Tales from Merman’s Cove

I sat silently awaiting my punishment. What was I being punished for exactly? I guess I couldn’t say anything, other than having an overactive imagination. What was I supposed to do? The teacher asked for a short story. I gave him one.

The school administrator for Harding Elementary paid me no attention, clicking away at her typewriter, likely doing whatever grown-ups do that kids and adults can equally care less about. I sat on the bench peering over the reception counter just outside of the closed-door meeting that my grandmother was called in to meet privately with the principal. I wasn’t told what was going on. Nothing I could do except wait, eyes scanning the recently added Halloween decorations adorning the #2 pencil yellow walls. These weren’t the kind of modern decorations you’d find in the seasonal aisle of the local Lucky’s Supermarket or Target department store. No. These were decorations recycled from decades prior, probably when the school was first founded, and dulled on the same level of spook as a Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon. Which sent my mind down a rabbit hole. Why is it that every Halloween black cat has a hunched back? Is it not a Halloween decoration unless the cat has a hunch? Is it just normal cat decor then, not tied to any specific holiday? Where do the black cats go during Christmas anyway?

When it was finally my time to face the music, I walked into the little earth-toned office and sat next to my grandmother. On the other side of the weathered wooden desk was my principal, for whom I’d never seen this close before. I didn’t look at him. Instead, I looked at the thing on his desk: my short story. What was it called? I wish I could say, but it didn’t matter. I was proud of it, and with the adjoining page of crudely drawn cover art featuring a horde of the undead feasting on the flesh and brains of the living. I wondered if the principal could smell the mix of watermelon and cherry scents coming from the Mr. Sketch Scented Markers I’d used for the intestines and blood respectively.

So what was so wrong about that? Well, I guess it was because of the setting. See, it wasn’t some graveyard that found these once dead citizens inhabiting. It was my school, or in my telling, the school if it were built on a cemetery. A school hit by a wild bolt of lightning that coursed through the pipes like metal veins and shocked the life back into the formerly dead dirt-nappers below the godforsaken earth. Was I in trouble? It turned out, not really. This was the first time I’d ever been called into the office and all the characters were generically categorized without being attributed to anyone in particular. So why did I get called in with my grandmother? I guess the principal just wanted to confront the twisted youth who could come up with filth like this. With a witness too. True to form, the issue of violent video games was brought up by the administrators. Mortal Kombat and Final Fight were some of my favorite ways to waste quarters at the arcade or pizza parlor on the occasional Friday night dinner outing. Or maybe it was the media of the time that drove my adolescent brain over the edge? We’ll never know for sure.

While the principal listed all the fictional possibilities for my crazed imagination, my mind wandered in wondering which of the kids in the grades around mine had weapons in their bags at this very moment and I not knowing if they were just all for show, tell or street cred. I didn’t really think about it much then. It’s not like thinking about it would do any good. About as well as being a snitch, and I was already a fat kid. No new reasons were needed for them to target me, thank you very much. Fighting was never an option that entered my mind knowing the other guy(s) were armed. I was too busy worrying if a short walk to a friend’s home would mean being jumped by a gang (again) or if the living room would suddenly burst apart from a drive-by shooting from whatever illicit activity was happening in the homes next door. Though, being a poor kid did come with some advantages. For one, it meant not having to worry about your sneaks being stolen off your feet. Just your loose change pulled out of your jean shorts or having a Tamagotchi to get swiped during recess. There were other, bigger things to worry about. Like what was going to happen to me for letting my imagination run wild.

This time I was lucky. The principal let me off with a warning. I thanked him, wondering if they’d search my desk and find the remaining weird stories I’d worked on during our free time. I happily departed with my grandmother, following out to her dark blue Geo Metro that always smelled a little like vomit after I’d puked into the air vent a year prior (though to be fair, I warned her I was sick that day, even as she told me I was just faking to get out of school). To my surprise, she wasn’t mad about being called to the office on this occasion. That’s not to say that she was happy about being pulled away from her day to be told her grandson was some kind of a weirdo. But I knew deep down that she knew that I was the right kind of weirdo. If that makes any sense.

It was a short drive just a few blocks from the elementary school down Fairmont Ave to the El Cerrito Plaza. We took a nice stroll through the open-air mall, dodging rollerbladers zipping along the sand-colored walls and “Store Closing” signs for shops that thrived when my grandmother was in her prime. That’s about the time I started to realize the last remnants of another age were starting to slip away before my young eyes. There was something uniquely special about a drug store Coca-Cola from a vending machine straight out of the ‘60’s that pulled me in, especially at the bargain of a quarter a cup. Even looking back in my mind, I can still taste it just as if I were standing in front of its vend-o-magic glory. No Coke since has ever been comparable. Was it a particular way the chrome machine spat out its proprietary concoction of syrup and water into the waxy floral Dixie cup filled with tiny bits of crushed ice? Or is it all just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake grown from a middle-aged mind looking to see if the days were really the “good old” kind or just the days I managed to get through with a modicum of sanity?

The San Francisco Bay Area of my day felt like an anarchic playground to a latchkey street kid in the mid 90’s. The big city across the water had its charms found in the mix of life reflected in things like Full House, Mrs. Doubtfire and The Rock. On the east side of the bay, I felt more of being somewhere in the mental crossroads between Coolio’s Gangster’s Paradise and the parodic Amish Paradise of Weird Al.

I can still smell the mix of cigarettes and coffee in the air, waiting in line for a greasy bag of doughnut holes to munch on while my grandmother had her afternoon visit with neighborhood friends. It was fine with me, sitting against the wood-paneled wall, face planted deep into a book with one ear listening to the adults conversing about this and that. Waiting patiently until they were done before making one last stop for the day.

B. Dalton Booksellers was a home away from home, especially each time a new Goosebumps book was out and I ached to read it before the rest of my friends could. However, soon my choice of stories escalated to the old reprints of pulps from the likes of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Rice Burroughs to keep me company when things got rough. As a kid, sometimes you know life could always be better, but you’re powerless to do anything about it. Just keep your head down. Do as you’re told. If things get tough, get tougher. If things get too tough, find an escape to make life a little easier to get by. Our world isn’t always an easy place to live in. But I found that the right words can help fuel the necessities of therapeutic escapism. That’s about the time in my life when I discovered Stephen King. “There are other worlds than these,” goes the famous line pulled from The Gunslinger and the first of the seminal Dark Tower series that I know touched many like-minded readers.

Everywhere I looked, I could see the other worlds around me. Some of them were splayed in brilliant colors on Saturday morning and afterschool cartoons. Others crept in as the little insomniac that I was, watching B-movie thrills in the dead of night and learning to lovingly mock them thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. A few were waiting to be discovered on VHS box art scary enough to make me re-think walking down the horror aisle at the local video store. Or through a wide range of spy thrillers spanning from reruns of the comedic Get Smart to the incomparable 007 himself in both film and literary versions. Magnificent covers to Dungeons & Dragons guidebooks in eclectic patchouli-scented Berkeley hobby shops sparked the imagination with wizards fighting dragons on the ruins of ancient castles. It blew my mind that these worlds could be pulled closer somehow to my own little insignificant piece of earth.

Worlds of wit drawn from the Marx Brothers quickfire tongues helped shape my voice to come. The comic vulgarity of Mad Magazine exposed the hard truths of life could always have a counter take of nonchalance with “what, me worry?”. Worlds of espionage and danger brought forth thanks to the Bonds (Sean Connery & Roger Moore) showed me that a dash of charm goes a long way when you have a gun in your face. The daring exploits of adventurous rogues like Errol Flynn and Harrison Ford taught me how I could respond when in danger against any foe big or small. I didn’t need a weapon at school when I could just make a bully laugh like I was a chubby Groucho. I realized that I had everything in my power on my own to craft the stories that filled the worlds I wanted to experience. The same kind of stories that have evolved into the collection you have before you now.

Is it possible to be nostalgic for a time that never existed? To have a connection with a place you’ve never been? To miss a person you’ve never met? My answer is given through the words spilled out onto the page from the same twisted brain that was washed in the media of ages long past and a time that exists only in my memory.

I thank you for being on this journey with me. Hopefully this book encourages you to reminisce on your own nostalgia, whether it be lived in or dreamt.

Cheers,

Dexter “Merman” Keyton