Try This On For Size
Years later, a collapsing pier becomes a reminder of the lessons learned walking in the shoes of others.
Published
In collaboration with Sperry, we asked Tyler Blue Goulden to share a glimpse into the moments that shaped his perspective and the paths he’s traveled.
The first job that I ever had was on the pier in Malibu at a restaurant that was struggling to stay afloat. My mom got the job for me; she was teaching the executive chef's kids how to swim. I really didn’t want a job because my great aunt, who used to drive me to and from all of my extracurricular activities in school, would always take me to Subway, Taco Bell, or In-N-Out after pick up and let me keep the change for $20 bill. I was very diligent about holding onto this change and had amassed a small fortune in my 15-year-old head. However, soon, I turned 16 and got my license, and my parents were adamant that I would get an actual job with a W-4 and real responsibilities and parking tickets. They had no idea I had saved over $640.
Shortly before my birthday, I went out to the backyard of my family home as the executive chef's kids were practicing backstroke in our pool. My mom yelled, “Yes, yes, right arm, left arm.” The executive chef was sitting on one of the La-Z-Boy outdoor chairs. I walked over to him with nervous trepidation and a question in hand. He said I was looking for a job as if it were an accusation, and I muttered yes. He said, “I think we have a position for you. Why don’t you come and stop by the restaurant tomorrow? I’ll introduce you to the owners, and we can sort you out.”
The next day, I drove over the canyon and into Malibu. I felt, in some way, so much older than I had the day before. I was going to get a real job and stop grifting off of my great Aunt, who is living on a pension from her former job and a bountiful stock portfolio that nobody in my extended family knew the depths of. I met both of the owners that day. One was a tall, tan man with deep-set wrinkles on his face as if he had spent his entire life sitting in the sun and smoking a cigarette. The other owner was a man named Johnson. Johnson had a cleft palate and a scar on the right side of his chin that, when he smiled, parted slightly to reveal the deep, scarred gorge of skin. It was a purple canyon thinly veiling a tributary of broken blood vessels that only revealed itself when he grinned. He was a very sexually aggressive man and loved to flirt with all of the female waitresses. They all saw the river of blood that scored across his chin on a daily basis.
My first-ever girlfriend visited me regularly at work. Her name was Becky, and she didn’t live far from the restaurant. She would show up unannounced for most of my shifts just to say hey. It made my day each time that she did. She would even kiss me in front of the entire restaurant while I was at the host stand, and even though I blushed beet red every time, I also could not help feeling like the man.
Business was slow, and the food was terrible, so it wasn’t all that busy except on the weekend when tourists would sit at the tables by the window, where you could see the ocean come in and out. They were extremely hard to come by and very coveted. But most days, the inside was filled with flies, and no one was there. We often got together to use an electric flyswatter and make a game of who could get the most.
One of my favorite people who I liked seeing at the restaurant was a mom of two named Rosa. She had gotten a DUI the year prior and was working to expunge her record with somebody that she knew in the court system. She was extremely loving and very maternal. Rosa seemed very hopeful that she would get her record expunged, and I was, too. Just because she made one bad decision didn’t mean she should have to pay for it for the rest of her life. She lived only 45 minutes away in Fullerton but had to take the bus, which took her two hours. Her husband was nowhere to be found. The last she heard was that he was in Nevada somewhere, making all the wrong bets but surviving on luck. I felt bad for Rosa and often tried to give her the best tables—the ones with the people who looked like they were the richest. I felt awful when sometimes these people I had given her specifically turned out to be the worst tippers. I was so bad at judging who would be generous and who wouldn’t.
About a month after I started working there, they hired another host because, on the weekends, I just couldn’t handle it by myself. She was a model and an actress. She had been in a small role in a recent movie but nothing else. Her name was Izzy, and she didn’t say much. I could always tell that she felt like she was better than this job, and I think that she was doing it just to appease her parents and maybe cleanse her mental sanity of somebody who only worked freelance. The schedule was good for her, apparently, and she took many smoke breaks. I was in love with her. Even when Becky showed up, she noticed and would ask me, “Do you love that girl?” I said, “No, of course not. I don’t love her. I wanna be with you.”
One day, Becky goes, “When I left the restaurant the other day, I parked across the street on PCH, and I watched you stare at her. You stare at her when she takes people to tables, you stare at her when she comes back, you stare at her when she’s on the telephone taking reservations, and you stare at her when she goes on her smoke breaks.” I told Becky that I didn’t stare at her, and that I was not in love with her, but she was unconvinced.
She said, “I think maybe we should stop dating.” I said, “OK, fine, I am in love with her. I do stare at her on her smoke breaks, I do stare at her when she’s on the telephone, and I do stare at her when she takes people to the tables. Still, she’s a woman, and I’m a bo,y and we will never be together, and I’m sorry.” That was enough for Becky. Becky was in love with me, and I was in love with my coworker who would have never shown up to give me a kiss at work, no matter what job I ever got.
Business at the restaurant had never been worse. The slow decline of the place was in the faces of everybody. You could see it in their eyes. It reflected off the plastic. Constant complaints of food sent back. The tall tan man who smoked cigarettes and always stood in the sun seemed as though maybe he was smoking more cigarettes and getting more sun than usual. He looked like he had aged 10 years since he hired me two months ago. The other sexually aggressive man had gone from making jokes to smacking ass. He was up to his ears in debt and used his hands to grope wildly around the waitresses.
I only went into the management office once, but there was only enough room for him and the papers. Nothing else. He was obese, but still, it was a very small office, and it was very crowded the day after they called us into work. I knew it was strange that we were all on the schedule at the same time.
They gave us a long speech about how business was bad, how they were shutting the restaurant down, that they were in debt and had been for years, and nothing seemed to work—no new menu item. No new staff. No reinvention of the place could ever make it a survivable business. There was a sense of relief on everyone’s faces. As this news hit us, only Rosa was upset. She complained that she was in the area on Christmas and that it was packed and people wanted to come to this restaurant, but it wasn’t open. I felt bad for her once again. It was the last time that I ever felt bad for her. It was the last time that I ever saw her.
A day later, the pier collapsed into the ocean. I remember thinking to myself, wow, how poetic that the entire restaurant was being held up by the fact that we were all there and we all needed it in some capacity, whether it was the skim checks or the daily reminder that we had somewhere to be. It was unbelievable that the entire place just crashed into the ocean floor.
Later, I went to the executive chef's new restaurant on the other side of the canyon. That was just as bad and failing just as miserably. He informed me that while I had been in New York, one of the owners, Johnson, had gone to jail for six years on child pornography charges. The tall, tan man who always smoked cigarettes in the sun had killed himself a month after hearing that the restaurant could not collect insurance money as they had already filed for business closure and bankruptcy the day before. I felt bad for the man who always stood in the sun and smoked cigarettes. It wasn’t fair that the restaurant collapsed into the ocean and that the insurance company refused to pay him because he had already filed for the closing of the business. It wasn’t fair that he had to work with a sexually aggressive pedophile who made everybody around him feel uncomfortable.
It wasn’t fair that he had to employ people like Rosa, who had a DUI and needed more money from a place closer to her to support her two kids. It wasn’t fair that he had me, the 16-year-old, working at a job that I hated, breaking up with my first girlfriend because I was in love with a woman who would never show up to my shift just to kiss me. I felt bad for all the people involved. I felt bad for the tall, tan man who couldn’t rescue his restaurant. I felt bad for Rosa, who couldn’t get a DUI expunged from her record. I felt bad for Becky because I was in love with a woman who would never show up to my shift just to kiss me. I felt bad for the restaurant. It would never crawl out of the ocean and be a fully formed business ever again. The only people I didn’t feel bad for was the insurance company. They really lucked out.
Just like that restaurant fell into the ocean, sand slips through my fingers when I sit on the beach. I pick it up, inspect my handful, and watch it slowly fall. Just like I watched so many things in my life fall. I’ve watched the eyelids of love far gone fall into a torrential downpour of tears and rage. I’ve watched the pharmaceutical bomb I used to carry in my breast pocket fall into the toilet of the bathroom we used to share. Fall has come, and I’m standing on the beach. I’m standing on the beach and looking at the waves coming in. The waves come in, and they remind me how good they are at letting go. They roll in, break, and then they release. Only to return once more as a different form, a sibling of itself. A completely unique wave, but still water. I pick up a handful of sand, and throw it as hard as I can into the ocean. I pick up a second handful of sand, a tear falls from my eyes, and I let the sand fall with it. I can see winter from here, and it looks warmer than ever.