Neil Young — On The Beach
I was in love with my college best friend. I thought he was my best friend; I thought he was my friend; but he was only my friend when it was convenient for him; I realized this years ago, when I made a deal with myself I’d tell him by the end of our senior year that I’ve always had feelings for him; and I finally worked up the courage; and we got high and went out for coffee, that stoner speedball; we went to the opposite college’s music library on the opposite hill; and I was looking down in his car full of paper and plastic bottles, I was all nervous and hot in the cheeks and I said; “I told myself I’d tell you this, that I’ve always had feelings for you;” and he said, “you’re not the first girl friend I’ve had that said that.”
That was the moment I felt defeated and betrayed by someone I thought I knew; it was a moment I realized I knew nothing; and everyone around me knew it; and they had told me; they told me he could tell too even though I never said it; but I had to get there for myself.
Why do I still think about this ten years later? Not because I have an anxious brain and am constantly trying to let things go, no matter how big or small; but because when you make what you think is a lasting friendship with someone over years; when you share the same love for the same music; when you share the same, small major; and classes; and you work elbow to elbow together building a music library; and when he wants to (of course only when he wants to) join you to host the radio show you covet, the one you inherited, the one on Wednesdays night; when he smiles at you, but only when no one is around; when he is kind, when no one else is around; this is when you think you have a friend, maybe even a best friend.
But then you remember that he never answered his phone, not even for a broadcast emergency; and you found yourself picking up his slack; then you remember standing around with friends as the end of the year free concert plays in the distance (you’re on air working, of course, not really enjoying the show) and his girlfriend is there; she sits on his lap and he cannot even look you in the eye; or answer you when you ask him something, or talk to you; you remember knowing they had nothing in common and wondering why didn’t he realize it was me he should be with; you remember wondering what it was they had in common, behind closed doors; you remember wanting to like her, to be her friend; but she only gave you dirty looks; maybe she knew, like everyone else did; maybe she thought she knew something; she thought something about you and you thought something about her, but you didn’t know each other.
When you want to see something you see it. But when you look back onto that something you see a different color. Now I am no longer green. I see, ten years later, he was gaslighting me; a term I know and never thought it could be applied to myself, I don’t know why; I always thought I’d knew when it was happening, but I didn’t; it was when he asked me advice; told me that he liked that song, too, and wanted to add it into rotation; when we were alone in the staff room discussing the show, because it was a Wednesday when he wanted to show up; when we spoke the same language of bits and pieces of words, and knew what we needed to hear to make a song work; all of this gaslighting; he lit a fire so deep in me I felt it, and I thought he felt it too; but all along it was just a cut out; a collection of red and orange, and maybe yellow, construction paper glued into flames; and I hate how long it took me to see those pieces that everyone else could, even though they told me they were there. I hate how much time and energy I wasted on him; I hate that I still think about it.
He was kind to me once, while I was fighting with my best friend, K; he was kind to me more than once but this is the once that stands out because I was losing my first love, my best friend of three years; K and I were inseparable because I let her walk all over me; I let her interrupt me; I let her talk over me; I let her do anything and I waited for her even when I was late, because to say no would make me something, I don’t know, I couldn’t name; and when I finally couldn’t take it and turned away from her, I couldn’t tell her why; he was there when she yelled out, “why are you doing this to me? You have to talk to me sometime;” we were at the station, she was on air, friends, radio and not, were there; the studio door closed behind her, but they heard it; I didn’t know what to say because there was too much to say; I walked away, gave everyone a lift home; and I went home to write a paper and he actually called; he invited me to smoke a blunt because he saw my face when K yelled, “why?”; he heard, along with all of them, that I said nothing; and he knew, like all of them who knew me so well, that for me to say nothing was not normal; I always had something to say, and I always had something to say to her; but I had nothing to say. But I knew how to answer him.
Which is why I tell this story, this music memory. It is the first time I heard my favorite Neil Young.
When I arrived to his house, down a long stretch of homes, and parked out front, went through the empty apartment, marveled at his closed bedroom door, wondering what could be behind it, and past the crowded kitchen counter, and found him and a close friend sitting on the couch they pushed onto the porch overlooking the empty, dark yard, I felt betrayed. But I didn’t know that then; so I sat down.
That other friend was leaving town with his roommates the next morning, driving to Florida for spring break. We smoked in silence until he went inside to put on a record. And there it was, On The Beach. I had never heard it before. I asked what it was. He told me.
It was a slow churn, a perfect sound for where we were. As soon as he said the word “beach” a thousand words were spoken between the three of us. If there was one thing we were trained to do, it was selecting a song. He and I had that in common. No one could do it like we could. No one tried. We were the ones. We were always in charge.
We sat and smoked. I could feel the tension of not belonging, that maybe they had been talking about me before I showed up, but I can’t tell now. It’s been ten years. But I still feel the crowded air on the porch. And I can still feel my eyes glancing towards the screen of his phone, filling with messages from who I could only assume was his girlfriend. When I saw him replying, I thought of all the times he never answered me, never answered us at the station. It made me sad, jealous, and mad, but not in that order. I wanted to be on that screen.
This memory is like an old shoe I’ve thrown away every year and there it is, again, in my closet, under the bed. I don’t know how it got back to me. It won’t go away. It never had a pair. It just sat there uninvited. But I managed to make the record my own. I played it constantly waiting for that small hook of a few notes in the title track when Neil’s guitar trickles. I played it when I was drinking on the couch alone. I played it at night. I played it when we smoked weed. I wound the song up and back, waiting for those notes. They are that moment, when I could finally wash away.
I don’t remember what song he played first, but it wasn’t the upbeat opener “Walk On.” Now, I tell myself it’s the title track. Now when I think about this quiet night, this soundtrack selection, the anticipation of the beach, picturing five guys in a rented minivan driving the east coast south to share a hotel room and drink each other stupid, I think about being on the beach. I think about the empty sand and waves that won’t stop. I think about how awkward I was. I think about that moment the sand goes from dry to wet, when your toes start to sink under even if you tried to lift them up. The worst part of this memory is that I wish I could return to it and stand up for myself. I did not not how to do that then.
But now it is mine. He may have pushed play that one time, but I hit it over and over again.
On The Beach empties me out, scraping whatever’s in there, muscles, bones, tendons, blood, and pushes it through my pores, making room for something else; and when I fill up again I put On The Beach on my turntable and place my head on the floor in front of the speakers, the sweet spot; it calms my nerves, my blood, my tendons, my muscles; whatever seeps out of me melts into the floor and down onto someone else; a cool wind brushes over, through the cracks in the lobes of my brain until there is nothing; I hear the peace of an empty beach; I cannot see the sun through the clouds.
I go on the beach to be left alone; to smell the ocean and look over the edge, and taste the salty breeze.
