As my relationship with PhD was imploding, I decided that after I graduated culinary school I would go by myself to my family's beach house in NC. I hadn't been there in more than five years. The ocean was calling me as a place of peace amidst the turmoil of PhD, being fresh out of school with no job and the acceptance that most of my culinary school friends were going back from whence they came. I needed to sit for hours on the porch rocking, watching the waves and hearing them crash just like I did as a little girl. I needed wet sand between my toes and to feel the last push of a wave grasping at the shore rush over my feet. I needed to close my eyes and feel my skin suck the sun's warmth in as I turn a healthy golden brown. I needed crab cakes served in a crab shell, fried flounder, sweet hush puppies and watery mayo coleslaw, buttery biscuits and fennel-laden sausage patties. But what I needed most, what I craved, what I could practically smell the moment that salt air hit my nose after I arrived and parked under the house was one pound of beer and Old Bay-steamed whole shrimp served on a styrofoam plate, lots of napkins and a cold shitty beer in a can.
And that's the first thing I did.
I dropped my bags, took a deep breath of the inside of the house, said a fond hello to the ocean and headed right over to the restaurant on the mainland side of the bridge. It sat right on the intercostal waterway. A two story rickety white and red painted wood structure with outdoor picnic table seating. I went through the line, ordered my pile of shrimp and a beer and waited on a bar stool.
It was better than I remembered. By the end of that pound, I had a thick layer of Old Bay under my nails and shrimp legs stuck to my fingers. It was divine.
I didn't want to go home, but I didn't want to drink any more since I had driven. I took the car back to the house and walked two blocks to a neighborhood bar and restaurant. They had a live band playing and I slid right into a bar seat on the corner. It was mid-September and so sparsely filled by locals who live on the island year-round.
Before I got the bartenders attention, The Gent, who was sitting two stools down, asked me where I was from. He quickly moved next to me and we talked easily for over an hour. He lived two doors down from my family's house.
The Gent was about 5'8", 59, owned a construction company in town that built three-story monstrosities all over the island plowing down dunes, native grasses and animals in the process of covering every inch with beach houses.
Hairy, beer chubby, thin gray spikey hair, naturally spent too much time making out with the sun over the years, a footlong band of white skin wrapping around his nether regions.
But damn am I a sucker for a southern accent, smile and charm.
He was funny, always cracking jokes and laughing at them. Smiling with a can of cold beer in his hand living in swim trunks.
When I announced I was turning in to a pumpkin, he walked me home. It was on his way.
Over the next ten days, we spent a lot of time together. I would get up, go to the little local gym in town, make eggs, sausage and a biscuit for breakfast while I stared at the ocean from the kitchen table. Then I'd spend a few hours working on the house. I recall many days sitting on the cement carpark floor under the house, listening to music, repainting the rocking chairs, crying over my conclusion that when I returned to CA I was going to break up with PhD. I drank hard sodas at 11AM. Then when it was time for the paint to dry, I would suit up and head across the street to the beach to get my daily two hours of sun.
The Gent came by often wherever I was. Sat with me on the beach talking until he starting snoring.
I went over to his house for dinner nearly every night, except on the ones I needed to stay in and have a pity party.
On one of these nights, after dinner, we sat on his front porch listening to the ocean, to music, drank and talked until it was AM. I got up to say goodnight and head home. I walked to the end of the porch and turned at the top of the stairs to hug him. It lasted just a moment longer than usual and when I pulled away I saw it in his eyes.
