for every counselor
It all started when I felt a need to go down to the docks. I used to drive, but nowadays, I take the bus everywhere I want to go. And in Southern California, that means a great deal of waiting around. Sure, you could have an up-to-date and current schedule, with the best set of bus drivers on God’s green earth, and you will still be waiting. Waiting for the late bus, waiting for the handicapped to get on the bus, waiting in the middle of a traffic jam. Naturally, I wasn’t surprised when the bus in my dream came late as usual.
Have you ever been to California? Well, everything you’ve heard about it is true. It’s hot all year around, there’re earthquakes and fires just about every year, and everyone is an actor or a musician or has a screenplay. Even the sun shines differently way out west. The docks of Marina del Rey are no exception; rather, they are often the exemplary views you’d find in a travel magazine or a film. Plus, it’s easy to find on a map or a globe. Follow the California coastline down from San Francisco bay, and you’ll notice a long beach that faces directly south – this is the famous surf-city of Malibu. Run your little finger a little further down and you’ll see Santa Monica and the pier; further, you will find Venice, a hippie commune for the lovers of cannabis and reggae. Stop! Right there. That’s the Marina at the south end of Venice Beach, and really where it all began.
After braving that slight-yet-ubiquitous smell of urine on the local Three, the autobus dropped me off just a few feet from the shops that line the docks of Marina del Rey. As in real life, I was the only one getting off; people generally drive to get anywhere, especially a money-magnet like this place. Small boutiques and curio shops, a hip dive bar, and a grand restaurant with a massive brunch layout, all of it crossed my eyes, familiarly, expectedly. This place was so normal, even in my dreams: I had been here numerous times with Auntie Dor, and my brother worked down at the docks renting small vessels for a couple of years. I decided to go down to the place where the sabots departed out to sea.
Of course I didn’t know I was dreaming, but I ought to have figured it out by now. Normally, the observer of these docks might notice the enormous touring ships that go out to Catalina Island (which is also easy to find on your map), or at least some of the half-a-million dollar yachts bespeckling the aqueous parking lot, each ship begging for you to come closer to read the clever, kitschy name – whatever the last short-lived owner had christened upon its stern. I should have known I was dreaming for I’ve heard you can’t read anything in your dreams. Nonetheless, I passed by Gettin’ Richer, Touch of Class, Serendipitious Windfall, and the Artful Douchebag.
My mirth dissolved before the expanse of one ship, practically a caravel – Nay, a blasted Spanish Galleon. It sat, harboured in one of the bays designed for the day-travelling tourist ships, and it looked terribly out of place. To give it dimensions, I would have to measure its length in cubits, its height in terms of yards rather than feet. What color was it? At first, I deemed it black, but this was a trick of sunlight. I approached it from the front: the wood was mahogany in color, but it could’ve been stained Cedars of Lebanon for all I knew. I couldn’t see up to the deck, but three masts launched themselves into the clouds threatening to poke the next cumulous that should attempt to occupy the firmament directly above me. I was entirely enraptured.
I decided to walk the length of the ship. If I could not measure it outright, why shouldn’t I spend some time pacing along the walkway? At least then I would have a working idea of how long it was. It was a big black iceberg sitting here in the harbor, which recalled to me the lessons of fifth grade science, specifically buoyancy. I began to question the validity of such an extant ship. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that a ship whose deck lies a good story or two above me would have more than thirty feet extending down deep underneath the surface of the water? I stopped halfway – or what seemed to me to be halfway. Looking into the translucent liquid, I was astounded: This ship sat flatly over the top of the water, hardly extending at all into the depth of water that the Marina afforded. Surely this was some trick of the eye.
Continuing my circumnavigation, I came to what I believed was the back, or stern, of the ship. It had me confused, as I had been tricked by a clapped-out 1950 Studebaker in my youth: back then, I thought the back of the classic auto was the front of it. But I was right this time, for there on the hull emblazoned in ever darkling Roman characters, I read the name “M O N M O U T H.” [In my dream, I hadn’t realized that this was the surname of one of the many progenitors of the myths of King Arthur, a man by the name of Geoffrey.] The more I looked at the ship the less it stayed fixed in the era I believed it to be from. In that moment, it was a starship as ebony as the space it would occupy, seamless and covered in tar-black chrome. In the next, it streamlined itself into the cold, locomotive lines of an Art Deco conversation piece. “This lot could easily fetch a cool million at Sotheby’s, but how would anyone ever paint it?” I thought aloud.
As I walked back along toward the boat’s bow, I was a bit startled to see that I was not the only admirer of the vessel. A nerdy-looking-but-huge African-American guy was staring up at the gunnel, trying to see a way to climb aboard. His back was turned when I noticed him, but shortly after failing to find a point of ingress, the man sharply made an about face, thusly noticing me.
I smiled at him, walking slowly along the length of the boat. It was not in me to ignore someone in my proximity, especially a big black guy. I wasn’t scared, at least not in the sense you might think. I approached his sphere of influence slowly; I never know how to react to other people in public. He was an extraordinary specimen of his race: six-foot-six and ripped, and blacker than I have ever seen a human being. He was not the dark brown of your “Black is Beautiful” movement, nor did he resemble the purple people-of-color common to paintings of jazz’ Haarlem Revival. Anachronistically, he looked like a Mormon in his white short-sleeved shirt and black slacks, though.
“Hey man,” I uttered as he, in turn, looked me over. He smiled first, like he knew who I was. Then I smiled, and squinted, which I always do when I smile. In this case though, I was nearly blinded by the contrast of his teeth against his midnight face. The interior of his mouth could have been dark gray, and I would still have to squint a bit. I think he noticed: his smile disappeared as quickly as it had been conjured.
“What’s up, bro,” he said softly, like a surf-rider. As was typical of California lingo in Two-Thousand-Eight, this phrase is oftener a statement than a question. Again, he seemed out of place, for he sounded much more like a kid who grew up on the beach, and much less like his counterparts that experienced their nascent years in Inglewood or Compton or Crenshaw. The black dude kept walking past me, preoccupied, so I did the same.
Then I noticed the ship again: there was now a gangplank allowing me to travel up to the top deck if I wished. Now I was certain that this path wasn’t there before, and had I but known I was dreaming, I probably would have waked myself up in that moment. But in that surreal environment, one doesn’t have such choices at his or her disposal. I walked straight up that gangplank, quickly, so that the black dude wouldn’t see me. Who knows? Maybe the ship was his. Curiosity had cleaved unto me, and I had to have a good look around.
Again, the ship had morphed into something altogether new. I could see all of its masts now – recalling it now I shan’t believe it – there were six of them! All of the canvas sails had been pulled back into themselves, furled and unready. If not archaic, the sails and the deck, all of it looked brand new. It was no longer the black spacecraft or the nouveau ocean train, the boat had grown into the size of small courtyard, oddly-lined with bright newly-varnished hardwood flooring.
How was it larger now than before? Was this some trick of the eye? I elected to walk the length of the deck, again counting paces, to see if somehow it could have been possible that the ship had grown. After I reached halfway (or what I perceived was halfway), I saw that black guy again: He’d found the gangplank after all, and he was coming up to see the deck as well. Thinking quickly, I rushed toward the scuttle so that I could go below the deck. I didn’t need to walk the rest of the ship’s length to know it had indeed augmented itself in the moments it took me to come aboard.
The stairs leading below led me straight into darkness, as you could imagine. There was light down there, but in comparison to the luminescent sun above, my eyes needed adjusting. After a minute or two, I was startled to look upon a sight straight out of antiquity. A long, long hall lay before me, lined with doors to each side in alternating fashion. Before I could make out any shapes beyond this, I examined the source of the light: the walls had the oil lamp-lights of old, as though this were some creepy haunted house, or a vintage hotel in the heart of Paris. More and more, I could see the parts that made up the whole; the yellowing wallpaper, the pointillist paintings, and the Persian rug running the length of several American football fields.
Only one way to go, I pondered. Now as you know, I had to try every single door along the way; an obvious result of my obsessive compulsion. Granted, I would not have done this in real-life; picture a grown man walking from door-to-door in a pricey hotel, attempting to force himself into every single one along the way. And, of course, the length of this hall had to be longer than the big boat itself. Nay, even at all this I still hadn’t known I was asleep.
I also counted the doors as I trotted along, and I did trot, because the black dude could not be far behind. There were forty-one doors on the right side, all bolted, and forty-one on the left, likewise locked. Keeping my head down in this process, it took me awhile to notice the ornate oaken door that filled the threshold at the end of the long, long hall.
The door itself had inlaid woods of several types, and three peepholes with which to look out of. The moulding alone, above and to the side of the door, proved that someone of great importance should be on the other side of it. I thought to myself: What sort of paranoiac requires three portals to look upon his assailant? Does the he have three eyes? I guessed this was where the Captain lived. Clearly, there were half a dozen deadbolts preventing anyone from getting in. Thus I imagined pirates attempting to take control of the vessel, and coming up short at such a daunting passageway. I pictured a gruff, lantern-jawed commodore at ease in his quarters, with all of his necessities within reach, including perhaps an enormous window and a secondary rudder with which to pilot the ship, in case her majesty were under duress. I was no more going to get through this door than in through the pearly gates of Heaven without express written consent from that first Christian doorman, Saint Peter.
I tried the latch anyway. It was locked, shucks.
Well, this was it. I knew all of the doors to be locked along this blasted path, all eighty-two of them. [Surely I would have woken up at that obviate number eighty-two, since it is (as you may know) my lucky number.] In a few moments, I expected Captain Black-Fellow to come strutting down the stairs, down the low-lighted hall toward me. In my imaginings, he would not be as cordial as before. I was trapped here, essentially.
But what if I skipped some door along the way? Perhaps I hadn’t fully depressed the handle of one of the staterooms of my haunted hallway. No, I tried them all; I am obsessively compulsive. One good turn deserves another though, and I wasn’t ready to fight with the swarthiest of swarthies. So I marched along trying each door again, this time trying each handle twice. Couldn’t hurt, I muttered in my mind.
Lo, there was an open door. How could this be? I’ll tell you how, it’s a dream. Easy to discern now, sure, but in that moment I began to think of the world as less and less rational, more and more mystical. I should have woke up, but I didn’t – the clutch of Lord Morpheus was not about to let me go over as mere a trifle as a locked-and-then-unlocked door. I pushed open the door with just enough haste to get out of that blasted entrapment-of-a-hallway, but slowly enough not to scare the would-be occupant. It really didn’t matter in either case: the door creaked like a wardrobe in desperate need of oil.
I entered and, without my consent, the door closed behind me like the door to a vault. I was about to try the handle from the inside, but my fear was so great that I stopped myself. Why determine if I am locked in? Surely, it would only multiply my panic. For now, I was satisfied believing wholly that the door was most likely locked, rather than being certain about that fact. After all, the ambiguity of that fact would save me from distress.
Turning to survey the room, I found the first place that actually seemed to belong on a ship. Here was a crew-member’s stateroom: sparse, without any vibrant color, containing only a cot and a closet. There was nothing in the room, and by that I mean no things. Because at that very moment I discovered an occupant within – and there he stood, almost at attention, looking directly back at me. It was just a boy, he couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old. As my eyes focused upon him, I viewed a kid wearing the worn-out clothing of a sailor, and he had at least one tattoo – or was that a brand? – certainly he exuded an intellect beyond his years. We looked at each other, each of us knowing the other was completely out-of-place. I looked at him with an uneasy smile, trying hard not to let my eyes squint up (as they invariably do), just in case he tried to pull a fast one. Finally, I could see his eyes: The gaze he dealt me was cool and calm, but his mouth betrayed his emotions about me – and, man, was he fuckin’ angry.
