But a Big Dream Ch. 01

"For you, Chi, I'll create a whole new species." He pulled his golden e-cigarette out and vaped great thunderclouds of smoke of unknown toxicity, blinking with intermittent thunder as they exited the room. "Maybe a whale with a unicorn horn."

"Those already exist. "

"Yeah, well, I'm not the god of the sea, for Christ's sake. Could've been, didn't want to deal with the tides. In, out, spring, neap, yawn." He waved her off—because males are male, blood or ichor, real or fictive. She locked the door behind her and headed into the evening sparkle, throwing off her myths and recalibrating her thoughts to all the human concerns that keep us from dreaming as much as we should.

The Olympian had started visiting her, as was his wont, when she was scandalously young, but she should stress that the early appearances were mere (literal) recitals, he accompanied by himself on lyre. (Since his set list had to come out of her own twisted brain, these were less Homer, more Lavigne.)

Her copy of Edith Hamilton splayed beside her on the bed, he had infiltrated her bedroom in the guise of a gray cloud from which he precipitated in all his glory: the alien-blue eyes of Hugh Grant, body a lovingly accurate facsimile of the high school swim-team butterfly champ, Pedro Rodrigo. For that, how bizarre the early epiphanies were entirely platonic: even Chi hadn't understood why she had conjured him.

Maybe, she just liked the (mind's eye) sight of him. The swagger. The lazy confidence, reclining in his chiton, popping gigantic grapes into his mouth, watching her do her calculus homework. "My people created that, you know."

Procumbent on the bed, she'd looked up from the textbook, her hair still in its ridiculous sexless pixie cut. "Um, it was Newton, actually, and he was English." She could be insufferable at that age.

"No. Archimedes, look it up."

The cockiness appealed, too. Omniscience doubly so. But all those old myths about him being a mindless sex fiend were completely overblown, in her experience; he remained perfectly well-behaved until well after her eighteenth birthday. And even then, she had played the seductress.

Her phone buzzed again, and she was curious what depraved nonsense Art was proffering now, but it turned out to be the surfer again, this time an invitation to a beach campfire. It was actually the kind of event she'd been looking for for the past couple nights, but nineteen year olds were a taste as antiquated as all the rest of her teenage obsessions.

"I'm antiquated?" Zeus was lying on an osier beach chair by the side of the path, drinking golden syrup from a crystalline goblet. The tiki torchlight actually seemed like his natural environment. Maybe something to incorporate later...

"You're timeless, my love," she said. "I thought you were staying in the room."

"Eh, I finished the crossword. Thought I'd enjoy the night air. Find me a nice little hamadryad. Screw her brains out. Tell the 'rents I say hi."

"Out of all my disgusting sexual eccentricities that I would die if my parents ever learned, you're at the top of the list."

He gave a triumphant laugh. "I know the competition, and I am flattered. Still got it after all these millennia! Zeus out!" There was a sudden hash tag of lightning bolts, a boiling of smoke, and he was gone.

The family was not in their room. She found them on the patio of the hotel restaurant, where her brothers were simultaneously devouring chicken tenders while playing with their iPads.

"Jesus Christ, Chiasa, you are going to get a melanoma," her father said. He was drinking his customary Heineken, wearing a faded striped shirt with too few buttons done up.

"Ken!" her mother yelled. She didn't dig blasphemy.

He waved her off. "Look at her. She's emitting gamma rays."

Her mom assessed Chi and wrinkled her nose. "You do look a little pink, darling. Make sure you moisturize, or you'll end up like your grandmother."

Her father was battling a son for a chicken tender, resorting to distracting him by pointing over his shoulder and then lunging for the basket. He looked up after applying ketchup: "Wait, you can insult my mother but I can't say 'Jesus Christ?'"

"Your mother didn't die for our sins."

"Don't tell her that. You'll give her ideas," her father said. He gesticulated wildly at the waiter. "Chi, what do you want? They have sashimi, but it is repulsive. But try some of this Portuguese bread. Here, I'll order some more."

"No bread," Chi said, sitting down. Her brother explained to her the game he was playing. It involved zombies and Knights of the Garter.

"Oh right. Bread is evil. Carbohydrates." Her father nodded and cross his arms, as if positing some timeless piece of wisdom.

Her mom looked up from her phone. "How was your day, sweetheart? Want to go snorkeling tomorrow?"

"Maybe," she said. Chi was pretty agile, so she managed to snaffle a tender quicker than her father had. Also she and her brothers were pretty tight; free food was the perk she got for patiently listening to them recap their school lessons. She could recite the water cycle in her sleep. But it was summer now, class was out, so tonight instead they described the mongoose they saw on the black sand beach today, and how it looked like Uncle Haruki's ferret. By the way, Uncle Haruki's ferret was a smelly little rat that should be drowned for the sake of the biosphere.

"Doing anything tonight?" Her father made eyes at the waiter and pointed at his empty beer. "They're doing karaoke at the bar." For some reason, her dad, a native English speaker who had forgotten whatever Japanese he had ever learned, always pronounced 'karaoke' in traditional Nipponese fashion. "Your mom and me, something from Grease. Epic."

"Dad."

"Epic! Sick! Hella hella hella. I am a master of modern slang. Christ, I'm hip."

"Ken!" Her mother did not dig blasphemy.

He waved at his wife again and went angling for another tender.

Chi smiled, and she felt a deep love in her heart. But, to be perfectly honest, that love was a sort of snare, and she had the sudden desire to get as far away from them as she possibly could. She imagined running down to a dock, finding a boat with keys and speeding over to the Big Island where she could run absolutely wild (it was a fantasy, so she pretended she had some idea of how to pilot a boat). Christ, she'd even prefer to slam beers down at the beach with the surfers. Maybe a couple of guys would jostle for her attention. Maybe she could get some coke.

By the time she'd eaten—coconut shrimp, subpar—the desire to run was like some animal clawing inside her chest (maybe a ferret). She said her alohas and went trotting beachward, the moon a wan bulls-eye above the water.

"They infantilize you. They don't mean to, but you feel like a child around them," a voice said from above. Zeus had his mammoth thighs clapped around the top of a palm tree, looking for coconuts. He plucked one off and gave it a shake, grimaced, then threw it away.

"Would you cut it out with that? If I wanted psychoanalysis, I'd fantasize Freud."

"Ha!" He slid down the trunk and slammed into the sand, sending a little shockwave outward. A sudden downpour of coconuts occurred. "Think of what he could do with that cigar."

"Don't make a Clinton joke. I'm not old enough for the reference."

"Bah, fine. Do you know coconuts aren't even native to Hawaii?"

"Really, where are they from?"

"Cocorado. Hey, you don't dream me up for the jokes. At least I hope not. But let me tell you this." He came close, his white robes rustling in the breeze around her.

"What?" she said, suddenly a little flush.

"You," he said, and touched her chest with his finger, "are a blossoming sexual dynamo. You're crackling like a nebula about to become stars. You're like a five-foot caterpillar forcing big, giant, painted wings out of its back. All Cronenbergy. Sometimes it even scares me."

She lifted a leg and they kissed. His hair moved around them of its own accord. And, of course, he copped a feel.

"You say the right things, sometimes," she said.

He grinned. "Did I ever tell you about the time I fucked the moon?"

"Good night."

The beach was mildly populated, with the moon giving things a semblance of a photographic negative. Orange lights from hotels and restaurants and homes were garlanded around the lagoon, speared by palms, all above an apron of damp sand. The waves delivered little snatches of moonlight to the beach and withdrew in darkness. With her shoes on a finger and the waves sopping her feet, she broke into a run and gamboled, springing on her tiptoes in a series of kicks. She missed ballet, although she was always perfect rubbish at it, and, around age twelve, the girls had started teasing her about the size of her ass. She had had a chronic nightmare that one day her leotard would just snap from the pressure.

Art had said if nursing didn't work out, she should consider a career as a beanbag chair. She had told him if investment banking didn't work out, he should consider killing himself.

She slunk into the orbit of the campfire with a demure wave, sidling between a couple of beach chairs and taking a slap to the face from the marijuana smell. "Hi, I'm Chi. I think I got an invite here."

The surfer leapt to his feet. "You! I didn't think you'd come."

A guy to his left rolled his eyes: "Smooth, Case. Always act surprised when they accept an invite." He took a turn with the joint, swelled up his chest like a dragon getting ready to blow fire, then leaked out smoke from a sort of vaudevillian grin. "New bitch. You want?"

She was about to refuse, because she had a terrible track record with post-blunt decision-making, but her surfer stared at her and said, "You don't have to," so she grabbed the thing and toked deeply. This seemed to generally impress the group, six or seven undergrads from the look of it, who had the contented peace of a day well-wrung out. She fell backwards into a seat and asked for a beer.

"He called you Case," she said.

"Oh yeah," her surfer said. "That's the name they gave me. Casey. I... kind of hate my parents for that."

Chi leaned way back and watched the Milky Way inch across the face of time. Christ, she was going to be starving in twenty minutes. The absolute bestest thing about Art was he was a provider: if they smoked up, he always sprinted out and returned with a bag full of fries, KFC, and Sour Patch kids, and that's the kind of order that he'd have to hit three places to fill—all in ten minutes, tops.

"Wait, like Casey at the Bat?"

"Yeah, like the goddamn poem," he said, and looked off to the left sullenly. He knocked some sand around with his foot and was otherwise quiet.

"What's your story?" the big toker asked, not looking up from his phone. He had spidery tattoos down his forearms, and an alpha vibe that made him the most attractive prospect around the fire, but the woman next to him obviously had him claimed: she was currently attempting to decapitate Chi with her eyes.

"How do you answer a question like that?"

"You know, open your mouth, produce some words that provide relevant information."

"Here with my family on vacation."

"Sexy," he said.

"Yeah, that's the word for it. How about you?"

"Here with your family on vacation." Some scattered laughter around the fire, and now the toker's girlfriend was staring so intently Chi could almost feel her windpipe constrict. She had short tomato-red hair, an industrial art nose ring, and an apparent inability to even pretend to smile.

"Are those real?" the girlfriend asked. Apparently she was able to smile.

"You, uh, don't have to answer that," Casey said.

So, you see, you're twelve, your glands start producing some weird magic potion whose main toxin is estrogen, your hips balloon overnight, the girls in dance class make sure you're aware that it's noticeable, and one time, cunts, somebody makes a joke about "Save two seats for Chiasa!" Ten years later, weird beach pixie chick thinks that it's somehow within bounds to talk about your tits, as if the unspoken commandment that we pretend to leave all body judgments to the dudes had never been enacted. There's no fucking sisterhood, Lena Dunham, and fuck you for making me believe there was.

"If you can't tell, why should I?" Chi said. This seemed to please the group, and got at least a few appreciative snickers. It also meant that now every male in the group could not resist a full ten-second visual inspection of her chest.

"And that's enough about me," she said, and gave what was, in her opinion, a quite gracious smile considering the circumstances. She devoted herself to the beer.

The chick was too possessive, which meant she and toker weren't an item, or maybe they fucked but he liked it open and she said 'Cool' but who actually means that? Either way, Chi thought, I am now going to make a half-hearted attempt to fuck him. Or maybe go see if the Wendy's franchise ever made it to Maui, whatever. Island air had something of the post-orgasmic to it: it made her want to do something terribly, but she didn't have the energy for it right now.

She actually ended up having fun. The record-skipping beginning of the evening notwithstanding, it turned out to just be some sophomores from BU who liked to surf and got a good group-on. The big toker—Andrew—was the sickest history major she'd ever met, funny as fuck, with no other mode than the acidic, world-weary sarcasm of a man twenty years older. He interlarded his not uninteresting monologues on US foreign policy with references to Chomsky and Fellini movies. And though he did want to fuck her—a girl knows; also he winked at her when he proposed skinny-dipping—she in the end ruled it out. She was positive he had crabs.

Also, his girl-whatever turned out to be surprisingly sweet. Clémence (like the anarchist, Andrew said—it was a reference Chi would have to look up later). She apologized for being bitchy, said she'd just had a fucked-up day, though she offered no details. When the skinny-dipping began, she was out of her clothes in the lapse of a breath and ran giggling into the water. Breasts pert, cute vulva, pierced hood—which always struck Chi as a bit of a hat on a hat, but to each her own. She had a violin hickey, which merited respect.

Casey was the last one to take the plunge. He walked around in little circles in the sand, repeating "are we really doing this, are we really doing this, are we really doing this," before finally hollering, "FUCK IT," disrobing, stumbling out of his boxers, and diving into the waves, rather impressive cock trailing behind him like a rudder.

Chi had been the penultimate, and since it wasn't her first rodeo, she stripped delicately without hurry, like a surgeon readying for an operation. She rocked back and forth to shed her jeans, drew off her underwear, tucked them carefully in a pocket, and cast off the bra. The firelight lit her in flashes and pops as she walked ceremoniously forward. Inch by inch, the warm water surrounded and penetrated her. Casey came crashing in next to her.

She floated easily, which lent itself to various lazy jokes. Some splashing led to chicken fights, which got surprisingly competitive before ending in laughter and a bruised boob. Zeus went drifting by, riding a dolphin bareback, and made a series of vulgar puns about crabs, clams, and starfish, then said he was heading for Rapa Nui.

It was either her drinking or Casey's that did it (an unanswerable question, since they'd never be sober together), but somewhere in the course of the night he became downright tolerable, to the point she let him feel chivalrous and walk her back to her room. Relaxed, he started to talk with a nouvelle but enchanting enthusiasm about his twin loves of tennis and veterinary science.

Before they left the beach, they ran into a trio of adults—real, late thirties and beyond, adults—who were rapidly cycling between French, English, and possibly Spanish, laughing and hiccoughing. Two men, one older, with a Nietzschean mustache, glasses, a wreath of short white hair and a piercing, professorial stare; the other shorter, younger, dusky, Mediterranean skin, with thick black hair and incredible musculature. The woman, merlot-haired and loquacious and impressively voluptuous, made disarming jokes and cheerful comments about the beauty of two young lovers on a moonlit beach, leaving Chi as at ease as when she'd been floating beneath the stars earlier, though she hoped Casey wasn't getting overly optimistic notions about their relationship and what the possibilities of the evening were. The Mediterranean said something lovely about her looks that seemed heartfelt but without the least agenda, though it did cause Casey to take a possessive step closer to her, involuntarily squeezing her hand. This was presumptuous on his part, but it made her feel pretty, a feeling that still made her feel like a child given a piece of candy. Perhaps a habit from ballet.

It was only when the woman brazenly leaned forward to whisper in Chi's ear that she realized it was the woman from earlier on the beach. Chi's knees spasmed in sudden insecurity, and she stumbled against Casey, holding on for support, which evidently surprised him and, also, made him grin. Instantly, she felt lost, and she was happy to let him lead her back to the hotel, after they bid adieu to the adults, who continued their macaronic riot across the island.

The woman's breath had smelled of champagne and pears. She'd said, "Be gentle with him."

It wasn't the presumption that they were going to rut that stuck with her—that was just fair inference, plus Casey's intermittent erection was difficult to ignore, try as he might to strategically position the Sox cap he was carrying. It was the idea that she needed any advice as to how to use it which was really intolerably rude. It was the type of thing Zeus would usually have a comment on, but he was evidently off shagging something.

"Well, thanks for coming out," Casey said as they walked down the hallway. It was thatched, half open, lit with recessed lamps. "Sorry if my friends were, you know... too whatever." The way he stood over her, supporting himself with an arm on the door, very little distance between their faces, could actually be interpreted as aggressive, but he didn't know that. Chiasa Sato was well at ease.

"So..." she began, pulling the keycard out of her purse, "You're nice, but I really do have a boyfriend."

"Yeah, I understand. You do seem pretty cool, I mean, to say the least, so he's a lucky guy. I really didn't expect you to come tonight. But! I'm really glad you did and we got a chance to hang out and talk... and, uh, swim. I hope you have a great vacation, and life, I guess."

Chi waved the key card, cracked the door, paused. She looked back, quirked her lips. "Look, you don't know me, so there's no reason you have to answer this. I'm mainly just curious about my radar for these things. So, if you don't mind me asking—you're a virgin, aren't you?"

"Ok, nice to meet you. See you round."

"C'mon, dude, it's just a question. I've had my naked box against the back of your head."

"It's not just a question though, is it?" He clenched his arms and released them, took a few steps back and forth. "It's like an accusation. It's embarrassing."

Chi spent an excruciatingly long moment staring at him, drumming her fingers against the doorframe. Her first time left much to be desired: she had no idea what she was doing or what was being done to her, and her partner was just as up to speed. Had things gone differently, she might have just given up the entire enterprise, redevoted herself to academic perfection, to her parents' delight. Luckily...

In short, she saw a strong case for experiential asymmetry in these situations, and charity demanded that she do the right thing here.