Mad at Me

     I can't remember for the life of me what made us so mad at each other. But anger indiscriminately takes no prisoners, and on this particular flashback the first fuming had mostly to do with finding an apartment.

     It was 1979, give or take a year. We were barely 20 years old, at the most 21. We were good-looking, healthy, and full of so much promise.

     By healthy, I mean physically. Mentally we were both struggling, trying to find our footing, feeling lost and unsure of ourselves while dealing with perhaps the greatest setback of our lives: giving up the dream of playing college basketball.

     We were living in our hometown of San Diego, a city where for years young people from all over the country had made it their dream to live, but we were a long way from living our dream. I'm not sure why we felt like such castaways back then, at such a young age and with our whole lives ahead of us.

     But that's manic depression for you. By the time we turned 20, the claws of bipolar disorder were already deep in our respective buttocks. Oblivious to our knee-jerk compulsions, we soldiered on for many years as best we could, taking on the regrets and ramifications of our mistakes one by one.

     Somewhere between us living rent free together in the home of a gay model and his wife and infant child up in Irvine and moving into a one-bedroom apartment together on Ensenada Place in South Mission Beach, we'd gone looking for places to live in Ocean Beach.

     The details of this particular row are a bit hazy now. After looking at several rentals we suddenly got into a heated argument about which place to take. As I sit here trying to remember what happened my mind is going blank. I'm not sure exactly what set us off. All I can vaguely remember is us storming along the sidewalk on Niagra Avenue in downtown Ocean Beach absolutely livid with each other.

     I think we'd eaten at one of the breakfast places on Niagra in those days. The argument may have started over pancakes and eggs, but again, I'm not sure anymore. We screamed at each other with hurtful and hateful words springing from the deepest, darkest places of our disappointment and displacement in and from the world. It came from the anguish of not knowing our true calling in life.

     Of course, during these times we forgot about living our best lives in the moment and being grateful for every minute of our youth that we got to spend with each other.

     Needless to say, we ended up not getting a place together. At least not on that particular occasion. But there were other times we lived for short periods together in relative peace and harmony as roommates. They are now priceless moments in our brief life spans.

     Another time we got into a major imbroglio was at a breakfast place that our mom and dad used to take us to back in the early 70s called Mr. D's. Their special was two eggs, hash browns, choice of ham or sausage, and a buttermilk biscuit. All for 99 cents. And the biscuits were to die for.

     We went there many times with our family, and a few other times either with friends or each other. Again, in this instance, I don't remember what we were fighting about. Things got so heated Mars started spitting food out of his mouth.

     As I remember it, Mars usually got a lot more worked up than I did during our battles royal. Nine times out of ten I tended to get his goat a lot more than he got mine. But that's not something I'm proud of. On the contrary, it makes me wince, as Mars says, about how unable we both were to fully enjoy the warm fuzzies of being alive at such a young age together while here on planet Earth.

     One more mad at me story comes to mind. It was the time we decided to go live in Hawaii together, in the Fall of 1999. After leaving a job as a TV videographer in Texas, a gig that had lasted only a few months, I decided my next best move was moving to the Big Island to become a divemaster.

     My plan was to pay for the training needed to become a divemaster at a dive shop in Kailua-Kona and then work as a guide and crew member on one of the diving boats there. This dream of mine all came true, albeit in a warped and perhaps even pathetic way.

     After booking a flight from LAX to Hilo International, Mars and I stayed in a hotel above the Oceanside Harbor for one night before driving up the coastal route in a rental car. I started to write about this in a short story here, In No Particular Order, but have yet to finish the first chapter.

     We left a day before our scheduled flight and when we got to Laguana Beach we decided to hang out for an hour or two. It was the beginning of the end.

     We climbed over a long, forlorn sea wall and sat down on our beach towels in the deep white sand. It was roughly 11 am on a weekday morning and the wide, desolate beach was nearly deserted.

     I vaguely remember a sinking feeling of dispirited loneliness overcoming me as I took in the surrounding scene: an inviting yet unoccupied volleyball court, its taut net perfectly still in the warm, breezeless September air, and a trio of sexy young girls trapsing through the sand looking for a place to lay their beach towels and sunbathe.

     It felt like being caught in a crevasse of high anxiety and deep disillusionment, not to mention sexual longing and frustration, from which there was no place to crawl out. I was 40, maybe 41 years old, without a place to call home, falling into the abyss of my first midlife crisis.

     Sadly, we were each in our own separate, inconsolable worlds. We could no longer find solace in each other, in just being together, at an age when so much of our lives still lay ahead. And right there, while lounging free and unencumbered on that magnificent Southern California seashore, we began sliding into one of the worst falling outs of our lives.

     Of course, there would be a few more spats for us to navigate before we gave up quarreling for good.

     We left the beach and while driving the rest of way to LAX the subject of Mars wanting to smuggle half a pound of cheap Mexican weed onto the flight came up. I told him not to do it, but he was adamant. We got into it and by the time I parked the car in the Holiday Inn parking lot it was game over.

     When we got out of the rental, Mars was out of his mind, screaming at the top of his lungs and pounding his chest with his hands. Facing me from a few feet away, fists raised, he suddenly took a fighting stance against me.

     His violent outburst scared and horrified me at the same time. This was my identical twin brother, so mad at me he was ready to turn our verbal disagreement into a physical brawl.

     I backed off and retaliated with the silent treatment, which had been my tour de force against him over the years. I got my duffle bag out of the backseat and headed to the lobby to check in alone. It was one of the worst moments of my life. In shock and deeply wounded, my own anger, not to mention fear and loathing, took its ungodly toll upon my soul.

     I checked into a single room, while Mars called his wife at the time, Eva (mentioned in the Twinship Lasts a Lifetime section), who drove up to the hotel and took him back to San Diego.

     I flew to Hilo all by my lonesome. Gut wrenched, I made my next move like a wounded and desperate animal gone berserk, fighting and flighting at the same time, Hunter S. Thompson playbook in hand.