expectations and pressures that threatened to define me. What happened to me in the stillness always felt like the answer to a prayer. Except that I never prayed. And what I heard sounded like the distant echo of the departed sea. Hearing this, I knew who I was going back to the first spark of life in the primal deep. 

Without the desert around me, I was lost. So maybe if I followed the sound of the sea to the sea itself, I could find my way back to the person I was before I lost everything and became a cliche.

I chose the Oregon coast because I’d never been there. And I chose the seaside village of Oceanside because I’d heard it had a motel on a hill overlooking the sea and no shops. On a September morning two weeks later, I boarded the plane for Portland where I would rent a car and drive to the coast. 

Had I known what the sea had in store for me, I’m not sure I would have gone.

Next: “Fax and Copie”