In Search of Billy Vila

I like to think that I'm pretty competent at life in general.

I'm all for women's lib, job equality, labor undivided by gender and all that shit - I mean, I did spend some pretty impressionable years of my life crawling around in the dirt with an M-16 over my shoulder and I loved it. So yes, yes sure, "We Can Do It" is damn right - I'm walking proof. I've always tried my best to impress on all the young little Susettes I've mentored, taught, or coached over the years that we Susies should definitely be prepared and more than able to do for ourselves and find our own meaning out in the world.

(Better be making me a sandwich while you're telling jokes, Billy.)

But.

Here's why I know I am just completely fucked if I end up alone: cats are terrible at operating power tools, and I suck at true Billy stuff.

Ironically, this came to my attention in the kitchen one day, when my garbage disposal just... stopped working. Honestly, this was just the latest in a string of Billy things that have gone unfixed, untinkered, uninstalled, and just generally undone in my life over time. For instance, I've lived in my place for a year now and there is still a weird floodlight-y fixtureless bulb inexplicably dangling from the ceiling in my dining area, which would take all of four seconds to swap out with something actually useful that did not, say, burn one's retinas with the searing light of 10,000 suns every time one accidentally flips the wrong wall switch. All I need is a ladder and like two screws and one tiny iota of homeowner's motivation, and this eyesore is no longer scorching dark soot spots into my walls whenever an unsuspecting guest helpfully attempts to turn on a light. But you know what?

I just don't do it.

Instead, I never, ever use that lightswitch. The dining area is a Dark Space. This is my solution.

This is partly because places like Home Depot, with their annoyingly-manly warehouse ambiance and their high shelving system designed to completely emasculate anyone under 5'5" and the sheer essence-de-Billy that a high concentration of their products are bathed in (read: I do not have any idea what that item name is even supposed to mean, let alone what it is for or if it is anywhere in the general conceptual vicinity of whatever it is I came in here looking for so y'know what? I'm just gonna grab this Gatorade and get out of here), just make me want to freeze up and wait for a forklift to mow me down like a baby bunny in the aisle. I just know those orange-aproned smug bastards are watching my bewildered wandering on the closed-circuit system and laughing, hopefully accompanied by ad-lib mockumentary David Attenborough-style narration (which is exactly what I would do if I was ever hired at such a place, until I inevitably got fired for not knowing what the fucking fuck anything any customer ever asked me to direct them toward was, which dismissal would likely occur in under 39 minutes).

(Excuse me? Where are the male cans?)

Another factor in this digging-in-of-heels is that I've just sort of refused to amass the requisite tool repository, in part because I am loathe to spend money on things I do not enjoy using, but also because that set is something a husband should come with. Think of the household tools as the Billy side of the dowry.

Is this shitty, lazy, sexist living on my part? Maybe. I do have in my possession a couple hammers, a tape measure that no longer self-retracts, several tubs of spackle in various states from fully-hardened to completely petrified, and a handsaw with a blade so rusty that angry tetanus colonies are actually visible to the naked eye on its surface, but this is the extent of my home-repair kit. So sue me: this is just not an area into which I am interested in taking the solo plunge, and besides, why buy piecemeal when you're in the market for the aforementioned complete set?

Anyway, one day the sink disposal did exactly nothing when I flicked the operative switch. Naturally, I flicked it a couple more times just to be sure, then turned off the water and walked away, thinking to myself, maybe it'll start later.

I know this is a rather illogical thing to think, because of the whole "magic not existing" part about the way the physical world works (sorry about the spoiler, religious folks). But without a Billy on-hand to make said "magic" happen manually, the disposal was pretty much out of my control. I mean, I can't even put a couple screws into my benign ceiling, and this thing has moving parts that could conceivably chew off my arm Fargo-wood-chipper-scene-style? I don't think so.

(So is this "Pete" guy single, or...?)

So about a week and several hopeful-yet-disappointed switch flickings later, the water drain-time had begun to slow noticeably. Again, at first, I continued along the track of "ignore and hope for Billy-less best," but alas, it did not improve.

I did try one solution, likely mentioned by some Billy in years past, which finally dawned on me a couple days into the disposal's labor strike: I located the circuit breaker panel (proving here that I am innately good at Susie stuff, I had arranged a leaning shelf worth of books and plants and photos over that big battleship grey bitch upon move-in and had forgotten about the existence of that weird door). And then, I actually found the correct switch for the disposal (labeled by the previous homeowner as "Disposal," coincidentally), and with an immense amount of hopefulness, I had flicked that switch, too. And you know what?

Nothing fucking happened.

(Flick it again, Sam.)

So, I did what single Susies have done since time immemorial, when Billy-stuff in their lives has steadfastly refused to just fix itself: I called my dad. He suggested I look for a reset switch on the actual disposal, which I had actually briefly done on the day it crapped out and which switch I had also flicked hopefully, several days ago. But, without more promising options, I gave it another shot, thinking maybe there was perhaps another switch yet-unflicked (about as likely as finding a lamppost in the forest at the back of your wardrobe, but whatever - Let Us Pray). Unsurprisingly, though I again found the dirty Billy-ness of the ugly under-sink pipe-y space - exactly the sort of space I avoid at all costs in my house/life (thank god I don't have a garage) - I did not find a portal to Narnia or another magical switch.

But just as I was crawling back out from the cabinet doors in defeat, you know what else I found?

I found the goddamn plug of the disposal, which had somehow been dislodged from the socket.

(Brain: also apparently unplugged.)

I also found that I could really, really use someone just a little more mechanically-skilled in my life.

If he was good at running his fingers through my hair at night and making me laugh in the mornings, I might even be inclined to make him a sandwich or two.

Kryptonite, Part II

If you were to have performed an engineer's safety inspection on my relationship with Billy Basement, it would never have been opened to the public, because the underlying Susie-Billy Basement infrastructure was founded on some pretty trigger-happy math to begin with. For example:

(Why isn't this working?)

Billy Basement wasn’t a traveler and I was fresh off the boat, literally: I met him mere months after throwing down an anchor in a landlocked life after years of vagabonding adventures aboard Delirium. Billy Basement owned a standardized little place in the ‘burbs while I’d spent my entire adult life moving cross-country on a yearly (at maximum) basis. Billy Basement saw not only his parents, but his entire extended family, at least once a week - not a one of whom, out of four currently-surviving generations, had ever moved away from the metro area where Billy Basement and I resided, while my own Solo clan is a pretty globally far-flung family, even by modern mobile American standards. Billy Basement liked to stay on the couch and Netflix, while I liked... well, just about anything but that. Billy Basement held a job he was already, in his twenties, pretty sure would be the very same one he’d work until retirement, while I was still constantly ditching my latest daily grind on a whim, keeping my longevity record among the ranks of the continuously-employed at just under a year, and bouncing on to the next in my string of tabula rasa do-overs unscathed.

So yes, in the rearview, there were some serious oversights in calculation from the get-go, and they didn't exactly add up any better with time. In fact, with a little distance and a lot of armchair phychologizing by various Friends Like These, I can admit that the basic chalk-outline of why the FUCK I was with him looked something like this: stability.

Billy Basement wasn’t going anywhere – and at that moment in time, after having spent years doing 100%, exactly, unfailingly the opposite, I think I really believed on some level that I was ready to just sit down, so to speak, and join predictable mainstream audience society, too.

("My Very Long Nap: The Billy Basement Story")

To bring the metaphors into the home-life arena, Billy Basement was sensible beige aluminum siding that would responsibly tone down whatever HOA-approved, muted-primary-color paint shade a less buttoned-down neighbor might get cuh-RAY-zee with on their faux shutters. Billy Basement was microwaved Boca Burgers for dinner, because real meat was too messy to cut and cook in the kitchen. Billy Basement was a redundant land-line telephone like your grandparents still have for dialup, just in case his cellphone wasn’t charged (Billy Basement was also a cellphone charger assigned to every room, in case his battery got low during, say, a particularly long Battlestar Galactica marathon). Billy Basement was a system of timers on various house lights so robbers would think he was home at 7 pm every night, except also, in the spirit of abovementioned redundancy, Billy Basement pretty much was home at 7 pm every night, like clockwork. And Billy Basement was a teetotaler, which clearly Just No.

(Well the last thing I need is fat children!)

Billy Basement also wasn’t particularly social outside of his comfort-zone of fellow band members – a trait that I finally made him confront head-on after we’d been together for an entire year and he had weaseled out of every single invite or request for his presence at any event in my own pre-Billy-Basement social circle. It's like you have an imaginary boyfriend, commented one girlfriend jokingly, after the fifth or so time he'd ducked out on group plans at the last minute (a comment which made me cringe, in large part because, as Punchin' Judy helpfully articulated in retrospect, it suggested that my imagination, insofar as boyfriend character creation and development, was abysmally dull). It was time.

In my life, there exist a handful of Billyvillians who’ve stayed in touch since high school days. Now, plus a growing cohort of permanent significant others, we tend to gather once a year or so for a wedding, the hometown summer festival, a new-spouse or new-baby meet-n-greet, a housewarming, a group lake-camping trip - really any legit excuse to get together and catch each other up. And so, one year in, as plans began to circulate for a housewarming/hometown get-together, I downright voluntold Billy Basement to suck it up and make an appearance.

He’d gotten his way about a lot of things over the last 12 months – I’d given up a pretty choice uptown apartment and moved into suburbia with him, I’d quit my bartending night job because the men-chatting-me-up element of it made him unbearably sulky and accusatory, I'd relocated my day job as a gymnastics coach to a new and, although much more competitive, less personally appealing gym on his side of the city, I’d become damn near vegan to cater to his own semi-pushy squeamishness, I’d spent endless hours with his shitty nieces and nephews and insufferably yuppie sister who insisted on calling me by his ex's name and then saying "Oopsies!" (the second half of which was the truly intolerable offense), and mingling with his long-time pals at far too many poorly-attended band gigs, and - no really, believe it! - I’d stopped drinking entirely for the last nine or so months. All of these things were born out of Billy Basement's requests, suggestions, naggings, or guilt-ings, but they were all voluntary. Look, I even exercised enough self-restraint to not surreptitiously put the dude's overalls - yes, overalls - into the Hefty-bags of Goodwill-bound stuff we cleared out of his house when I moved in (though there was no way I could hold my tongue when he actually wore them. No way). I was trying, dammit! And now, I wanted him to have to try for once, too.

(Yes I know dear, but you can't wear them to my friend's house so turn off Caprica and go change.)

Of course, no sooner was Billy Basement's verbal agreement to come with me to Billyville that summer made, than an old ghost, heretofore off my radar for most of the last year, started pinging texts my way to see if I would be in attendance and to say he hoped so.

Seriously, after a completely incomunicado trip around the sun, now when I'm just testing out the H-bomb of a Susie-Homemaker life, this? What the fuck, Billy Builder?

(Sort of gives new meaning to "tailspin.")

***

We're at my friends' house - the same friends whose wedding I went to as Billy Builder's new date maybe half a decade prior. I've brought my own goofy cans of bullshit diet energy-drink so I can have something besides booze to cheers with, there is a fire hopping in a firepit out back and there is food spread out on the countertops and there is music and there are are various-shades-of-drunk friends everywhere, with the occasional stray kid darting from room to room. I have not yet spoken to Billy Builder, beyond a passing hello and a brief introduction from which both Billys found a polite reason to rapidly redirect their attentions. Billy Basement is doing OK at people, and I am done with my girlfriendly preliminary-integration-helper duties. I wander through a kitchen full of familiar faces and walk out to the garage, where there is an auxiliary restroom I'm hoping to snag. And out in the workbench area, by the couches-and-beer-fridge man-corner, are The Mover and Billy Builder, who both call me over. And then The Mover exits stage-left. And then Billy Builder closes the distance between us and touches my waist, then moves his hand to my arm with a sort of gentle urgency, and looks me in the eye, and takes a nervous breath, and starts to talk.

What did he expect from me? I can't really say. Here under a fluorescent shop light, face to face, I am thinking that on the other side of the door is my boyfriend - a truly boring guy, yes, but one with a good heart who is currently adrift among strangers. On the other side of the door is conversation with staccato bursts of laughter that I can hear over the hum of the shop light and the words tumbling out from Billy Builder's lips, which are nearer to mine than I ever thought they would be again. On the other side of the door are some of my closest friends, who are also some of Billy Builder's closest friends, some of whom have said point-blank to me that Billy Builder is the worst thing that I could do to myself, and some of whom have said they'd always hoped  Billy Builder and I would wind up together in the end.

And here on this side of the door, in an entirely separate dimension, my thumb has dented my drink can without my realizing it, I have stopped breathing, and I have so many words spinning at once in my head that none of them are coming out. Billy Builder has fallen silent after delivering every single "I'm sorry" and "I have to say this now" and "I miss you" and "I fucked things up" and "I think you're the only one" I ever woke up heartbroken by dreams of hearing his voice saying, and I'm a goddamn mute. His hand on my wrist is the only solid thing left in the world that's not shaking in increasingly unstable oscillations while the shop light in the rafters is buzzing to crescendo, like the sound of a spinning saw blade ripping something in half.

On the other side of the door is my life three minutes ago.

And on this side is my life now.

(All aflutter.)

***

We are rescued from our own feedback loop somehow. Maybe someone comes out the door, maybe somebody calls for a toast, maybe some kid comes running through the garage to jump on the couch with shoes on. It doesn't matter. Something snaps us apart and then I'm next to Billy Basement, I'm hugging the hostess goodbye, I'm getting in the car, I'm looking out the window at the flickers of weeds and future roadkill in the periphery of the high-beams as Billy Basement and I head for the highway. 

I find myself staring at him and he's a stranger at the wheel in the dim dashboard glow. He's absently humming a little tune to himself that I almost start to recognize, but then Billy Builder's heroin voice is filling my head like a spreading pool of something thick and warm and comfortable, drowning out everything if I just close my eyes.

Billy Backpfeifengesicht's Handy How-To Guide to Dating

Let's get this out of the way. It's not a drunken typo up there in the title. It's German, because they have all the really good words:

(Oh, the people you'll meet!)

So, say you got the number of a friend-of-friends Susie at a barbecue a while ago, and you've asked to meet up with her for summertime drinks.

It's a good idea for you to text her "Wherever you're feeling, just let me know!" while you're making arrangements - that way you can get a feel for the kind of place she might like, and hey, the pressure's off - you won't be responsible for any flopped locale choice. Women love an easygoing guy who's interested in their preferences.

Has your Susie gotten back to you on the establishment? She has? If she's proffered a hip-but-low-key joint, and an alternative in case you're less into having 20-something amazing local beers on tap and more into food or wine or whatever, then now is the time to shoot both of those down. Do not feel that you need to make any compensatory suggestions of your own. Just include several frowny-faces in your texted response to her voicemail. Women love men who can express their emotions.

After a day of silence, fire up your text-fingers again. Just because a Susie is being a normal grown-ass adult and has broken the talk-barrier by calling you (and speaking with your voicemail), doesn't mean you have to return suit and put on your big-boy pants to call a Susie back. Keep riiiight oooonnn texting. Women love a man who's dependable.

(See above for  recommended "sext-face.")

Ah! So here you are, at your scheduled meetup, because your Susie is a forgiving gal who also sort of has a morbid curiosity about how rom-com-esquely bad a date with you will really be! You've grabbed a patio table, which is a smart move because it's a beautiful day crowded with sun-seeking pedestrians in your city. Do not under any circumstance wave when your Susie strolls up, exactly on time and visibly trying to weed your location out of the melee. If she does not appear to spot you on first scan, give a whistle. A whistle. This will attract any self-respecting woman's attention immediately. After all, dogs are your best friend if you're any kind of MAN, so she should count herself flattered to be addressed in a like manner - women love subtle compliments.

She has located you, navigated the crowd, and is now standing at your table? Wonderful! Do not arise on "hellos," do not even make a cursory attempt to half-stand in salutation, and certainly do not give her a greeting hug or even a handshake. Do not remove your sunglasses. Do not hand her the beer menu you have already perused, sitting idly in front of you. "Gender equality" killed chivalry, amirite brah? Even the genderless type of good old-fashioned civilized human-to-human manners are kind of for little girls and pussies, eh? Instead, since there's no table service out here, let your Susie know what you'd like her to order for you when she goes inside to procure her own pint. Women love feeling needed and competent!

(When she carries back two waters AND two beers, she's just showing off. Don't even comment.)

Ahh, so here we are at the meat of the date: the part where you two will get to know each other with conversation and, if you are lucky, a little witty banter. Wait, did I say lucky? I meant unlucky. Here's how to deal with a joke you don't get or a literary, political, current-event, or pop-culture reference you are going to be clearly a little insecure about having missed: get snotty. No really, don't charm your way outta shit. Just throw out juvenile potty-humor-level comments and try to make it sound like a stupid thing to talk about because you probably know more about it than her anyway, because penis. Women love a man who owns a conversation!

This is your time to shine, and to do so, you must impress her greatly. When she asks what you've been up to since you last socially ran into each other a mere week ago, you should fabricate something humble but believable, like "oh, just... teaching myself new kinds of quantum-math." It's OK if you cannot explain any further, not with a single related vocabulary word, even if she pokes around a little looking for details and seems slightly amused, because trust me, by now you have made enough of an impression that she will for sure quote you verbatim in her blog and besides, girls and math? Ha! Your secret's safe, Einstein. Women love a smart, smart man!

(So maybe you should've been "teaching yourself" "new kinds" of reflexes instead.)

If you really want to heat things up, go for politics, even though she jokingly reminds you it's one of the Big Three to handle with care in polite company.

Universal health care? Living wage? Pay equality? FUCK THAT NObama bullshit. Especially if you're a smug born-into-the-upper-class white dude in America who's pretty much never faced any adversity beyond Ohhh noes beer pong moneys are low and my parents shut off my credit card!, let alone actual systematic discrimination, abuse, harassment, or even any single situation in your entire fucking life where you were not the entitled majority, your scoffingly-certain assertion that these things don't really actually exist for anybody here in the States is sure to make your Susie swoon. You can seal the deal by proudly declaring that you're a social Darwinist oh and also, who even cares (refer back to scoffing approach), but pshhh no, you've never read any Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, or even, ohhhh say... Darwin. You don't need books because you have sarcasm and volume, so don't get sucked down the hysterical rabbit-hole of socio-economics and history and facts and shit. In fact, don't listen to anything - just keep talking. Women love a man with strong convictions.

(I'd like to solve and say "THIS FUCKING BILLY," Pat.)

By now she won't even be able to sit still - you've hit all the buttons in the book in the twenty minutes you've been romancing her, my friend. Now's the time for you to just sit back and watch the dividends on your dating prowess come rolling in. If you've played your cards right, your Susie's given you the breathless  "hold on a sec" index finger and has gotten up and is heading inside to the counter to get you another beer, even though her own has barely been touched. Women love a man who fosters their nurturing side.

(I'll be needing another drink to even handle this level of sexy.)

Oh, but wait. Through the restaurant's plate glass windows, you can see that she's ordering... shots! Boom, looks like someone wants to get this show on the road. You're in there like swimwear. And out comes the wallet to settle the tab. This chick really gets what "women's lib" is all about, which is rare these days with all the femiNazis running arou--hold up. Hold. UP.

She just slammed a shot with the bartender, without even looking outside at you. They appear to be sharing some sort of joke.

(Oohhhkay, Kutcher, you got me. Where're the cameras? Hello?)

When she walks out the door and coyly exits the patio without actually glancing back in your direction, you should *immediately* text her this exact sentiment: WTF? :'-(  You should do this so quickly that you will be able to watch her receive said text as she walks away across the pedestrian square. You should thereafter fire off a  :-( ?!?!, again quickly enough that you will be able to see her shaking her head in bemused disbelief upon receipt. And now she's actually physically chuckling out loud as she walks out of your view.

NAILED IT: the number one thing women love is a man that makes them laugh.

Goodbye to Billy Bittersweet

It's well over a decade ago, and I'm in the company car with yet another Billy. He's not even my project - he's my coworker DelValles's Billy - a good-looking semi-punk of a kid who I catch looking at me just a half-second too long every time I say something. Somehow I've ended up working this contract more than DelValle has this last month. It happens like that in Army Recruiting, sometimes.

(Goddammit, DelValle, that's my trick.)

He's leaving tomorrow, this Billy, and I'm taking him down to his hotel room in the bowels of Los Billgeles to await the early-morning ship-out. We haven't been driving too long - we're still on the 101, with a generally-brain-fogging slog through the Valley on the 405 ahead of us. The sun is going down late, it's summertime-hazy, and we're zipping by strawberry fields and factory outlets and scraggly palm trees that haven't been groomed for varying amounts of time just over the "too long" mark. I love this place, southern Billifornia, but for most of my year in recruiting, I'm not even really conscious of it going by. Not like now.

Some of the guys are quiet, and that's OK. I'm comfortable owning the conversation and serving them up their share as I shuttle them south into the city and their big, looming futures. If you make the drive down the coast often enough, with enough Billys, the talk generally falls into a standard holding-pattern of routine topics that change very little. You get so you know what sorts of things will come up almost before you're on your way, just by how the kid's parents say goodbye. The humor might change, the faces might change, the traffic might change (HAHA no it won't!), but the general skeleton of the trip's the same. It's the same drive over and over, chewing up countless five-hour blocks of this, my twenty-first year. 

Eventually it just gets easier to embrace a sort of numbness than try to make yourself care about every face, every question, every four-year contract you set into motion. Recruiting is a fucking exhausting revolving door of people, an 80-hour workweek blur, a year where you'll never talk to so many people for so much of your day, yet feel so goddamn lonely all the time. Mostly, though, I've discovered how not to mind it, because times like the drives, I just don't even really live through it anymore. I bounce through it without realizing it, I chatter without really absorbing any of the kids' hope or fear or regret or boasting or whatever, and it's for the best. It's self preservation. Whether you care or not, they all sail over the edge, they all turn into ghosts one way or another, sooner or later. And they're just fucking kids. They'll be fine. Just like you were - you, who can't even remember your recruiter's name just now.

(Me, on hearing there's no cake in boot camp)

But this Billy isn't one of those kids. He's a little older, and conversations with him are always of their own breed. The first time I talked to him, engaging him in the office while DelValle was out on a call, I was shocked and actually a little irked at the way he subtly managed to run the conversation. This was my job -  I was the professional meant to be running that fucking show from the first handshake all the way to the boarding call bound for Basic Combat Training and he was just a fucking recruit and really, at the end of the day, what the shit, I was young and dumb but he, he was just a high school skater who was more clever than DelValle, for sure, but could barely pass a standard drug-screening UA - a failed-once-and-might-not-graduate-again-this-year who lived every minute of his punk-ass days by the grace of rich parents in orange grove country, up the San Guillermito Valley. 

But also. 

Also, it woke me up in a way, because all of a sudden there I was paying attention and genuinely laughing. I was recruiting, yes, but also with DelValle's Billy, I was Not Recruiting. It was real interaction. I guess that can come from surprising sources.

(I meant enlist! Enlist! Haha, I can't believe you thought I said kill.)

Anyway, I've grown to like him. I think it's because we've made this drive a few times, DelValle's Billy and I, what with him coming up hot at the last minute on the piss tests. In fact, I've probably spent more time in the car with this kid in the last month than I have in the same room with my but-for-logistics ex in the last three. I still live with the dude in a tiny little SoBil studio, we dance silently around each other without touching or making eye contact in the mornings because there's only the one bathroom, and I get through that without really living it, either, and that's also probably for the best. The futon is fine. Nothing could keep me awake by the time I get home at night.

So DelValle's Billy is telling me about flying prop planes out of the San Guillermito airstrip with his dad. He mentions he called the office the other Saturday looking for me, wanting to see if I was serious about taking him up on a previous offer of a free ridealong on one of his practice flights. I was probably busy, I say, and he nods his chin upward almost imperceptibly, like young confident Billys do, and says I guessed as much, but man, sure wish you coulda gone.

He laughs and shakes his head and I think to myself yeah, I wanted to go, and then in my head I privately replay how instead, when DelValle took the call, I whispered to him to tell his Billy I was out at the community college on an appointment. And I think to myself how after DelValle hung up, I shrugged at him and rolled my eyes and then suddenly felt like I might choke if I didn't quietly get up and walk out of the office and back down the hall to the bathroom, where I locked the door behind me and stood there in my uniform, looking down at those awful regulation black-patent heels and that stupid green polyester skirt I ironed every goddamn morning. I think, here at 65 mph with DelValle's Billy next to me, about that dirty, scuffed-up bathroom linoleum where I stood there just breathing in and out and shaking with my palms pressed on my forehead, fingers curled like hooks, not sure why I was suddenly so upset and frustrated and terribly, terribly sad.

(In space, no one can hear you curse.)

The sky is filthy: blood-red smog blocks our view even as we tunnel out of the Sepulveda pass, where a business-as-usual mesquite brush fire this dry summer on the northbound hillside has traffic coagulated to a dehydrated ooze. Jetliners are plowing their noisy way through the air above us, and once we turn off the freeway and into the tangle of the city's inner-workings they seem to hang, sluggish and unmoving, surreal and low over the boulevard ahead.

We pull up to the hotel and I shut off the car. It's late enough in the day that the air-conditioner chill is able to linger awhile even without the engine blowing. I lean my skull back on my headrest, and I want to close my eyes but out of the side of my field of vision I catch him looking at me like he does, just a little bit too long, and he sees me do this. And something about this specific quarter-of-a-second lodges somewhere in me like shrapnel: that image becomes a sharp unextractable foreign object that to this day, not often but every now and then, maybe at night when I turn over on it wrong in my sleep or something, still aches like a scar. He's got a tiny silver stud in his left ear and it flashes in the orange sodium glow of the evening's first streetlights as he glances down and then back up at me. Tomorrow's drill sergeants are going to destroy him if he doesn't take that out by morning.

I think to myself, we're here.

I think to myself, again.

And I think to myself, I probably will never see DelValle's Billy again. 

And then I'm surprised by the realization, not just a string of words occurring to me but an actual feeling, that after all the other kids I've driven over this cliff without a second thought, it's really too bad, this time around.

My head feels like it's made of steel, the headrest is a magnet, and the force required to separate the two to turn and face him as he grabs the door handle is like ten years of tiredness all at once. Recruiting'll take it out of you if you let it, sure, but fucking life: that's the exhausting thing. I don't have any energy to spare on it. I have so many more Billys I still have to find, charm, cajole, convince, sign and seal and deliver, forget. The meter never stops running.

(Clearly not L.A. because green lights.)

I blink at him. You want me to walk you in?

Nah, he says, I know where to go. And I know he does, which is a relief. I hand him his papers full of DelValle's signatures and DelValle's recruiter ID number, and they weigh a hundred pounds. He takes them and holds them in his lap with the sort of quick breath you take before saying something, and I catch his eyes wandering on my face again while he pretends to leaf through the packet.

And me: I look away.

And then he is standing in the parking lot, a rush of balmy, exhaust-filled air settling in his empty seat. The trunk closes with a hollow jolt and DelValle's Billy raps on the roof of the car as he shoulders his duffel, facing the back window with one hand up in a poor civvie half-salute. And waiting.

I turn on the ignition and pull away and in the rear view, we watch each other shrink for a few seconds before he turns away and walks out of the sudden red splash of my brake lights, toward the automatic doors.

Billy Billionaire Comes Aboard

Not long after I made my way to the South American coast aboard Delirium, I started to hear rumblings of a tour de force even greater than Billy Basso headed my way: the yacht's owner, Billy Billionaire.

I'd get tipsy on the dock with Ginger and she'd say something like "Oh he's just going to eat you up!" Then Billy Basso would chime in with something similar, but less encouraging, like "Oh yeah... he'll eat you alive."

("Don't worry," they said. "It's all in play," they said.)

But I wasn't worried about all of that. After all, I'd cast off the lines of my suddenly-quite-dreary-seeming former life for the barefoot work of a suntanned deckhand in the tropics. I'd sailed off into the blue yonder with dolphins jumping at our bow, I'd swum in the ocean with green eels as big around as my thighs, I'd toured through steaming jungles and sat salt-sprayed helm watches in the middle of stormy nights and woken up to butterflies landing on our little ship when there was no terra firma in sight for 360 degrees. I'd had small near-daily word-nerd epiphanies on the nautical etymology of everyday language like "learning the ropes" and "giving leeway" and perhaps most importantly, I'd managed to not get myself fired. In fact, while learning that seasickness was, inexplicably, not really a problem for me on Delirium, I'd also managed to learn a fair amount about sailing in a short time and even though there were absolutely no Billys on any foreseeable horizon of mine in this new unpredictably nomadic life, I'd fallen in love with the water. I'd become smitten with the work of sailing in proportion to my growing competence on-deck. Yeah, I still had my occasional late-night moments of lonely mourning over Billy Builder when he'd cross my mind from halfway around the globe, but I'd made a couple friends and started to see the world and the related distractions were many. I wasn't invincible, but I was on the upside of life. I was ready for Billy Billionaire.

Or so I thought.

We prepared for days before he was to arrive: Ginger provisioned and cooked some of his favorite things, Billy Basso and I scrubbed and polished every surface, I made up the stateroom with 1,200-thread-count sheets and fancy towels and Godivas tucked into nests on every pillow, and at night we ate dinner and I received what, in retrospect, should maybe have been a disconcerting amount of coaching about how to "handle" Billy Billionaire.

"He just..." Ginger offered, trailing off. Expectantly-raised eyebrows did nothing to revive her sentence. That was all she had.

So here are the things I had heard:

He's in his seventies. DO NOT let this fool you, because:

• His visit will mean big changes to your daily routine.
• He likes to snorkel and sail to new snorkel spots all damn day. ALL. DAY.
• He drinks every night.
• He drinks nothing but gin martinis.
• Cocktail hour will be your cue to get out of uniform and ready for the town. All three crew. Every night.
• Gin causes him to get outrageously funny.
• No really, he drinks nothing but gin.
• He is hilariously, self-deprecatingly charming.
• He is generous to a fault. Money is nothing to him.
• He lives for other people's drama.
• He will try to get your life story out of you for said drama.
• You must not tell him your life story, because he is your boss and he will never ever forget anything you say.
• You will have to drink martinis with him. It is literally part of your job.
• However, you will love drinking martinis with him.
• You will invariably drink too many martinis with him.
• This will not help you to refrain from telling him your life story.
• He will tell you his life story. And it is fantastic.
• He will get adorably animated.
• He will spill lots of gin.
• He will love it if you spill more.
• You will probably start to spill more.
• The man. Is fueled. By gin.
• He will make friends with the entire bar, every bar, every island, every time.
• He will never *ever* have a bad time. He is always at his best.
• He is invariably a center of laughter.
• He will sneak off to bed once everyone else has set sail for blackout island.
• He is happiest when everyone else is having a roaring time.
• Your roaring time will not keep him up and you will continue to roar. Later than you should. You late-roaring imbecile.
• He will always be up early in the morning.
• You will always have to be up earlier.
• He will get you to drink too many martinis for this crack-of-dawn bullshit.
• GodDAMNit.
• You'd better be bright-eyed anyway.
• Sunglasses on the morning sails are your friend.
• Fuuuuuuck.
• There is no point even hiding it. We're all in the same boat (literally).
• He will invite you to share $100 wine at lunch. Do this if needed.
• You will be excited about the evening by the afternoon sail.
• All of the above: repeat daily.
• You will be exhausted, relieved, energized, and sad when he leaves. Except your liver, which will just be exhausted.

(I... am... failing to see any problem with this.)

So, the first day Billy Billionaire came strutting down the dock, an utterly unassuming-looking dude in a t-shirt and cargo shorts escorted toward Delirium's slip by a suitcase-toting Billy Basso, I stood barefoot at the edge of the teak with Ginger. He came aboard with hugs, immediate at-ease jokes, high fives, and smiles. And the night proceeded to follow the above script near-verbatim, until he fell down his stairs putting himself to bed. Ginger and Billy Basso both commented that even for him, this was a new level of drunken merrymaking. "I think you're in," they said.

I loved the guy.

But then, the next morning, with Billy Basso and Ginger and I all at the ready in our polos and khakis at sunup, Billy Billionaire failed to emerge at his usual early hour. According to them, this was absolutely unheard-of.

We waited. We joked about how my presence might have been the overstimulation that sent him over the edge the night before. We listened occasionally at his door for audible signs of life (there were none). And hours crawled past.

By eleven, in the neighborhood of four hours past his usual rise-and-shine, some serious worry had developed. What was the responsible course of action here? After all, he was the yacht owner, we were the help, and disturbing him was the last thing anyone wanted to do. But... what if he'd hit his head on that stair fall and was in bed with a subdural hematoma? What if he was just dead on the floor from alcohol poisoning or aspirating his own vomit or something in there? Finally, when I couldn't take it any more, I knocked.

There was no answer.

(Time for Plan B.)

It was "agreed," in a sort of ro-sham-bo loss, that I should go in for reconnaissance. It made sense: I was new, he seemed to think I was cute, and if he was mad about having his privacy invaded I could at least fall back on one or both of those excuses.

I cracked the door. Inside, in the dark, I could make out an inert human shape under the comforter.

Maybe six steps separated me from the edge of the bed. I squinted in the dimness, hoping to at least detect the up-down motion of breathing coming from the covers. No such luck.

Two steps closer. I could see now that the bed was a tangled mess of linens, covered in dark streaks. Ohgodohgodohgodisthatblood??ohgodohgodohhhh... The bed is absolutely destroyed. It looks like there has been a struggle. Now, as my eyes adjust, I can see definitively that some of the bloody streaks are clearly trailing handprints. And there is still no movement from Billy Billionaire's form.

Another two steps closer. Those blood streaks are so ominous now, so clearly not just the evidence of a nighttime nosebleed that I feel like I might throw up. OhgodohgodohgoddidI*kill*himlastnight? ThatistheONEwayIcouldpossiblystillgetmyselffiredGATDAMMIT!  I'm right next to the bed. I whisper Billy Billionaire's name but of course, nothing but silence and dread are in that room with me. I reach out to where I'm guessing his shoulder should be. I hesitate, taking a deep breath. OhgodohgodohgodOK...SoldierUPohgodohhh--and just as my fingers touch down on the corpse, the en-suite bathroom door bursts open and Billy Billionaire, looking a little haggard but freshly-shaved nonetheless, finds me bent over the bed in horror.

"Thought the old man shit the bed, huh?" He asks, with his trademark wry twinkle.

I'm still catching up with my pounding heart, barely processing that he meant "shit the bed" quite literally as opposed to the figurative meaning I'd been convinced of, as he shuffles past me to the door. Over his shoulder, he adds with a touch of reproach, "Oh for Christ sakes, it's chocolate. You hide those goddamn chocolates in a drunk man's bed, that's what you find in the morning."

And as I'm still clearly dumbfounded, he pauses in the doorway. "C'mon kid. Let's get some coffee."

(...Or therapy. Either one.)

And that, on what turned out to be the first day of the Billy Billionaire years, is exactly what we did.