BEN WHIPPLE

Selected Writing

Danny Turnbull (Fiction)

Danny Turnbull stood at the altar, waiting for a bride he didn’t know.

He adjusted an antique silver bracelet on his wrist, squeezed his earlobe, touched the bolo at his throat. Finally, he stuffed his sweaty hands in his pockets. He looked around the tiny chapel. It was empty.

Danny was in his mid-fifties. His hair was thinning but he still slicked it back proudly. He kept the sides tight because it felt better in the Nevada heat, and in some ways was a nod to his tour of duty during Desert Storm. He loved the smell of the desert. Creosote. Palo Verde. Dried sage. He carried more weight around his waist than he used to, but he was still broad and muscular. He was dismissive when old friends called him “Bull.”

The tiny chapel had an aroma of dust and aged pine. There weren’t any books behind the pews, but he caught a whiff of old bible. He never cared much for scripture.

Danny had been married before. Three times. He didn’t care about finding love anymore. He knew it to be fickle. Instead, he valued companionship. Anyone willing to marry someone they’d never met must feel the same, he thought. He heard about a matchmaker in Vegas who set people up in a tiny chapel out in the desert. She promised to give people exactly what they needed.

“Write down your preferences and I’ll take care of the rest,” she had said.

The matchmaker slid a piece of paper towards him. She had painted eyebrows and a scent of rosewater and baby powder. Danny mumbled something and scribbled a brief list. She read the paper and raised her eyebrow until the paint cracked. She looked up at him, incredulous. Danny’s expression didn’t change.

“I’ll seee what I can dooo,” she sang.

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When Danny returned from the Gulf War, he married his first wife Carmel. She was 19 and smelled like Cherry Coke. She had Baptist parents who didn’t trust Danny’s Unitarian leanings. Carmel loved that about him. She was everything a man at war would want. The doe-eyed pretty face, Girl Scout innocence, and American apple-pie virtues he couldn’t wait to come home to.

But a year into their marriage, he realized those were all projections. Carmel was a real person, complicated, flawed, and stubborn. She was devout and sober, and wanted the same for Danny. He didn’t know how to adjust.

On Sundays while Carmel went to church, Danny caught glimpses of their neighbor Darla’s greener pasture. The first time he did, he returned home before Carmel and stood in the shower, trying to wash the guilt down the drain. He broke down and sobbed but refused to wipe the snot away – someone in the war told him it was a sign of weakness to care. Carmel knew where he went on Sundays but held on too long. It was too much to tell her Baptist parents. Finally, Danny left, disgusted with himself. 

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A small wooden crucifix hung above the alter on a cream-colored stucco wall. Jesus looked down on Danny with poorly carved eyes. Danny diverted his gaze to a yellowed plastic clock, hanging askew near the door. It was 5 p.m.  

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For many years Danny worked on the power lines. He had an apartment on the outskirts of Tucson and liked to ride his Kawasaki dirt bike through the Sonoran Desert. He had the odd girlfriend but nothing serious until he met Mandy. He’d been to a boondocker party in the desert and crashed his dirt bike riding home. Mandy was a nurse at Tucson General Hospital, and one day, Danny came rolling into her life, with a broken leg and booze on his breath.

Danny felt the warmth emanating from her scrubs as she hovered over him, checking his vitals. She was redolent of Bain-de soleil and warm towels. Mandy moved her soft hands over his cracked, desert-worn skin. He tracked her movements with kind eyes. His blood pressure rose, and Mandy blushed when she noticed the bulge appear in his pants. He was in too much pain to move, so they shared a laugh. Three months later they were married.

They moved into a small suburban home in Drexel Heights. Their neighbors had families and swimming pools. Every afternoon they could hear kids playing. Danny struggled with domestic life. He missed the boondocker parties. On Mandy’s thirty-third birthday, she talked about having kids and encouraged him to sell the Kawasaki.

The following weekend he rode into the Sonoran Desert and met a younger woman named Kelsey. He buried his wedding ring in his pocket and didn’t come home that night. He was too drunk to remember her scent. When he found himself washing the guilt off in the shower the next morning, he knew it was over. On New Year’s Eve ‘99, Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric brought in the new millennium and Danny ended his second marriage with Mandy.

 ——————————

The minute hand touched 5:20 p.m. on the yellowed clock. The matchmaker told Danny to be there after 5 p.m.

“All the magic happens at golden hour,” she had said.

The sun was low in the sky and cast long shadows inside the chapel. Danny traced the curious outline of a candle on the floorboards. He thumbed his naked ring finger in his pocket.

—————————— 

 In his mid-forties, Danny moved to Moapa Valley, Nevada and got a job at a nuclear plant. He bought a silver Airstream in the desert. His life was more routine, and he thought about dating again. He had long since sold the Kawasaki.

Danny had trouble meeting anyone locally, so he resorted to eHarmony. He met Karla. Her profile was great-divorced but successful, no kids to speak of and independent. Karla respected Danny’s youthful spirit. On their first date they stayed up until sunrise talking. She had an aroma of amber and bergamot. Danny felt young again. After six months they had a shotgun wedding in Vegas. They laughed the whole drive home.

But Karla kept everyone at a distance, and Danny wanted something deeper. When he found out about her teenage sons, Devon and Casey, Danny was dismayed. Karla tried to explain, begged for forgiveness. But now he found her to be duplicitous, untrustworthy. He walked out of their marriage a month later.

 ——————————

The sun had just dipped below the horizon when Danny heard something outside the front door of the chapel. His heart raced. He adjusted his hair one last time.

The door creaked open.

No one entered.

The warm desert air trickled in and he could smell them all. Cherry Coke. Bain de Soleil. Amber and Bergamot. His stomach tied itself in a knot.

He came down from the altar and walked towards the door. He stepped cautiously outside. But there was no one.

He walked down the stairs and onto the desert floor. He heard the door close shut behind him. He stood there taking in the empty expanse in front of him.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. 

Palm Trees and Coconuts (Nonfiction)

Burnouts. Derelicts. Waste-oids. There are a dozen or so colorful words I can’t help but use to describe these colossal fuck-ups. Degenerate maturations of beguiled youth. In Southern California the sun fades more than the paint on the hood of your Tacoma. It wrinkles visages, clots blood and broils every last brain cell of these fully aged American misfit slackers. Wrung out and left to dry after the turmoil and inevitable capitalistic trouncing of their long lost summer-of-love ideals. This was where the hippy movement was laid to rest: the free parking lot at C Street. Sandwiched between the 101 and the Pacific Ocean. Nowhere left to go but swim. A 70’s GMC van. Nebraska license plate. Rusty. American flag. Faded. The torso of a mannequin, spray painted with glitter sat on a wicker chair. Behind it, melanoma flesh moved in jerks. Harsh movements of unpredictability. This man could fix your board, fix your life, make you “SUPERSONIC!” his sign read. Next to him, a neck tattoo and calf high socks sprouted from Osiris sneakers. Strange inebriate smiles behind rhinestone encrusted sunglasses. Crooked spines with crooked teeth. 

In the waves one day, an irascible man one courtesy flush from social security went rabid when someone on a paddleboard cut him off. Later, in the parking lot, the paddleboarder loaded his disabled, elderly father into their minivan. Courtesy Flush rifled through his trunk and produced 3 wooden surfboard stencils 4 feet in length, and threw them directly at the paddleboarder’s mouth. They split his lip and bruised his face. There was a skirmish. Bloody Lips stole Courtesy Flush’s cell phone. Courtesy Flush rummaged through his trunk again, this time producing a metal easel. He chased down bloody lips and assaulted him again, striking his back and arm with the metal easel. “You started this!!” he yelled. Bloody Lip’s two children watched in horror. I watched the grotesque barbarity as one would, with equal parts curiosity and terror. My caveman DNA told me to stick around in case I needed to get involved, but secretly I enjoyed the show. It must have been apparent because in a surreal twist, Sage Erickson appeared and asked me what had happened. Now standing face to face with one of surfing’s most famous heartthrobs, she told me Courtesy Flush was an artist known for his serene underwater seascapes. I nodded and my eyes darted between her sunburned lips, and Bloody Lips, who survived the ordeal and used Courtesy Flush’s phone to call the cops. No one else paid much attention. It was the third time I’d seen police called to the lot that month. 

In Southern California the wackos coexist with the yuppies. Range Rovers and Econovans. Botox and epidural leather. Santa Barbara pinot and MD 20/20. May there be an epithet, “Here lies the California Dream. Many came. Many burned.” Now the whole thing is ablaze. What hasn’t been scorched drifts through the hills on a warm Santa Ana. Fragments are rumored to be found in an IN-N-Out drive thru, the H.O.V. lane, the local taqueria. It’s a strange patchwork of mental illness, self obsession and delinquency, in a landscape of palm trees, azure waves, and mountains.

Yet amidst the grownup aberration, groms with shiny sponsor logos slapped on crisp white boards jog down the beach under the nose of the parking lot derelict. The burgeoning surf industry’s young hopefuls, unburdened by any idea of what the California Dream was or should be. For them, the question is simple: who will be the next Dane Reynolds? The next Bobby Martinez? Tom Curren? (Or is he now passé?) Their fathers set up tripods on the sand, gathering footage for their next web edit with the enthusiasm of a fanatical Soccer Dad. Most of them are homeschooled and haven’t heard a school bell ring in years. 

From the parking lot, I glanced up the point and saw a small figure position himself for a set wave no one saw coming. He popped to his feet effortlessly, and brought his small frame low to his tiny, bright-white, stickered board. Extending and bending his legs he performed a powerful double pump bottom turn and projected himself into the oncoming section. He launched into the air, the board glued to his feet, a blast of white water trailing his fins. He landed fins first and rotated smoothly towards the beach, maintained his momentum and eyed up the next section. He compressed again, extended and belted the next steep section with a quick vertical snap. A fan of white spray erupted from the lip, water droplets danced in the afternoon light. His weight centered over his board, he took off racing down the line to meet the next section. Quick lip line floater. Shallow bottom turn. As he approached the end section, he dropped his back hand, loaded his weight over his back foot, and laid into the projecting lip. The blue wave face shattered into a million crystal beads of white. A perfect expression of power and release. He regained control with his front foot and pulled the board back underneath him, riding out the wave into the flats. In the lineup heads turned. On the beach necks craned. One proud father looked up from his long lens camera, a smirk forming at the corners of his mouth. The grom paddled back out for another. Hidden in the foam beneath his feet, generations of dreams he was too young to know. 

For some it’s the California Dream, bottled, trademarked, and sold at a Wholefoods in Middle America. For those with bright futures it’s the dream of surf superstardom, and for others, it’s a dream forged by the perceived freedom of escapism. But it requires that commitment to surf here. Lineups are packed with surfers sitting shoulder to shoulder. The jockeying for waves is relentless, and Surfer’s Code is adhered to lightly. Half an hour can pass between rides. This is no deli counter. No numbers are taken. No fucks are given. It’s your fitness and apparent ability that gets you waves. Add to the recipe age, declining muscle mass, and a 9 to 6, and a desperation appears in men’s eyes as they claw at the sea for the last strands of their youth. 

Harmonious, ephemeral moments do exist in the remote regions of surf culture, but no one is in communion with nature on this stretch of freeway. The common reality is closer to road rage. Middle aged men don superhero-like wetsuits, but their super power is a regression of 30 years of maturity, scolding beginners for their blunders. “Just being out on the water is so peaceful!” exclaims the surfer in their first 6 months of surfing. But the novelty of bobbing on a board fades quickly. Waves are a limited commodity and competition is fierce. This realization represents a fork in the road for many surfers; either to accept that their interest in surfing is merely based on a lifestyle choice, that progression really isn’t an option as the prerequisite time to get better can’t be spared. Others fall head first down the rabbit hole. Buy a full quiver. Buy three wetsuits. Watch all the web edits. Don’t smile. Shame beginners with “kook.” Change every vowel of their vocab to “ah.” Inflate their ego to shield fragile selves from their own mediocrity. Assume the cold mystique of their favorite pro whose freakish talent is often earned at the expense of social skills.

There is an enduring perception that surfing is a laid back sport. A clever marketing scheme designed to attract newcomers. But anyone close to the sport will tell you it’s not all palm trees and coconuts. A trip to the parking lot at C Street is a glaring reminder to find balance: dream big but have a plan, have a plan B, have an escape plan for plan B. Renowned professional surfer Joel Tudor once said, “Ponce de Leon traveled all around the world looking for the fountain of youth. All he had to do was jump off the side of the boat.” What he forgot to mention is the fountain is only big enough for a few. 

The waves were good and the crowd thin. I replayed images of the grom’s wave in my head as I performed a well choreographed routine, squeezing and contorting into my wetsuit. I rubbed soft white wax across the deck of my board. The familiar coconut scent whisked me away to the many exotic locations I’d waxed up a board. Mr. Supersonic continued to jerk his weathered frame in the sun’s setting rays and I wondered, who’s version of escapism was more true.