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| Tracy Stetson |
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, likely asleep. The 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 shangrila.
I clung desperately to my friendship with Russell. As his friend I could stay at shangrila and get high and eat for free and continue my desperate attempts 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 an effete snob and a total hedonist who cared nothing about anyone save himself. 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 19 and had developed passions for getting high and getting laid and those passions were predominant. When Russell invited me for the weekend and I met his sister I fell instantly in love. Okay, lust. Russell was handsome — devastatingly cute to women, as several told me — and his younger sister was even more beautiful. Tracy was not just sexy as hell but wise beyond her 17 years. Unlike her brother, Tracy also had a conscience and did not speak contemptuously of everyone outside her circle.
When the school year ended I’d had an open invitation from Russell to “come hang out.” I think Russell liked me because of my sense of humor and my ability to keep up with him when he started drinking and using. At his house I had to put up with more of the stupid, sexist, borderline racist and classist things he said. I hated myself for it 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 where he was setting world records for most pro bono cases. 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, who for all his faults was also a wit.
Worse than Russell were his friends and cousins. There were eight to ten different ones 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 at all times wore the skimpiest bikini ever made.
But I couldn’t tear myself away from Russell and Tracy and the steady flow of booze and drugs. There was an endless supply of everything including a garage refrigerator that was filled with nothing but foreign beers. Visitors were always bringing over drugs, cocaine, acid, marijuana, magic mushrooms, uppers and downers. It was heaven and hell all at once.
I was making a little progress with Tracy. Virtually every other guy who came by flirted with her too but I was the new guy so she’d never heard my patter before and I was, as she herself said "different than the usual bozos who come by."
Trying to be fully awake was proving difficult. I managed to stand up and find my watch which, to my great surprise, 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 tits. 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 shouted. I was so startled that I jumped into the pool without removing my shirt. Ten 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 expensive whiskey, of course). 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 a an inch or so taller than Russell and I, had remarkably pale skin for someone who never covered up much of her body. But that skin was without blemish and I fantasized about tasting it. She had long blonde hair reaching the middle of her back. Charlotte had not an ounce of fat anywhere that it did not enhance 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, of course. Initially I’d thought he was gay but he showed no interest in men either.
After brunch we lounged by the pool and commenced to get really high. This particular day, lines of coke were on the menu 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 I of course knew nothing about. I started feeling genuinely excited about life (thank you, cocaine) and bored senseless by the conversation. When Tracy got up to go inside I followed her.
She left the bathroom door open and 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 as she flushed.
“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 better on more levels than I can count. (Modesty forbids explicit details.) There was nothing about her performance in bed that suggested a 17 year old. There was no awkwardness the first time nor the second nor third which quickly followed. After round three we slept in each other’s arms for a few hours and awoke to yet another two encores before rejoining everyone else, which we did while holding hands in the way only 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 and frankly it was pitiful. He seemed pathetic and lost. As if his anger was something staged that he had to go through.
I glared back at him, still holding Tracy’s hand.
“Answer me!” He screamed, and threw his glass against the house where it broke into pieces many of which flew back towards us.
Now Tracy stood up and screamed in her brother’s face. “What is your problem you fucking asshole, you’re ruining everyone’s good time!”
Russell looked away from me to his sister and slapped her across the face. Hard. I did not think. I stood up. I punched Russell in the face. Very hard.
Russell put his hands on his face, then cupped his nose. He was bleeding. Someone gave him some paper towels. “Get the fuck out of my house, you fucker, you hit in me in my goddamned face.”
“You deserved it,” Tracy sobbed.
“The jig is up,” I said with resignation. I knew my time at shangrila was over for good and all. Within ten minutes 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 half heartedly for her brother and confessed that this was not the first time he’d lost his cool publicly.
Later that Summer Tracy visited me in Berkeley and one weekend when Russell was away I visited her.
Russell did not return to Davis. I heard that he went to UC Santa Barbara. 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 and ended up moving to Seattle where I got a job doing community outreach. I also eventually got into 12 step programs for my drinking and drug use.
It was shortly after moving to Seattle, six years after hanging out at shangrila, that Tracy contacted me. She was moving to Seattle to do graduate work at the University of Washington. She also informed me that 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 did not find myself at all shocked by Russell's suicide, it seemed like a logical step for him, a person who believed and loved nothing, especially not himself.
Tracy and I became lovers again for awhile. But it didn’t last. I don’t know what does. I honestly don’t.
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