Clear Waters

I just shook my head. "You're the last person I'd ever expect to be stuck on an island with." He looked back at me from the wreckage of the small plane.

"And why is that?"

"You know that famous interview question: 'What one person would you want to be stuck on a tropical island with?'"

"Yea, sure," he answered.

"And?"

"Yea, I get it," he admitted. "Why would I be so interesting, right? I mean, you already know so much about me. Where I grew up. Where I went to school. All that."

"Exactly," I agreed. Truth be told, we had grown up in the same town, been educated at the same schools, and even had followed the same path in our profession, Psychiatry, at the University of South Florida.

So, yes, exactly.

I had hoped--in that hypothetical--that I'd be stuck on an island with Milan Kundera and we could discuss his books, although he would probably be a little ornery; or Gandhi, but he'd be so nauseatingly agreeable I'd end up strangling him; or the young Natalie Wood, but Robert Wagner would probably swim up to the shore to kick my ass. Wait, wasn't Christopher Walken on the boat when she died? Correction, Christopher Walken would swim up to the shore, and how creepy is that? So, maybe Bono?

Or, maybe, anyone with a flare.

We didn't talk for several hours. What was there left to talk about? Stranded here for ten days, sucking the milk out of coconuts and nothing else. I know our electrolytes were all screwed up. Mine were. I've had a hallucination or two.

"Yea," he said out loud, "me, too."

"I didn't say anything," I said curtly.

"Didn't have to," he said, just as curtly.

"I suppose you're right," I agreed.

We lay in the failed shade of palm fronds barely hanging on after the battering from the hurricane that dumped us here. I didn't know whether I didn't have the strength to bang another coconut open or just couldn't stand the thought of more coconut milk.

"I know what you mean," he said.

Had I said that out loud? I couldn't tell what I was saying versus what I was thinking.

"How 'bout you?" I asked him. "Who would you like to be stuck on an island with?"

"Anyone but you," he answered, and he meant it.

"Nice." One word, but I thought it won me the argument. It certainly summarized it. "You know what your problem is?" I countered.

"No, what's my problem?"

"Self-loathing."

"Self-loathing? Really?"

"Yep. It's pretty obvious."

"How so?" he asked, with the cunning tone of a prosecutor.

"You hate yourself because you couldn't quit smoking, for one."

"I did quit."

"Yea, me, too," and I laughed, looking around our small island. "You hate yourself because you can't make your medical practice grow any more. You hate yourself because you know you've driven your wife to have affairs."

"I did? Me? What about her? She cheated. I didn't cheat on her."

"Ah, but you did. You slept with the late hours you kept to drive up your income. You had sex with the money you chased instead of having sex with her. You fornicated with a set of golf clubs instead of doing things with your kids. You cheated alright, and you feel you were in the right just because your cheating didn't involve your penis. And your kids, by the way, are all screwed up." This hit a nerve.

"So are yours, my friend," he said. This hit the same nerve.

Yea, so are mine, I thought. Hell, probably everyone's kids are screwed up, aren't they? I suspected. I swallowed hard, like a dry piece of crow going down. "But most of all," I continued, "you hate yourself because you feel you've become irrelevant."

"Irrelevant? How so?"

"You--you used to be such a player. You were the guy. Everyone wanted to hang out with you. You were witty and charming and always interesting. Women flirted. Men were jealous. But as your family was disintegrating, fewer wanted to be in your circle. It's like they outgrew you, like they just moved on. They did, my friend. And here you are, a balding guy who feels he might still be just a little cool 'cause he has a Corvette."

"It's a sweet ride."

"I once thought so, too. But you think you can use it to get from O-to-COOL in 3 seconds. Like your other toys--your trips to Aspen, your Rolex. You hate yourself because you suspect you look ridiculous. The world has passed you by and you can't catch up, not even with 490 horses. You look all around and everyone has moved on in another world--their world--that used to be yours, but in which you can't function. At least not as someone who belongs in it. You see, my friend, you're a generation out of sync. You try over and over to snatch a life preserver to stay in that world, but all your desperation is like cramming for finals. You don't even know how to swim in their world."

"So that's it, then? Get to be a certain age and just give up?"

"Maybe. Or at least take some inventory. You're not a player. You're not relevant. You're not important. No, not anymore. And that's not really bad." I paused, then, "Of all the people I could have met on a tropical island--been stuck on an island with--it had to be you."

"And is that really bad?" he muttered. Then, looking up hopefully, said, "If I ever get off this island, I'm gonna change, I swear. Give it all away."

"Reinvent your relevance?"

"Something like that."

"No you won't," I said.

I knew this guy. I knew what--and what he was not--capable of. And so did he.

He turned away. I think it might have been the first time he wasn't facing me these whole ten days. I found it strange how I looked from the back, him and me, because my whole life I was always stopping for just a moment when I passed the mirror.

"We might as well be friends," I called out to him. "No man is an island. We're the only one I've got."