
August 11, 1993
---------------

  TYBEE ISLAND, GEORGIA -- Why watch fish when you can watch people 
for less?

  Lots of people spend lots of money to buy fancy aquariums and brightly 
colored tropical fish from other lands. It makes them feel at home to 
sit and watch the creatures.

  As tiny as it may be, Tybee Island harbors an abundance of the best 
people-watching aquariums in existence -- laundromats and bars. The 
dynamics of a laundromat involve a thankless task and an arena that pits 
man against machine. People walk into bars to do battle with one another. 
Nobody ever gets their quarters back from either place, but it costs 
nothing to watch them lose.

  I started watching Janice and her friend early this evening when they 
walked into this local bar. The night was young and so were they, holding 
hands and singing silent songs together. They sat at a booth, ordered a 
pitcher of beer, and began sharing whispers and smiles across the table.

  A small highway winds east from Savannah through a vast marsh-like 
sea to the beach. You become aware that you are on the "island" only 
when the highway makes an abrupt turn to run south along the sandy 
shores.

  "Main street" runs one block from the highway to the sea. Although 
miniaturized, it is cluttered with businesses like any other main street. 
On this street is one gift shop, one laundromat, one real estate office, 
one arcade and five bars.

  The mere ratio of bars to regular businesses may be unique but it is 
not the whole story. Typical tourists abandoned Tybee Island in favor of 
nearby Hilton Head Island years ago. People know each other here. It is 
a community. If there is a bar fight here, odds are somebody has hit a
friend.

  I am no stranger here. Two years ago I came here with a dear friend 
and, together, we decided to spend a lot of time in the bars on main 
street. We were lovers who trusted each other with the other's kingdom, 
so we thought we were ready to make a very important decision regarding 
our lives together. We had spent six months holding back from doing
something we both wanted to do. Our relationship had grown and flourished 
since then so we thought we were finally ready.

  We all have turning points in our lives; times and places where we 
chose our route among many paths. Tybee Island is my place.

  Everybody knew Janice, just as everybody knows everybody on Tybee 
Island. She is the daughter of a local fisherman who spends his days on 
a boat, working the ocean for shrimp. It's hard work. Janice, they say, 
has chosen an easier, softer way. She is a law student and pays her way 
through school by working at a day care center on one of what locals 
would term "the other" islands.

  Of course, Bill helps out a lot too. He does the chores -- sometimes 
even the dishes -- at the apartment he shares with Janice. Some say he 
is the brightest star in Janice's promising future. As they sat at the 
booth in front of me sharing the first pitcher you see how much they
supported each other. Neither one laughed or smiled alone and I assumed, 
in trying times, it was the same with crying.

  Tonight I could afford the luxury of observing. I was no longer a 
participant so I could concentrate on people watching. Bars and 
Laundromats are the places to go to watch people and I arrived here 
alone this morning with a suitcase of clean clothes.

  The months that followed my visit here two years ago were filled with 
agony. It turns out that the decision we made here wasn't such a good one 
for us. Since then, I have done a lot of crying alone. First as he was 
sleeping then when he was gone.

  But life goes on and so did the evening. Janice was still laughing 
when they ordered the second pitcher. I overheard pieces of Bill's 
soothing words to her across the table -- something about how well she 
was doing in school and how special that was to him. ". . . Beautiful 
and smart, now that's a rare package," he said.

  Janice is beautiful. Long dark hair, splendid figure and eyes that 
glistened even the dim light of the bar. She is no more than twenty-two 
years old, the point in life where the tomorrow's are so much more 
important than the yesterdays.

  The second pitcher was shared a lot faster than the first. After 
they ordered their third, the conversation got much more intense. I 
could only overhear portions of the discussion. Something about Bill 
doing a little better with the dishes and her bad habit of hanging around 
the care center after work.

  I wasn't interrupted much. I was careful slip a ring onto the middle 
finger of my left hand before I came to the bar. It works with most guys. 
But then again it's the ones that it doesn't work with that you have to 
worry about. Warren happened to be one of those. "You sure I can't buy
you a drink," he slobbered. I assured him that I was. I had made that 
decision long ago as well, right here on Tybee Island.

  It wasn't difficult at all to hear the couple I was watching after 
they got halfway through the third pitcher. Bill was telling her that 
things were going to have to change . . . and change quickly. She needed 
to come home right away from work. Janice wasn't smiling anymore.

  "You get all prettied up just to tantalize these guys in here," Bill 
said when they started on their fourth. "You would just love to sleep 
with the whole bunch of them, wouldn't you."

  It got worse. Much worse. Soon, Janet's glistening eyes were 
glaring through a haze of held back tears. Bill's slurred words were 
ugly -- although Janice held her own, slashing back her own comments. 
It's pretty damn hard to share hate and anger, so each of them tried his 
or her best to stand up for themselves.

  "You slut," Bill yelled. "Go ahead and screw them all, I don't care." 
He gulped down the remainder of their fourth pitcher and stomped out of 
the bar.

  Janice stayed behind and called over the waitress. This time ordered a 
single glass of beer.

  I joined the rest of the people in the bar in staring down at my 
hands in front of me. There is something painfully embarrassing and 
belittling about witnessing the anger of lovers.  A collective shame 
seems to cloak the audience. The turn of events did not come as a 
surprise to me. Like I said, I have been here before.

  The night went on and soon the other patrons became busily engaged 
in what they were doing before the fight. Warren was no exception. He 
walked past me and up to Janice.

  "Wanna a ride somewhere," he said.

  Janice brushed back a lock of dark hair that had matted on her 
forehead and looked up. "Sure. Sure, why the hell not?" She said.

  Like I say, for people-watching, you just can't beat laundromats and 
bars.

(NOTE:  "Janice's" father's occupation was changed. The names of the 
couple were altered out of respect for their privacy. As mentioned, 
everybody knows everybody on Tybee Island.)  

August 14, 1993
---------------

  TYBEE ISLAND, GEORGIA -- Some Chinese philosopher dude once said that 
crises is "opportunity riding the dangerous wind."

  I have considered that thought with some misgivings over the last 
few years. I have a tendency to doubt the messenger of meaningful news 
and it seems to me that the Chinese are falsely credited with too many 
novel inventions. I was told they developed Pizza -- yet everybody knows 
that Pizza is Italian, right?

  I thought about such things today as I walked along the compacted 
sand of the beach here, preparing for tomorrow. My mind wandered to the 
phase uttered by some American pipe-smoker:  "Fear" is short for "False 
Education Appearing Real." Now, that hit home.

  If philosophy is anything like the old Certs commercial and they are 
both right, it means I've been battered around in an artificial hurricane 
most of my life.

  Where is the solution?  If "the calm always precedes the storm," how 
the hell am I supposed to enjoy a cloudless day?

  And so it goes with me. I am plagued with such thoughts. Conventional 
wisdom, scrawled in stone by those who are supposed to know about such 
things, just makes my emotional situation worse. I started out on 
this trip to get away from the misery of home and find the tools to get 
better. I cannot think my way to health because, in a very real and honest 
way, my best thinking got me to where I was.

  To get better, I must grow. To grow, I must act.

  I do not believe that people can deal effectively with emotions 
using intellect. It's kind of like pitting David against Goliath in 
this internal, grueling battle I am fighting. Emotions are gonna' win 
every time. I have to do something that spurs within in me all the 
dreaded emotions I want so desperately to conquer.

  So tomorrow I am going to enter a bikini contest.

  Now, before you get to laughing too hard at the picture you have 
created of this twenty-five-year old blonde think of your own fears. 
Chances are I may find a few of them a little silly, too. To you, these 
fears are very serious and very real -- they hurt. So do mine.

  I just broke up with a man I adored. We lived together four years. 
I cannot cope with the desperate loneliness I feel by watching other 
couples walk along the beach, hand in hand. When I watch them I think of 
how very perfect their relationship must be; I am convinced that he must 
do the dishes and she never has any headaches. I compare how I feel deep 
down inside with how they act together in public. This is the kind of 
thinking that gets me into trouble.

  I've learned that when I feel really lonely I should find instead 
someone who also walks alone on the beach. I try to be the best company 
I can be for a few minutes. It's a small thing, I know, but the harder I 
try to help them feel better the less lonely I am. Little actions, rather
than big thoughts, seem to do the trick.

  So this morning I bought one of those "g" string bikini's at a 
little store on the highway and spent the rest of the day trying to 
work up the nerve to wear it.

  Little things.

  It is not immodest of me to tell you that I am very pretty and that 
I have the body to wear one. Throughout my life my looks have worked 
against me. When I attract other men's attention, the one I love holds 
it against me. My lover would call me a slut because a stranger would 
smile at me. If a guy would actually approach me and ask to buy me a
drink or something, my boyfriend was convinced forever and absolutely 
that I had slept with the stranger. No, saying that I am physically 
attractive is not an act of conceit -- it is a confession.

  "Blonde jokes" have become very popular lately. No one laughed at 
them more robustly than my ex-boyfriend who, by sharing both my body 
and my soul, knew intimately how truly unfair they really are. This 
man who would tell me he loved me for my wit and my ambition would 
parade me in front of friends and strangers with the unspoken demand 
that I keep my mouth shut. He would dangle me in front of them as bait
and, when they finally nibbled, he'd take a bite out of me.

  Angry?  Yes, a little. More than that, I am ashamed.

  During the final year of our relationship it got so I would tie 
my hair up and wear the most unattractive clothing I could buy. I 
did everything in my power not to be noticed. This obsessive practice 
of trying to look ugly started out like a flimsy cobweb at first and 
then, like all bad habits, grew into a chain that shackled me . . . 
holding me back from myself.

  Shame is a big time inner agony. It takes lots of work to bust it 
up into pieces small enough to throw away. No amount of thinking is 
going to make it anything but worse.  I need to do something.

  So, tomorrow I am going to enter a bikini contest.

                              #  #  #

Copyright 1994 Leslie Meek, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leslie has been searching and in her travels relates to us what she has
found so far. Warrensburg, Missouri is where the travels have begun and
there is no telling where her search will end -- if ever. Perhaps leaving
was her fist step to realizing -- she was *there* and already knew.
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