Pier Pressure

Timothy hates opening his wallet. Every time he peels apart the Velcro, he sees failure.
It’s unavoidable, cringing in the front sleeve meant to house his driver’s license for the past year, eleven months, and twenty-nine days. Instead, the plastic exposes a wide blue stripe--the mark of shame.
A learner’s permit. Almost eighteen years old, and he still can’t drive alone.
“Fuck,” he mutters, fingering the card and its round corners.
He’s tempted to flick it away like a fly; one twitch of two fingers and the water will swallow his misery without bothering to chew. The ocean licks its dirty lips as if in confirmation.
“Not yet.” Waves shrug--it will come, and soon. “Not just yet.”
Standing up, he brushed the sand off his ass and shoves the card into a pocket. But not before catching his own eyes and remembering last summer, just after his last birthday.

(“Why don’t you take off your glasses, Timmy?” Why hadn’t he convinced his mother to stay in the car during this humiliating chore?
This is hell, he thought, grimacing in the direction of the camera. It’s got to be. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you cant?”
The kid behind the counter--she had to be at least six months and a grade younger than he--smirked.
Surrounded by fake wood paneling papered with traffic notices, he began to feel nauseous. “I mean I can’t. I have to wear them to drive so I have to wear them in the picture.”
“Well, that’s stupid.”
“It’s the law.”
“Any changes to the descriptions?” The counter girl grinned, showing too many teeth to be friendly.
“No.” Under different circumstances, he would’ve asked her out--well, that was a lie. He would’ve thought about asking her out, possibly falling deeply and briefly in love, but he wouldn’t’ve grown a pair and done anything about it.
Now he only wanted to get home.
“Would you like to become an organ donor?” She was enjoying herself.
I’m glad one of us is. It drew a scowl across his eyebrows. “No.” Just renew the damn thing and LET…ME…OUT!
“Okay, then.” More teeth. “That’ll be $2.75.”
“Two seventy-five?” His mother dragged the price out of her mouth. “It’s gone up again--well, just like everything else, I suppose--here, dear, use all these quarters. I’ll be in the car.” She strolled out, not even leaving the keys, a single fig leaf to cover his dignity.
“Here you go, sir.” The counter girl’s tongue tripped on the last word, and he imagined the laugh she would pass around like Tic Tacs during her next break.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, and left.)

Sunlight dances over everything, lighting the pier from behind and peeking through the cross hatches. He breathes in the salt and peace that ride the air, and he feels balanced, content. At home. He knows what he plans is right and will go well, but--
“Not yet.”
No, not just yet.

Timothy sits on the couch, staring at the TV and waiting for the clock to drag itself towards midnight. On his left, his mother frowns at a novel over her reading glasses--vintage Kmart. To his right, his father pretends to be absorbed in the History Channel. The voices of half a dozen scholars blend and whirl around the subject until Timothy has forgotten it entirely; this is a good sign.
His eyes tiptoe over to his father. Chin down, mouth slightly open, eyelids at almost fifty percent coverage--yes, it won’t be long--
“So, Timmy.” Closing her book, his mother looks as if she expects a conversation. “Where’d you go this afternoon?”
“Oh, nowhere,” he says, dying a little inside. “The pier.”
“The pier, eh?” His father doesn’t move, but his interest shifts from the TV to his son. Shit a brick and save the mortar. “The pier right up the beach?”
“Yeah.” No, the one three gas stations past the moon, Timothy thinks in a sudden clot of anger.
“That seems like a nice little stroll,” his mother offers.
“Yeah.” A whole quarter mile.
“I remember that pier,” his father says. “By damn, do I remember being seventeen, eighteen, and hanging out at that pier…”
When her Look of Disapproval (she’s got to have a patent on that by now, Timothy figures) fails to attract any notice, Timothy’s mother folds her glasses. “He doesn’t need to hear any of that, Charlie.”
“Estelle, he’s almost a man.”
In twenty-six minutes and five, four, three seconds. “I’ve heard worse, Mom, I’m sure.”
“But your dad was so much--older at his age than you are now.”
Thanks, Mom. “Could I just hear the damn story, please?”
From both barrels this time: “Don’t cuss!”
No way he’s apologizing for “damn.”
He watches his mother stand up and head towards the condo’s only bedroom. “I’m going to sleep…we need to get an early start back tomorrow.”
“No problem,” his father says comfortably. “It’s all packed except the birthday cake.”
“All right.” Pausing, she smiles. “Good night.”
“’Night.”
“’Night,” Timothy echoes.
The curtain of Hawaiian shirts glides across the doorway; the molded fish table lamp goes quiet.
“Well,” his father sighs, leaning back in his chair until the foot rest cranks twice, “It’s been a hell of a week, Tim. Hell of a week.”
“Yeah, really fun.” And Timothy has had fun, most of it wading through the ocean without both parents alternating warnings about sunscreen and sharks. He’s seen a few females to lust after, uncovered a few shells and profound thoughts, spent hours reading in his swim trunks.
“Good vacation.”
“Yeah, good vacation.”
“I tell you Tim--thirty years ago, all of this was brush…Native, from the pier to the state line. We’d come on road trips all the time, just drive right to the edge of the dunes and camp a couple days…”
Timothy wonders if he’ll hear the pier pressure story.
“…so one year--I think this was for our senior trip…”
Like the one I didn’t get invited to this year? Timothy thinks it must have been very much like that.
“…and everybody else’s already in the water, see, chanting, ‘Do it! Do it!’ So of course I do it, making an ass of myself so nobody’ll notice I almost pissed my pants…”
Timothy can’t tell if the clock is broken or just lazy.
“…so the officer comes up to me and hands me a ticket--apparently it’s illegal to jump off the pier…and climb on it in the first place…anyway, my hair was the only thing the beach patrol or whoever picked up with their flashlights.” Chuckling, Timothy’s father fingers the red-orange mop that rests atop his head. “Just goes to show why you should never give in to peer pressure.”
His own laugh, Timothy fears, is not up to its challenge. “Ha, ha…I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”
“Good times.” His father’s eyes are still glazed. “Good times…”
Lasting an entire minute, Timothy decides he can’t wait any longer. “Hey, Dad, I want to go ahead and get some rest, too, especially if we’re hitting the road by eight.”
“Eight, eight-thirty.” Stretching, his father shakes off nostalgia. “Need some help with the couch?”
“No, I got it.”
“Okay, then.” Sweet relief approaches fast as his father moves towards the curtain. “’Night.”
“’Night.”
His father glances at the clock. “Oh, happy birthday, Tim.”
12:0. “Thanks.”
When he is left alone, Timothy piles the couch cushions onto the chair and tugs at the exposed pull-out extension. Nothing. After six nights, he still hasn’t learned how to make this easy.
He grunts and cusses--curses, cuss is his parents’ word--until the box spring pops out and the mattress flops like a landed fish. Immediately, the whole thing rebounds and leaves him nothing but a possibly dislocated shoulder.
“Shit.” But he says it without much frustration, or surprise, because it doesn’t matter. The couch cushions have much less imaginative stains, anyway.
Turning off all the lights leaves him a clouded gray pierced by the fluorescent bar over the oven in the tiny short connective hallway/kitchen. In this vapor, he peels off his clothes and glasses, stopping to grab a handful of his stomach. It’s really more of a belly by now. His permit is ten pounds off--just like his father’s license had been until middle age--only Timothy’s is rounded down.
Pajamas, pajamas, wherefore art thou…forget it. He grabs a couple throw pillows, curls up in his boxers, and dreams about the last time.

(“I will not trick or deliberately confuse you in any way, per state laws of transportation.” The DMV worker sounded bored. Timothy wondered exactly how many drugs he needed to take before going a whole day without kissing the concrete after every return. “Do you understand?”
He nodded--didn’t he? He must have. Surely he did.
“For the first portion of the road test, pull around the building to the back lot and demonstrate a parallel park between the barriers.”
Shivering and goosepimpled in the July heat, nostrils filled with his own deodorant, which didn’t smell like it was doing its job, Timothy eased the car forward at a tenth of its normal speed.
Line up the back wheels right next to that first sawhorse thing--not too close, not too close! Turn the wheel…more…let off the brake--put it in reverse, dumbass--back…annnd…what was that? WHAT WAS THAT? The back end, oh Jesus--maybe she didn’t feel it--it wasn’t anything--an air kiss--a love bump--
“Please pull around to the front of the building and park in a public space.” Suddenly animated, the worker checked and scribbled on his clipboard.
So soon? That was never a good sign. “…Have I failed already?”
“Please pull around and park.”
He did so.
“You did not pass. You are eligible to attempt again in one week.” She propped up his permit in the middle console’s cup holder, the closest thing to neutral ground, and got out.
Timothy slumped over the wheel, not bothering to watch her discussion with his father in the rearview mirror. It was the same, all three--four--times. Tears leaked down the slope of his nose.
Eventually, hearing the passenger’s door open, he wiped the failure off his face, yanked the car into gear, and drove onto the highway.
“Well, Tim,” his father said a safe distance away.
They rode in silence for awhile.
“Well, hey,” his father tried, “at least you’ll have a funny story to tell your kids when you’re teaching them how to drive.”
“How many times did it take you?” Timothy asked, drained of emotion.
“Oh, I flew right through everything except the parallel parking--got two points deducted because my front wheels were eighteen and a half instead of…just…eight--it’s not important.”
Another five miles down the road, under his father’s insistence, Timothy pulled into a gas station for gobs of chocolate ice cream dripping in waffle cones.
He let his father take the keys and drive the rest of the way home.)

On the dawn of his eighteenth birthday, Timothy watches the sun rise--an electric tangerine balanced on a purple table in a kitchen with pink and yellow wallpaper--and knows that he is ready to disappear into the scheme of things.
He doesn’t think of it as killing himself, except in moments of dark weakness.
In his hand once again rests his permit. He stares at it, seeing the abstract the facts represent, confirming what he has suspected for years: too fat, too pale, too nerdy, too short, too old, too stupid. Too easily discouraged, about everything, too tired to try anymore.
Rocks bulge from every pocket in his cargo shorts. They’re buttoned and zipped and bungee corded; he doesn’t want this to fail.
Yawning, he shuffles out under the pier until water laps at his knees. Up at five to beat his parents and check the high tide time--no note. That would’ve been too messy.
Briefly, after snapping his permit in two and considering the vicious new edges, he thinks about slitting his wrists with the root of all his problems; he’s into metaphors. But he’s also incurably squeamish.
And so he tosses it away and waits for the whitecaps to rush down through the gracefully angular battalion of pier supports all at attention, waits to be carried into the sheen of shifting shale, waits calmly and patiently.
Waits.