Remembering Paul--The boy who wandered in and out of my life.

In 2024, during the last season I was able to spend with my dear friend and novelist Darrel in Puerto Vallarta, we often talked about writing. Darrel had fallen deeply in love with the characters in his second novel and spoke of them almost as living companions. His excitement made me wonder what it would feel like to write from inside another person’s life.

When I came home, I decided to try. A young man I had known only briefly many years before quietly stepped into my imagination. I didn’t invent him so much as listen to him. His voice arrived first, and I simply followed where it led.



Paul

Hey. My name is Paul. I live in a little town called El Cerrito, the little hill. Well, there is a little hill here and overall it’s a pretty nice place. 

I got a mom and a dad and a sister and we live in a little house with three bedrooms, one for me, one for my sister and a bigger one for my mom and dad. There is a bathroom we all share and, of course, a garage. The house is painted gray. I helped my dad paint it a couple of years ago and he paid me $20. The house is located up against the hill, so it is fun to ride our bikes up and cruise down. The go carts my friends and I build from odd pieces we find around town are really cool too. We are not quite in that fancier part of the hills. We are just normal folks. 

My mom is a seamstress and my dad, I don’t know what he does but someday I’ll find out. Mom‘s family is Spanish from Spain. She cooks a lot. She cooks wonderful things. We love her Paella. When she gets a little extra money she buys shrimp and all kinds of good seafood and makes us a really yummy dish from the country of her childhood. My sister is younger than I am so, yeah, I kinda get to call the shots around here especially when my dad is not home. Did I tell you my dad is Italian and pretty good looking. I guess that is what my mom liked about him.

I’m 14 by the way and run around with some guys that are pretty cool frankly and we smoke cigarettes and roll up the sleeves of our T-shirts and kinda look a little bit like James Dean. The girls at school like us—they think we’re cool and we do some kind of outlandish things from time to time, pushing the limits you know, see what we can get away with, see what this world is all about. Did I tell you I love music? I really love music. I love the blues, I love jazz guitar. I’m not real good at playing it, but I like to play. Sometimes me and my buddies get together and throw some music together in somebody’s garage or, I don’t know, basement room. But mostly we just kind of hang out. We go to school  and I’m a fairly decent student. I’m not real into it but yeah, I’m a fairly decent student and I think the teachers like me OK. 

I’m not sure if my dad likes me. He’s a little hard on all of us but mom is just a wonderful mom. You couldn’t invent a better mom. She’s very very cool. Her name is Helen.  Helen, like the light. My sister‘s name is Elena did I tell you? And Elena is also the light so I guess these two ladies are the light of my life. I can’t tell you my dad‘s name because I think I forgot it. 

Sometimes when my sister has her friends over I think they’re kind of cute but I’m a little bit shy about asking girls out and stuff. I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do. You know what I mean? I mean girls have such expectations and nobody told us guys what we are supposed to be coming up with so you go to the movies and see some stuff and maybe try to imitate someone like James Dean—he’s a pretty good one to imitate. Anyway life is pretty good here in El Cerrito. I’m not unhappy, sometimes a bit lonely, but not unhappy. There is this girl Laurel a friend of my sister. She’s pretty cute, funny and really smart. I might like to see her but she probably would think I’m too short or something. Maybe someday…maybe in another life.



Christie 

Paul was a Fox. His mother Helen had a little sewing shop just down the street from me when I lived on Grand Avenue back in the late 60s in Oakland, California. Paul was a friend of a neighbor of mine and one time they just stopped by my apartment and I thought “he is incredibly good looking”. Guys didn’t jump on me like other girls. I guess I was off putting or something or maybe I just wasn’t cute enough. But it was a long time before I actually got to know Paul a little bit. 

My friend, the neighbor, moved out, and Paul moved in to the apartment behind me. It was wonderful every time Paul came home from his job at a  long-term parking garage that kept very expensive cars for people who traveled overseas. He actually got to drive them around, keep them in shape. As soon as his door closed you heard Lou Rawls and other great jazz all evening and I loved that. He would kind of hum, drum or snap his fingers to it and I would think “Wow that Paul is such a Fox”. 

Later, much later, I learned that Paul had actually stollen a Porsche from that parking garage where he worked and driven it across state lines as far as the east coast. He was living in New York or New Jersey. He married and he and his wife came out to the west coast. They lived in the mountains near Eugene, Oregon and he drove a logging truck. I learned that the FBI had knocked on the door of their Oregon home and arrested him for that car theft. He went to prison. I later heard probably from Helen that he was released from prison and he had settled in Creswell, a small town just outside of Eugene where we used to go square dancing when I was in college and where I first saw people do the twist at a country dance hall.

It just happened that one August I was driving up to Corvallis for a high school reunion and traveling alone, an unusual thing for me since it was one of the few times I was not burdened with a husband. On the way I pulled off in Creswell and stopped at the little building that said Chamber of Commerce which also doubled as a gas station. I went inside and said hey, do you know Paul? Oh yeah they did and they could get ahold of him. So I spoke with Paul and he said  “oh my gosh I can’t believe you are here! I’ll be right down, but meet me across from the Dairy Queen parking lot because it’s the only place that’s big enough for my truck”. I imagined a pick up truck and was surprised to see a huge log truck pull up and park and Paul coming across the street to meet me. 

What an interesting experience catching up with Paul. He always was a sweet guy as well as being good looking. He told me that he had been recovering from MS. He had been riding rodeo some and working with horses. He had also been a race car driver. He just couldn’t get over that idea of speed. We had a nice conversation and parted and he said he was in San Francisco for horse shows frequently and he would contact me. And indeed he did but as usual the men who always happened into my life—and of course one did—interfered. I felt uncomfortable meeting Paul with my kids to go to the rodeo, which would’ve been a perfectly reasonable thing to do but “c’est la vie”, that’s the way it was.  So I really never saw Paul again and many years later I learned that he had passed away. 

My good friend Laurel, whom I had met in that same apartment building, remained close to Paul’s sister and to his mother Helen. Through Laurel I occasionally heard how life was unfolding for Paul.

Helen was a very instrumental part in both of our lives. She became good friends with my future mother in law. When I met my second husband Jorge, his mother came from Mexico to visit for a long long time. She met Helen and they became friends since they both spoke Spanish. Helen was Spanish. Paul’s father was Italian. The women were about the same age and now single.

Laurel had told me about what was going on with Paul so I kind of knew a little bit before I actually met him in person again.  When we talked, that time that we actually talked, he told me he had never really gotten together with anyone in the years since he separated from his wife and everything that followed. But he said “you know, I meet women but they don’t love jazz the way I love it”. Music was very important to him.

I believe he was kind of a lonely guy. Helen always said I wish my son had married you! I thought Paul would probably not have been happier with me or me with him. But I do wish I had taken advantage of the opportunity to know him better.

So that’s just a little story about the Fox, Paul. May he rest in sweet peace and may Lou Rawls and all his other jazz friends accompany him.



Paul 

Wow Christie you found me again! It was really nice to hear my name called and yeah, I’m here hanging out with my buddies. It’s like when I was a kid and we played jazz and blues in somebodies garage, just kicked around. Except these guys are really talented. That’s what they did in life.

It is pretty cool here, pretty calm and I guess I kind of like that there aren’t so many pressures on us here to do things right. We just kind of roam. There are no rules so there are no rules to break. That’s good.

Anyway yeah, it was really cool seeing you back in Creswell and I always wondered why you turned me down for that rodeo. I guess there was someone else in your life but that’s OK. I’m glad you had someone and I hope your life is good. Sometime I might just get out for a little trip around earth and pay you a visit and we can chat a bit. That would be cool or we might see each other over here someday that would be cool too. Bye for now, Paul.

PS. Mom says hi! She’s making a Spanish Omelet and sharing some brandy Presidente with your mother in law Maria de Jesus. They found each other after you mentioned them in your story.

Oh, by the way, we don’t see each other here. It’s quite like life—all pretty much in our heads (if we had them).


Keep remembering!