Billy BenReilly's Story Arc (Issue #1)

I have no idea how Billy BenReilly and I became friends.

Here's a snapshot of the essentials that formed my concept of his character: Billy BenReilly roaming through the halls of my first duty-station barracks, all 6'4" of him elbows and kneecaps, every part of him including his hands, his feet, his nose, whatever - lanky and jutting and too long for human-proportioned clothing. Billy BenReilly unapologetically wearing flowing silk shirts with comic book characters emblazoned on them, Billy BenReilly donning a fedora every time he strode, like a daddy-longlegs, over the seaside hills of Billyrey Bay to and from the chow halls. Billy BenReilly somehow endearing himself to a crowd of his Army cohorts, who were themselves the more elite picks - the athletes, the charmers, the intellectual outliers that the few resident Susies gravitated toward - Billy BenReilly somehow found a niche under the wings of those sought-afters even despite an inexplicable penchant for making random and startling dinosaur screeches while prowling in stylized velociraptor posture up and down the barracks stairwells, even despite a tendency to go around mock-shooting webs from his wrists à la Spiderman, complete with sound effects and an occasional, spontaneous Spidey crouch-stance. Billy BenReilly getting busted in morning formation for having what turned out (much to everyone's - including our Platoon Sergeant's - relief) to be a Marvel comic book stuffed down his pants. 

Basically, Billy BenReilly just being an utterly, unabashedly absurd presence.

(Just doing whatever a spider can. Nothing to see here.)

Here's the first encounter I really concretely remember: walking into Billy BenReilly's barracks room, a room he shared with one of the hottest topics on the floor, where Billy BenReilly had decorated an entire wall-locker interior - every shelf, every drawer - with Star Wars figurines. And even though we were just barely grown-ups, most of us still highly susceptible to the currents of social approval, Billy BenReilly did not give a shit. He was so fucking proud of that toy collection, of his fedora, of his horiffically-awful billowy silk shirts, that he had stopped me in the hall, just some strange new Susie on-station he'd never spoken to before, to show it to me. It was done with the wonder and panache of a five-year-old showing off a secret fort to a trusted adult confidante.

I was not impressed.

(That is never gonna pass locker inspection.)

But Billy BenReilly's edge was in his incredibly naive and self-confident persistence, and eventually I started to find myself accompanying him through the foggy stretch of cypress standing between our barracks and the dining facility on weekends, or biking down to the wharf with him for clam chowder from the farmer's market, or engaging in silly little projects he would orchestrate, like stealth-planting tree seedlings in the barracks lawn to see how long whoever was being punished with groundskeeping extra-duty would just assume they were there officially and mow around them (as of just a few years ago, one of those fuckers was still standing and taller than me), or volunteering for heavy-lifting in some rescue group's sea-lion release event, or renting out a billeting room with a kitchenette so we could actually cook food, or sneaking into the Billyrey Bay aquarium with homemade people-watching Bingo cards: making a game out of finding the mom-with-a-stroller-blocking-traffic, the way-too-stoned-for-public-kid-lurking-in-the-jellyfish-room-for-hours, the first-date-not-going-well couple. The thing was, every single one of these adventures was good, wholesome fun - Billy BenReilly didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he still had his V-card, for fuck's sake (see what I did there?) - and yet they all went horribly wrong in some hilariously memorable way.

To wit:

One weekend, Billy BenReilly knocked on my door breathless, wide-eyed, champing at the bit for me to get dressed (in a new DareDevil logo T-shirt - he was always buying me T-shirts featuring super-nerdy things he adored) and out the door, because he had stumbled upon a sandwich-board-wearing man advertising the best idea ever: a whale-watching trip. Outside of Minnesota lake canoeing, I had never even been on a boat before, and so I took the bait. Joined by a handful of his benevolent social-buoy older, higher-ranked boys, we biked down to the dock.

I'm not sure what Billy BenReilly expected. I mean, I knew even at that age that he was hopelessly in love with me, and also that No. Not going to happen. But through what plenty of you Billys out there will recognize as tragic attempts at courtship rather than just the ridiculous foibles of an oddball dude, he'd actually achieved a superstar friend-zone slot, one of my most fun partners-in-family-friendly-crime, and - admission - I knew that without a signal from me he was never going to actually make the move for a kiss, so I just wore the shirts and went on the adventures and otherwise let that dog lie. Was it the right thing to do? I don't know. Maybe he boarded the boat with visions of us on the bow like some comic book superhero versions of Kate and Leo in his head, and maybe that day irreversibly changed how he thought of true love, in which case yeah, I'm an asshole. (But also, Titanic sank, the metaphorical romantic implications of which are pretty obvious.)

No, I'm not sure what Billy BenReilly expected. But I can tell you what he got, because it is all captured in an exquisite photo set by one of our aforementioned pals.

(Did not see this one coming.)

Leaving the dock, we are all smiling, waving, looking out at the bright and promising day sure to be full of gleefully-leaping cetaceans ahead of us. It is an uncharacteristically-sunny morning on the Bay. Everything looks to be turning up aces. If we were a Warner Bros. cartoon, Billy BenReilly's googly-eyes for me would be issuing fluttering hearts.

And then, flipping through the action-shots, the casual observer will note that one of us appears to be fading, growing pale. It is me, my face looking more and more desaturated compared to my bright red DD top. I am still resolutely smiling, though there is a trace of tension in my jaw, with Billy BenReilly obliviously joyful at the romance of sailing by my side.

(I *am* smiling.)

Now out at sea, fully committed to several hours afloat, I am a ghost. There is a slight look of dull panic in my eyes and my smile, still among the healthy, happy, rowdy group of strapping young soldiers in their weekend civvies, is more of a grimace. In one of these photos, I am gripping a railing with unduly-whitened knuckles, and Billy BenReilly is looking at me with adoration and a touch of concern.

And now the sun is gone. And now the waves are visible in the background. And now in half of the pictures, the horizon is at a strangely-skewed angle suggesting our boat might be having the balance issues of a staggering hobo. In these photos I am mostly cut off, maybe just the top of my head showing because I'm sitting down. In one of them, Billy BenReilly is kneeling in front of me with an earnest look of loving compassion. The look I am returning can best be described as "hate-lasers."

And then I am gone from the group shots.

(No. OMFG I wish.)

And then, because there is nary a single shit-eating whale apparent within 100 miles of us, because this whole trip is a goddamn motherfucking hellish lie Billy you sonofabitch, possibly because of my bright red shirt popping like a flare in contrast to the now-colorless day, I become the focus of photography, about which I am clearly far from thrilled yet incapable of warding off.

Here I am with my head in my hands, Billy BenReilly stroking my hair.

Here I am with a face indicating I might be pronouncing an "F" sound, flipping two birds at the camera as Billy BenReilly, looking honorably defensive, tries to shield me.

Here I am leaning over the boat's gunwales, clearly hoping for swift drowning death while Billy BenReilly reassuringly pats my back, the very picture of selfless caring.

(Oops! Spoiler.)

And here, a veritable gem of photographic art, is me, losing something like my last eleven days' worth of meals to the water. And no longer beside me but at the precise distance one might immediately acquire between oneself and, say, a just-discovered cow carcass bloating to distention in mid-August heat, stands Billy BenReilly, now sporting a look of complete horror. Billy BenReilly, completely disheartened and betrayed by the world and slightly terrified. Billy BenReilly with the shell-shocked look one might have if one managed to stumble and fall *into* aforementioned carcass. Billy BenReilly backing away, shielding his face from my true colors, the palette of which could be summed up as "every possible shade of puke, Jesus FUCK what did you even eat?"

If you've ever lived on planet Earth you'll a) easily recognize the below meme, and b) it should concisely clarify what sort of human behavior cause-and-effect I'm describing in the above photoset.

(Susie : Whale-watching -- Moshzilla : Dancing)

The final picture is the masterpiece.

On the dock, safely ashore, stands our small group of intrepid seafarers. Captured in a raucous knot are the handful of our Platoon's cool Billys, laughing and pointing and hamming for the camera. And on one far end of this group is me, a disaster-survivor's smile of thin relief on my face and - I shit you not - what upon close scrutiny has been judged by several analyzing parties to be multiple spots of backsplashed vomit marring the DareDevil logo on my chest.

And on the opposite edge of the picture slouches Billy BenReilly, facing the camera but slightly detached from the group, his enthusiastic naiveté of the morning now replaced by the haunted 1,000-yard stare of a grown man who has seen terrible things.

We did not go to the chow hall or, come to think of it, do anything involving food together again for a very long time.

Kryptonite, Part I

I flew back down to visit Billy Builder less than a month after our first grown-up run-in. And then I came back again less than three weeks later. And then he came up and stayed with me. And then I weaseled my way out of normal life for another few days at his place. And then we went to a mutual friend's wedding up by my hometown Billyville - where we met all those years ago - a dude I knew from high school, for whom Billy Builder was a groomsman. And then I went back down south as soon as I could to Billy Builder's. And somewhere early on in that exchange, I found myself in a ripcord-pulled-but-no-parachute-deploying freefall for the guy.

It was not exactly what select girlfriends of mine had in mind.

(Is a *little* support too much to ask when I'm about to make terrible life decisions, you bitches?)

But here's the thing: when Susie Solo's stupid brain, or heart, or whatever sort of manipulative arrangement between those two you might believe is running the show in these sorts of affairs, makes a call, shit does not get reversed. There's not even a replay-review option. So instead of listening to various friends who knew us both (including one, The Mover, who actually shook me by the shoulders one night a few beers in and told me Billy Builder and I combined were "like Whitney and Bobby, for fuck's sake!"), I toed the accelerator to the floorboards and maintained course.

(LalalalalalaIcan'tHearYouLalalaLA!)

Why the alarm from my nearest and dearest? Well, Billy Builder... was a fuck-up.

I don't mean his life was a total wreck or anything, but he'd been through some shit, and maybe spent some time as a less-than-great human - and because we had a lot of social overlap, a few of the people in my life knew about it. But here's what I saw: the aforementioned stumbles, yes, but he'd come out the other side thinking harder about things. I mean, isn't that the whole point?

Confession: I have discovered, over the years, that I have not just a tolerance, but maybe even a bit of a preference for guys who've had to crawl their way out of some trainwreck situations of their own making. I don't mean just your average hood-rats who are still trolling the bottom-waters and hurting people along the way, and not the never-had-a-chance sad-sacks with terrible family histories, and not your typical cliche "bad-boy" dead-ends. I mean folks who have learned the value of making their damn bed properly not from a textbook, but by personally fucking it up royally, and then having had to sleep in it in the past. These are the sorts of lessons that tend to turn boys into men (and girls into women, to be fair), and I actually have more respect for someone whose perspective has been shaped by a two-steps-back, regroup-and-get-smart, three-steps-forward kind of history than I do for someone who's just always been on a greased downhill track toward success. "I seriously question the life values," young Susie used to say, "of anyone who's never been arrested or fired." (That's still a little bit true.)

(I can't see how anything could go wrong here.)

And so things were fine. As things tend to be, at first. Fine as in: that moment you lay eyes on someone, like through the airport glass or walking toward your door or even just waking up in the morning, when your heart both somehow stops, but also feels like it just started beating in fast-forward, all at once - that kind of fine. The Billy Builder Experience was initially housed in a hazy envelope of those kinds of moments.

And then I had this terrible dream about Billy Builder, the night before I was booked to fly down to see him again.

I don't believe in any sort of clairvoyance or other metaphysical bullshit, but I do believe in intuition, and this one was the sort of dream that wakes you up like a punch to the gut, half-sitting upright and gasping for a deep breath of air in the dark while your brain slowly assembles the reality that it was a dream: that you're awake now and you didn't kill that guy or your sister's not really possessed or you're not actually at work without your pants or whatever, and so your life's not ruined here in the real world, and you collapse back onto your pillow in relief. But you don't fall asleep again for a long time, just blinking at the ceiling and waiting for the dream-dread to ebb while you slowly absorb the concept that that shit wasn't real.

(There are nicer ways to wake up.)

Except it was.

It might sound crazy, but I somehow knew from the minute I saw Billy Builder standing at the bottom of the airport escalator, smiling up at me standing there with my carryon the next afternoon, that it was true.

We went out for drinks at the bowling alley a couple blocks from his place, where I watered my liver to germinate the words for the question I already knew the answer to. Then we went home, where those words sprouted and unfurled and filled out into complete questions, growing up my throat and out of my mouth in vines that choked the space in the room between us. And instead of cutting back the jungle, Billy Builder's answers just obscured him in more green, unchecked.

(Did not sow. Don't want to reap.)

Details are not really useful here, but in very non-detailed silhouette: Billy Builder was still hung up on his ex. And she was back in the picture. And suddenly, my whole summer with Billy Builder was like the Lost City of Z, buried in vines, maybe nothing more than an Amazonian myth to begin with.

There are a lot of things I'll fight against, for the right reason, but going up against The Ex is an exercise in futility, and even at that young age, I knew it. She was local while I was a thousand miles distant. She was a two-year indelible scar on his past while I was just a currently-fleeting kiss, leaving no mark. And without even having met her, she was immediately my least-favorite person on Earth - a faceless nemesis made of Kryptonite.

(Two faceless nemeses, actually.)

I'd like to say I was graceful about it. I'd like to report that I handled myself with poise and dignity. But what really happened was more like this:

Without much of a choice at that hour, I quietly went to bed with Billy Builder, where he probably stared at my back without blinking all night, afraid to fall asleep or disturb me by, say, breathing too loudly, lest I fucking stab his face off with a broken beer bottle snatched from the nightstand. Then, predawn, I gave up on sleeping and dove into the most effective therapy I know: I went for the sort of run that makes everything else seem small: ranging miles and miles longer than I was currently trained up for, charging farther and farther from Billy Builder's house, pushing harder and harder, growing more and more out of breath until the fallout of the night before finally caught up to me by the side of the road. The actual moment - the sinking into defeat - is gone from my memory, but suddenly, this: me, on hands and knees there on the gravel shoulder, forehead touching down amidst the grubby constellations of discarded fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts stirred by the tailwinds of the morning's first early commuters. Time stopped there, as far as I remember, until a kindly dad-type pulled over, no doubt thinking I'd been clipped by someone's sideview mirror or something, buoying me back to the surface with approaching footsteps crunching through the weeds toward me and a cautious "Miss? Hey... Miss? Are you OK?"

And then I got to my feet, brushed the broken glass from my palms, and packed up and won the tiny battle of not looking back at Billy Builder as my taxi pulled away from him there on his stoop, my hands fighting each other in my lap and my disobedient heart lurking somewhere in the growing mileage between us, refusing to accompany me as I flew home.

(Coping, steps 1-7. Step 8? Blogging.)

If I could say the story ended here, it wouldn't have ever been blogged. But, because this is my weird life, and my weird blog, it didn't.

In true Susie-Tailspin fashion (know your predispositions and own up to them, folks), I proceeded to get fired from my job (my abovementioned life values are just fine, thank you very much). Then, later the very same evening I got canned, I received a phone call from someone who, at that point, I still mostly just knew secondhand through Punchin' Judy: Billy Boulangerie.

I hadn't seen or even spoken to him for probably nine months - the length of time since our first ill-fated encounter. For crying out loud, I didn't even have his number in my phone when he dialed me at close to three in the morning. I almost didn't answer, but because this is my weird life, for some reason I did, and here is what the semi-stranger on the line had called in the middle of the night to ask:

Did I want to take his job? You know, the one we had talked about nine months ago at the bar that one time he was in town? The one I'd said I would love to do sometime, if I wasn't already in this charmed relationship and happily employed and all? The job where he was one of three full-time salaried crew on a small, private, race-built sailboat that traveled all over the globe?

Because if I did, he was suddenly needing to find a replacement for himself and was offering me right of first refusal.

And if I wanted to be that replacement, I would have to let his Captain know within a day.

And if I said yes, I would have to get my current landlocked life shut down and put on ice, and meet the boat in Grenada - yes, the spice island just north of Venezuela - by the end of the week, prepared to be on-board and out-of-country for at least a year.

The Captain would call me tomorrow for an answer, said Billy Boulangerie.

Just think about it, said Billy Boulangerie.

Good night, said Billy Boulangerie.

Billy Blue-Suede

By their nature, outdoor summertime concerts are probably the most surefire way to stumble across an eligible Billy (or Susie). So, that's where I met Billy Blue-Suede: he and his boys were dancing next to the spot a couple girlfriends and I had staked out, in - you guessed it - a ridiculous pair of very, very blue shoes.

Footwear is, in fact, one of the first things I happen to involuntarily assess when I meet someone (anyone - not just Billys), and Billy Blue-Suede's kicks were pretty impressive, in a "this guy is somehow pulling that off... or is he?" sort of way.

Let me explain: you know how some people are so fashionable it hurts? Billy Blue-Suede's shoes took that level up a notch. They were all showy seams and strange tread-nubs and Italian-looking logos and alligator straps and faux buckles and shit, when everyone else at this lawn concert was in flip-flops or barefoot. In bizarre incongruity, the rest of Billy Blue-Suede's attire was event-appropriately relaxed to somewhere well below "casual Friday" standards. It was a little bit like if he'd rolled into the local Dullfield, Kansas drive-in movies in a Lamborghini... and work overalls.

(Built-in moves right there.)

But, I made the mental allowance that perhaps they were his Dancing Shoes (we all know how I love Billys who can dance), and we ended up organically chatting a few times between songs. Via the small snippets exchanged, I gathered that he was kind of interesting and was some sort of CFO for an investment firm downtown and had an adorable southern drawl and also, beer, so by the end of the show, Billy Blue-Suede and I were arms-over-shoulders yelling together along to songs that definitely do not need to be yelled along to, and I put my number in his phone when our two packs split ways.

We went out for drinks a few days later. If I was afraid I might not be able to pick him out at the bar with 100% certainty, due to aforementioned beer the night we met, I needn't have been: the one thing I could have recalled for a precise eyewitness police artist sketch was the shoes, and you better believe Billy Blue-Suede was sporting them again - despite the fact we were out on a rooftop tiki-themed patio on an 85-degree day and nobody who wasn't forced to by health codes was wearing closed-toed shoes. But, I guess if you've spent as much as I cringe to guess Billy Blue-Suede had spent on a pair of sneaks that hip, you get your damned money out of them, which at $3 a day, would maybe have required wearing them about 400 days a year.

The next time we talked, Billy Blue-Suede offered to make me dinner at his place. Some things I already knew about Billy Blue-Suede going into it:

a) He was from New Orleans
b) He was a Saints fan
c) He was a hobbyist home-brewer

It will be handy to reference this list, as well as my corresponding responses:

a) neutral
b) neutral on football in general, though NFL-sound in the background when nobody's watching is a distinct un-favorite thing of mine
c) positive, duh.)

So I show up and at the door is a shoe basket into which I add my own sandals. I notice two things immediately: I can hear a football game on, and Billy Blue-Suede is still strapped and buckled and cinched and lashed into his beloved shoes. In his own home. Where there's a shoe-basket at the door.


He greets me, gets me a beer, and we talk about the whole brewing craft for a minute before he excuses himself, saying something like "I hope it doesn't bother you but I'm gonna have to peek at the game every now and then while I cook... sorry, it's my team!"

I let it slide. I mean, if there was a good gymnastics meet on TV or something, I'd probably do the same. What I probably wouldn't do would be yell at the top of my lungs at the TV, which is where Billy Blue-Suede and I apparently differed. Turned out, "peek at the game" meant something a little more like "offer so much loud ref-heckling and through-the-screen coaching for pretty much the whole game that I literally make myself hoarse, while you, my date, have your beer in the kitchen and sort of involuntarily take over the whole cooking operation."

(While we're screaming and all...)

I find TV-yelling to be a particularly painful phenomenon. So, being a resourceful Susie, I made a little game out of it: Every time he yelled, I drank. Every time he called out to request that I stir this pot or check that burner temperature (so that he didn't miss a play), I cracked open another homebrew. Dinner could not happen fast enough.

(The Saints, you say? Saint Pauli Girl is my favorite!)

When I was probably 4 bottles deep, after the game was over, we finally ate, after which I made moves to get going. Sensing his closing window of opportunity, Billy Blue-Suede told me to hold on and dashed, still in his dashing shoes, to his bedroom. "I have something I'd really like to share with you!"

He came out with a Bible, from which he proceeded to read to me.

You know one thing more futile than yelling at an image on a plasma screen? Reading the fucking Bible to me.

(What do you mean, "Thou shalt be skeptical of nonsense" isn't a commandment?)

After about the fifth verse, I suddenly found myself staring at Billy Blue-Suede's decked-out feet and doing math. Four beers. Unknown ABV, but I was feeling pretty tipsy. After all the shouting at the Saints, how many Bible verses could he read before he lost his voice altogether? How long would it take me to get my sandals back on on my way out the door? What were the odds of getting pulled over driving across-town with my currently questionable BAC?

I looked up, as Billy Blue-Suede had stopped reading and asked me what I thought. It was really kind of a sad scene - him expectantly waiting for me to agree or freestyle my own favorite verse or praise Jesus or break into a Creed song or something (hey, I don't know what these sorts of people want!); me in a state of mild flight-mode panic. I had to get out of there.

I think I stammered something along the lines of "That's... nice?" and backed quickly toward the door, fishing my sandals out of the basket while realizing, as I stumbled trying to put one on, that there was no way in hell I could make the drive at this point. But what could I do? The time for exodus was clearly nigh.

After twice-failing to strap my sandal correctly, I stood, one shoe in-hand, and bade Billy Blue-Suede, still holding his Bible, thanks and good night. And then I bailed out the door faster than any semi-drunk person has business to be moving. I almost fell down his steps in my one-shoed Cinderella flight, sure he was going to come out after me to insist I sober up and listen to more Holy scripture, and I think it was at this point that I dropped the unworn sandal, which fell into the dark beneath his porch steps.

(This is why I can't have nice things.)

No time for that. I booked toward my car, expecting to hear more of the Good Book behind me at any moment, got in, fired it up, and drove around the block. And there, summer crickets singing and moths wheeling under the streetlamp down the road, I sat in my car, in the dark, and waited to be sober enough to drive my ass back across god's creation and into my own goddamn bed.