Bringing his cigarette to his mouth, my friend stared at me. I watched the sky, and sat silently. He nudged my shoulder and asked me what my necklace represented. He told me he’d seen me wear it often, but he didn’t know if there was any meaning behind it.
I told him and he nodded his head, “That’s cool man, that’s cool,” and he turned to the clouds.
I’ve always admired him, the way he’d carry himself with his sly smile, and doing things assuming that no one was watching, even though we all were. He was an artist, and an incredible one at that, making huge murals with his graffiti art in the LA Industrial District, or drawing small things in his sketchbooks that he’d only start sharing if someone asked him first.
A lot of people considered us an odd pairing. They said that I was always thinking, and that he hardly ever was. He would say things in class and in conversation that were random and sometimes inappropriate, and when you asked him for advice, he would often say that he had no idea what he’d do either. I felt he was the perfect friend for me.
In my first year of high school I rarely spoke. I wanted to watch and notice. I wanted to be around the people that I wanted to be, rather than being that myself. I always had this dream of what I could have been, another version of me that spoke his mind, who’d walk into a room and get a rise from the crowd. A real showman, and someone who was willing to put himself out there, then carry on.
He didn’t seem to have those worries about what he could have been or done, or notice things he didn’t need to. He’d crack his jokes and make his creations and that was what mattered most to him.
I’ve always admired him.
*
There’s this beach in San Diego that almost no one goes to. It’s empty and beautiful and the only way down is a very long flight of stairs made entirely of wood, where you can see through the steps to the bottom of the bluff below. The waves are calm and consistent, perfect for body surfing or swimming, and in the summer the water is often over 70 degrees.
It was a warm day, sometime in the summer, and I was looking forward to going back to school for the first time since the pandemic to start my Junior year. I looked up at the sky, it was clear, and I turned back to the water and the waves where I could see my mom and my aunt floating in the water a little ways away.
Jumping in the water, I started to swim to them. The water was warm so it was no problem for me to get to them quickly. When I reached them I tried to float on my back, but the waves kept knocking me over, and I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t float on my back. How was this possible? I learned how to do it when I was 6, the same place that taught me tread water, backstroke, breaststroke, and at one point even butterfly. I could do all of that but couldn’t float on my back?
They couldn’t seem to believe it either, and my mom and my aunt laughed while they lay there as the sun shone. I kept thinking about what I could do and what I was taught. How much did I need to spread my arms and legs? Was there a certain way I needed to breathe? Because if so, I’d already forgotten.
“Why do you think you admire him so much?”
My mom looked at me as she spoke. I asked her who she was talking about, and she told me that it was my friend from school. She asked me again why I thought so highly of him. I told her I didn’t know, and she leaned back into the water,
“Because he can float.”
***
“Thinking is good!”
My Junior year English teacher would proclaim this, walking up and down the aisles, praising analysis and critical thought. He’d make us write the same sentence over and over again, and tell us it was wrong, over and over again.
“Thinking is good!”
I spent hours on my essays, and did everything I could to impress him. I’d try constantly yet every time I thought I’d done everything right, I’d get another C.
“Thinking is good!”
Slowly I started to give up. I would write what I wrote and then that was that. If he didn’t like it, then whatever, I didn’t care, as it's not like much would change anyway. Somehow that's when I started to get the best scores I’d gotten all year.
The answers to his questions were often simple and clear. The more I thought about things, what I had to do, and what I could say to sound smart, the less likely I was to be right. All along, thinking was good, just not the kind that I had been doing.
It all made me think about him: the artist, the guy I knew a couple long years ago. The guy that did his own thing, who never really cared, or worried about whatever wasn’t right in front of him.
He wasn’t a thinker. That was why he was such a genius.
***
“Remember when you used to be best friends with that guy?”
My friend pointed at him, the artist, walking down the hall, with his smiling face and zeal. He was wearing a black tank top covered in paint stains, his hair was knotted and his pants dragged at his feet. We hadn’t talked in a while, I guess we’d just grown apart. I had new people in my life now, and so did he.
I remarked that it was an interesting time. My friend patted my shoulder, and told me he’d see me later. I watched the artist leave the school grounds and walk into the parking lot, sitting by the fence. He opened his sketchbook and started working on something I couldn’t see.
He probably should have been in class right then. I guess it didn’t matter though, our final year of school was ending, and all anyone could think of was either college or their careers. It was all almost done.
After a few moments, he looked up and faced my direction. He raised his hand and waved,
“Sup man!”
I asked him how he was,
“Chillin, just chillin.”
He turned back and continued to work on whatever he was making, rubbing his fingers against the pages and covering them in graphite.
***
In the coming week we finished our finals and whooped and hollered as we climbed into my car and drove westward. We saw the waves in the distance, and the moment I parked we went as fast as we could to the shore, dropping our bags and towels, and running into the water.
We jumped over rocks and dove into the waves, racing to see how far we could go. I looked up at the sky and leaned back. My friends laughed at me as I lay there, staring and smiling at nothing. I trusted the water to hold me, as salt got into my ears and seaweed into my hair.
I did it.
I was floating.
SO GOOD. ❤️👏
This is so beautiful, Archer. ❤️❤️