How a Birdie Got Between My Legs
By: Alan Asnen
Tags: Nature, Humor, Travel Writing, This Happened To Me, Short Story

…and almost killed me

common tern, publicdomainfiles.com, Kirk Rogers, US Fish&Wildlife Serivce

A friend posted a photo on Facebook the other day that reminded me of things I should have forgotten long ago but never have, darn it.

And then this:

I grew up in Manhattan, mostly on the Lower East Side, and, frankly, had a difficult time getting free of high school. Another story for another time. But, having made my escape, I was entered into the sweepstakes known as Community College in the well-lit precincts of Times Square.

Even though such schooling was free at the time — young lovers, think you are jealous now? Just wait — one still had to work to pay for luxuries like books, rent and food, so I found a job at what was then called the Post Office. Indeed, in those days one could get such a job. The Johnson Administration had its high points, believe me.

My old workplace…and no, no one really cares who took the picture.

Growing up in Manhattan, people might expect one to become somewhat slothful, but I was a great walker. Always had been. I was known to walk from South Ferry to the George Washington Bridge, and without a single mugging. Partially this was because, like most New Yorkers, I despised the transit system. Relatives of mine worked for said system.

Delinquents — of which number I had to count myself on occasion (no, nothing violent; and I always paid my fare, Mayor DeBlasio, so I don’t owe you a cent) — roamed the subways and made life unbearable at times. And partially I operated a motor vehicle…like the old lady I almost ran over the one time I sat behind the wheel of a car, put the car in reverse believing I was putting it into drive and nearly knocked her to the ground while she was jaywalking. I didn’t drive again for twenty years.

So, I am in my freshman year, working at the Grand Central Station PO, seen above, renting this efficiency in Yorktown — yeah, one person could manage that, too, in those days. I even had a girlfriend. Sort of. She had a girlfriend, too. Listen, it kept things cheap. And this paragraph is partly about saving money. I was saving money. I didn’t know what for.

But there it was, piling up.

One day my supervisor told me I had to take my vacation. Yes, boys and girls, a vacation. And you had to take it. A union rule. There was a union. That, too. Drooling? Is you drooling, just an itsy-bitsy bit?

What to do? I had to take the vacation. I had this money saved for…what? I had a friend who had a friend who worked for a travel agency. They still had travel agencies back then. Where did I want to go? Not too far. The hip place to be that year was San Francisco!

Cool, let’s go. Take the girlfriend? Nah. Ask the girlfriend to watch the apartment. She wouldn’t say no. She’d jump at the opportunity. I knew exactly what she’d be doing there. It was okay. Not like they were going to eat the cat.

San Francisco, there I went for a week. Didn’t have to get a haircut or buy new clothes, pretend to be anything but the beatnik-cum-hippie I ever was known as. And this nice package my friend of a friend travel agent put together included a tiny room at the ritzy Fairmont Hotel, home of Mr. San Francisco himself, Tony Bennett. Who could ask for anything more?

c fairmont.com

The first morning I was there, French toast and hot coffee warming my belly bottoms as much as the warm April sun, I asked the bellhop for advice about a nice walk.

“San Francisco is a great walking town. You can walk anywhere.” But a long walk, I said. “Have you ever seen the Pacific Ocean?” I’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean. A lot. Is there a diff? “Oh, brother! You bet.” How does one get there? “Just walk west. You can’t miss it. There’s a map down in the lobby.”

I slipped the young man a dollar bill — a decent tip, still, during the Johnson years. He thanked me, without cursing behind my back.

not exactly…but pretty close

I descended to the lobby and discovered that map in a short hallway behind the main desk. I noticed it looked a bit dated, most maps under glass hanging on walls do, don’t they, but didn’t pay much attention to that fact. I saw where we were, saw where the Pacific Ocean was, noted the name of a few main streets in between and headed out that big front door aiming west.

As the sun was beating me to the west many hours later, I began to wonder where I was since there was no sight of aforementioned water.

Photo by Daniel Abadia on Unsplash

Plenty of little pastel colored houses, small businesses and lots of cars, concrete, asphalt, even trees. No ocean. I finally stopped in a small store and asked.

“You’ve been walking south for a while. You can still get to the ocean if you turn west, but you should have turned west a long time ago.” Back north I went, back to where I should have turned west.

And now, despite the April warmth, the air began to chill, slightly, and a breeze began to stir. I wore nothing but a summer shirt, jeans and thin cotton windbreaker, floating on deck sneakers.

I spied something like strands of cotton candy floating through the air, not high enough to be clouds, not low enough to be cotton candy itself.

Again, as with the map, I made nothing of this, turned where that kindly old shopkeeper advised and soon heard the whisper of ocean, smelled that unmistakable aroma of the sea. At last I saw it in the distance, from what seemed to be the crest of a hill, shimmering, and I picked up my pace, only to find the image fading as if it had been a mirage.

Soon I came upon a wall. The sound was still around, even louder than before, and the aroma, now mixed with all the adjacent odors of sand and fish and even those hints of wreckage and death and rot that often accompany the ocean. But, no ocean in sight. Only this wall. Then I saw it. A tunnel!

Photo by Tiago Dos Santos on Unsplash

Racing into that tunnel was like racing into the tunnel of Yankee Stadium for the first time and seeing the universe anew.

But this time the sand was tan, not reddish brown, and the green beyond was blueish and heaving and roaring and EVERYWHERE. And instead of being “down there” below, beneath where all the people sat, enjoying themselves, laughing, eating, drinking, what I discovered was straight ahead, before me and me alone. At once beckoning and totally indifferent to my presence. All around faded in a mist, even the sound, as the waves crashed into each other, and foam sprayed like the formation of stardust inside a thousand nebulae brought together in a long string of cosmic wombs.

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

Stretched out along the sand were pieces of life itself the ocean had dispensed with, cast offs from its many encounters with the strange and usual, the errata it had swept down upon with that indifference and gutted, ripped apart and brought dead to this new home. Pieces enormous and miniscule of seaweeds only monsters found edible, driftwoods so fresh and dark they could have blood within them.

And shells I had never seen before, with pictures of flowers carved upon them, as though natives on some hidden island sent them here to me, on the hope of this very moment to find them, after spending virtuous hours sweating over them to send a message of peace.

Photo by Lacey Williams on Unsplash

Those shells fascinated me to no end. I picked one up and examined it. I spent many years living near the beach and knew those North Atlantic shells but had never seen any like this, so meticulously, miraculously carved. I cleaned one off and placed it in my windbreaker pocket.

When I looked up I saw a tern nearby pecking in the sand. I walked towards it and as I did it walked away. I came up to the spot where it had been, its footprints between my feet, and found another shell like the one I had discovered, picked it up, cleaned it and placed it in my pocket. I looked up again and saw that tern. Further off, pecking in the sand.

I followed it again and again it walked off only to leave me in possession of another flowered shell placed this time in somewhat wetter sand closer to the shore.

I did not even bother to clean this one, only shook it a bit and stuffed it in a pocket while looking around for the tern. I looked down instead and saw the footprints between my feet again. Followed them and… There it was, further down the shore and a bit closer to it, digging and pecking again.

But, not as before, this time I could not hear the sound of that long beak cracking through the sand hitting the shell. I walked towards the tern and it walked away again. I dug my fingers into the sand and shook the decorated shell clean. It was a marvel. Stuffing it into a crowded pocket I looked farther down the shore. No tern. I looked back from where I had come. No tern.

I listened carefully for the sound of the tern’s pecking beak. No sound. Only the sound of the rushing waves. I looked down between my feet. Not a mark.

I was covered with sand and salt from the spray, happy but exhausted. I continued looking, squinting until I finally caught sight of the tern, small, far from me, staring at me, head cocked slightly to the left, not pecking at the sand at all any longer, and far from the shore. This was when I heard what he saw.

Photo by Zach Ahmajani on Unsplash

The wave must have been at least half as tall again as I am. For all I knew then and know today, it may have been the conjoining of two or more waves. They told me later there had been a storm at sea which caused these massive waves on such an otherwise beautiful Spring day. I should have been driving. At least, when the tern cocked his head, I did turn around.

I saw it coming for me. When it screamed. Or was that me?

One shouldn’t — if one is a decent writer, at least — say things like “I’ve never been so wet in my life.” So I won’t. Indeed, in a case like this it would, perhaps, be something of an understatement considering the possibility that I was lucky to survive.

So was that tern. Given the fact that I couldn’t fly, catch him and strangle him. But, as the Stoics say, that was his nature, to have him peck through the sand, and mine, to follow him around like an idiot.

Not his fault then. Sonuvabitch.

Once I had spit back up half of Micronesia, and realized I had — HUZZAH! — discovered the Pacific Ocean, mission accomplished, I picked myself up and began the long, wet, cold walk back to the Fairmont. In the famous San Francisco cotton candy fog. Hello, Karl. Or, some people call her Shirley. You can do that, they say. She won’t talk back.

The girlfriend’s girlfriend, one day in a snit, stole those sand dollars. By the way. And then there was Nixon. Another story for another time.

Alan Asnen copyright 2019