There was a bowl of guacamole on the patio table and an open bag of tortilla chips. Flies were starting to make themselves comfortable around the unattended food. Next to the guac was a pitcher of Kool Aid that had been spiked with LSD. Tracy Stetson was sprawled on a lawn chair wearing nothing but a bikini bottom. Her mouth was open and she was making gurgling noises in lieu of snoring. Her brother — my friend — Russell Stetson was sitting across from me almost at the edge of the pool. His eyes were closed but he was awake. I knew this because every so often he’d say something like: “Herringbone is overrated but I’d take it with me to Christchurch, New Zealand with. Next trip. Uh huh.” When very high and very tired he tended to do that, I mean go all streams of consciousness.
I was pretty sure it was dawn but I had so many different drugs in my system that I wasn’t entirely sure of my own name, which is Peter Laine.
We were at Tracy’s and Russell’s parents house in the small, exclusive Marin County community of Woodacre. There were assorted other friends, including Stetson cousins, inside the house. Russell and Tracy’s parents were in Europe so our generation had the run of the place. Russell referred to the large ranch style house and adjoining property as Shangri-La.
I clung fast to my friendship with Russell. Being close to him meant I could stay at Shangri-La and get high and eat for free and continue trying to bed Tracy. Russell and I had met during our just completed freshman year at UC Davis. Russell was one of the most intelligent people I’d ever met and certainly the most charismatic. People were drawn to Russell but I was among the chosen few he selected to spend time with. Deep down I knew that I should loathe Russell for the effete snob and total hedonist he was. I’d grown up in Berkeley raised by parents and schools that preached social justice. I’d entered Davis trying to decide between going into environmental law, social welfare or teaching. Yet here I was cleaved to a nihilist who only wanted to enjoy his parents’ wealth. For all my admirable ambitions I was still only nineteen and had developed passions for getting high and getting laid and right then those passions overrode any desire to be a social justice warrior.
Russell had invited me for a week to “get the summer off to a proper start.” I’d met his sister during a Spring Break visit and had fallen in love. Okay, lust.
Russell was handsome — devastatingly cute to women, as several told me — and Tracy was just the other side of beautiful. She was also sexy, flirtatious and wise beyond her seventeen years. Unlike her brother, Tracy also had a conscience and did not speak contemptuously of anyone.
I think Russell liked me because of my sense of humor and my ability to keep up with his prodigious drinking and using. Being with Russell meant putting up with cynical and cruel views of anyone not in his inner circle. It was equal opportunity snobbery, he hated everyone. I in turn hated myself for indulging the misanthrope but the alternative was going back to Berkeley and either working with my mom at the juice collective she ran or helping dad at his small law practice. And being sober the entire time with no access to the delicious Tracy. I'd had enough of the non stop political discussions that had had dominated my upbringing, I just wanted to have fun. No one could see to that like Russell.
Worse than Russell were his friends and cousins. There were eight to ten of them around at any given time and each was more shallow and insipid then the next. I only liked one of them, a female cousin, Charlotte, and her only because she was so cute and wore the skimpiest bikini ever made.
At Shangri-La there was a steady flow of booze and drugs. A refrigerator in the garage was filled with foreign beers. There were not one but two fully stocked liquor cabinets and visitors brought over drugs, cocaine, acid, marijuana, magic mushrooms, uppers and downers. There was an ample supply of anything that could get you high in any way you chose.
It was my third day at Shangri-La and I was making a little progress with Tracy. Virtually every other guy who came by flirted with her too. I was the new guy so had the advantage of her having never heard my patter before. Still, I was getting the impression that she was about to tell me that she liked me but “not in that way.”
Trying to be fully awake was proving difficult. I managed to stand up and find my watch which indicated that it was 9:00. I was physically wobbly and mentally hazy. The only solution was to jump into the pool. First I stopped by the lounge chair and looked at Tracy’s breasts. They were perfect. I didn’t remember her taking her top off so this was my first conscious look at them.
“Stop looking at my sister’s tits while she’s sleeping!” Russell said. I was so startled that I jumped into the pool without removing my shirt. Five minutes of swimming made my muscles ache but my head clear. When I got out of the pool Russell handed me a Bloody Mary. “You’ve earned this, my friend. For meritorious service in the face of the hated enemy, sobriety.”
An hour and three Bloody Mary’s later most of us were in the kitchen preparing an enormous breakfast of scrambled eggs, potatoes, toast, fruit and coffee (spiked with whiskey). Russell never helped cook meals or do any chores around the house. He acted put out if asked to pass the salt. He couldn’t even stand to watch others work — “it bores me something fierce to watch anyone labor” he once told me. Russell would instead curl up on a sofa making fun of whatever sitcom, soap opera or game show he could find. “What a bunch of idiots!” Was a constant refrain while he watched TV. “You people are so sad it’s nearly delicious,” was another. Russell seemed to hate everything and everyone, maybe, I later theorized, himself most of all. He had not a drop of sentimentality and was perfectly cynical about everything.
At this meal Russell sat next to Charlotte who was sporting her usual flimsy bikini. She was about 5’11 which made her an inch or so taller than Russell and I. She had remarkably pale skin for someone who never covered up much of her body. That skin was without blemish and I fantasized about tasting it. Charlotte had not an ounce of fat anywhere that wasn’t in the service of enhancing her figure. If I weren’t so smitten by Tracy, I’d have made a play for her. Charlotte was clearly flirting with Russell, many women did — as did some men — but he was oblivious to flirtation and never reciprocated. In fact Russell never spoke of women or sex at all except to make fun of couples. Some people speculated that he was gay but he showed no interest in men either.
After brunch we lounged by the pool and commenced to get high. This particular day, lines of coke were on the menu to be chased by tequila or beer. I choose the latter. The conversation was variously silly or philosophical and there was some local gossip bandied about that meant nothing to me. I started feeling genuinely excited about life (thank you, cocaine) and excited about my prospects in a weird sort of everything-is-going-to-be-great-forever kind of way.
When Tracy got up to go inside I followed her as if this was the natural order of things.
She left the bathroom door open so I boldly stood at the doorway and watched her pee. “This a big thrill for you, watching a girl pee, Peter?”
“Watching you do anything is a thrill.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” she cooed.
“You bring out the sweetness in me,” I replied.
“Okay,” she said with smile, “let’s get this over with, let’s go to my room and you can have your way with me.”
I was aroused by the offer but said “I hate to think it’s something you just want to ‘get over with.’”
“Don’t take it the wrong way. I mean let’s get the awkwardness of the first time out of the way.” Tracy took my hand and led me to her bedroom and queen sized bed. I had never known such exhilaration. She took off her clothes in the blink of an eye and just as quickly got under the covers.
I did not hesitate to join her.
I’d only been with a few girls before, starting with Sarah Kowaleski in high school. Tracy was several hundred times more beautiful than any of my past loves. I felt like I was the master of the universe.
There was nothing about her performance in bed that suggested a seventeen-year-old. There was no awkwardness the first time nor the second which soon followed. After we slept in each other’s arms for a few hours and awoke to another encore before rejoining the party, which we did while holding hands in the way lovers do.
Most of the ensemble barely nodded at our approach but as we sat down Russell stood up and glared at me. “Did you just fuck my sister?” He demanded.
“God, shut up Russell, you’re such an asshole,” Tracy said.
“You stay out of it,” Russell said without even look at her. “You did, didn’t you? That’s the only reason you’ve been hanging out here so you could fuck my sister.”
It was the first time I’d seen Russell angry. There was something sad about it. As if anger was something he was trying out for the first time. It seemed performative.
I glared back at him, still holding Tracy’s hand.
“Answer me!” He screamed.
Tracy walked up to Russell and directed her comments to him inches from his face. “What is your problem you fucking asshole, you’re ruining everyone’s good time!”
Russell responded by slapping Tracy’s face.
Hard.
She immediately began crying.
I didn’t think, I didn’t hesitate. I punched Russell in the nose.
Russell put his hands on his face, cupping his nose. He was bleeding. Someone gave him some paper towels. “Get out of my house, you fucker.”
“You deserved it,” Tracy sobbed.
“The jig is up,” I said with resignation. I knew my time at Shangri-La was over for good and all. Twenty minuted later I was hitchhiking back to Berkeley. Tracy had walked me part way toward the freeway entrance and slipped her phone number into my back pocket. She apologized for her brother and told me that this was not the first time he’d lost his cool publicly because of one of her dalliances.
Later that Summer Tracy visited me in Berkeley and one weekend when Russell was away I visited her at Shangri-La.
Russell did not return to Davis. I heard that he’d transferred to UC Santa Barbara because it was a better “party school.” Tracy and I stayed in touch for awhile but then she got into what she called a “serious” relationship and went to college back east.
I graduated with a degree in Sociology from Davis then moved to Seattle where I got a job doing community outreach. I also eventually got into twelve-step programs for my drinking and drug use.
It was shortly after moving to Seattle, five years after hanging out at Shangri-La, that Tracy sent me a letter. She was moving to Seattle to do graduate work at the University of Washington. She further informed me that earlier that year Russell had committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. He’d never graduated college, never had a job, never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. He’s also never stopped getting high. Tracy told me that Russell used to speak of me but depending on his mood he’d either express regret over the way he’d acted or angrily say he should have killed me that day. Tracy said she never figured her brother out and for that matter neither did he. “He always was surrounded by friends but was never close to anyone. No one ever knew him, not even me,” Tracy told me. I wasn’t the least bit surprised by Russell's suicide, it seemed like a logical step for him, a person who believed and loved nothing, especially not himself. The ultimate nihilist.
Tracy and I became lovers again for awhile. But it didn’t last. I don’t know what does. I honestly don’t.
