The Cephalopodic Reveries of an Epicurean Vagabond: An Excerpt from Ryan Wildstar's Memoir
Los Angeles, Part One: "Paul"
[Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from Ryan Wildstar’s memoir, The Cephalapodic Reveries of an Epicurean Vagabond. This memoir is written as a roman-à-clef, so most of the names and some details have been changed.]
In loving memory of the 25th Anniversary of the death of my first love, referred to below as “Paul” (June 1970 - November 1997).
September, 1988: “Paul”
Poets have long spoken of love of at first sight, but how many of us have ever experienced such a phenomenon? I have. The moment I saw Paul walking across campus in his grey, faded sweat pants, black tennis shoes and long-sleeved Sisters of Mercy pullover, his silky, cascading dyed-black mane of hair swept back over his stunning face . . . I knew. I have never felt such an eminently intuitive, life-altering moment in my life. I knew, in that moment, that we were fated to be with one another. If only I’d known everything that would entail in the years to come.
After the first day I saw him waltzing across campus, I dreamt and prayed (in a very pagan way, having no monotheistic affiliations whatsoever) that I would see him again. And I did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone as physically beautiful as Paul. He was majestic. He had the face that wars in antiquity were fought over – part Antinous, part Helen of Troy. That is to say that he was strikingly androgynous, extremely sexy and aloof, and he seemed as if he’d been beamed directly to Earth from Mount Olympus or Asgard (which was fitting as he was half-Greek and half-Swedish). He moved as if the world didn’t exist except in his head. We were all distractions to him. I could not have been more attracted.
On the first day of my journalism class, I walked in and found that one of the only open chairs in the class was next to him. I almost choked and left the room. I was so nervous to sit next to him. He paid absolutely no attention to me. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice anyone or anything, as he was engrossed in what seemed to be the last few chapters of Stephen King’s It. I made some comment about taking my seat next to him and he nodded and resumed reading, annoyed at my intrusion. He continued to read through the entire class, ignoring the professor and the introduction to the course. I thought this was quite rude but it made me even more intrigued. It was almost a month or more, me sitting next to him in class every day in a kind of delirium, before he finally put down his book and turned to me and asked, “So, what are we doing in this class right now?” I almost fainted. He spoke to me. He looked directly into my eyes and I was incapacitated. I’d never felt this way before in my life. Naturally, I told him everything and asked if he wanted to meet after class for more details. He surmised me very curiously but not without some kind of interest and a twinkling in his eye. He asked if I had a car and, if so, would I be willing to give him a ride home because he didn’t drive and he hated taking the bus. I said I would, and I did, and then my life changed forever.
That day, in the winter of 1988, I drove Paul to his home in the Pacific Palisades in my red, beat-up 1980s Ford Grenada, which he thought very “charming.” When we finally arrived at his house, he made eye contact with me for the first time as though I was an actual a human being and not his chauffeur. To my utter surprise he asked if I would like to come in. I was embarrassed to even park my car on the street in front of his beautiful house. I’d never been in a house like his. I knew I was in over my head, no matter what the outcome. I was in trouble except for my wit, my charm and my brain. I hoped that was enough to keep me from seeming the absolute country bumpkin that I was. I said yes. His eyes suddenly engulfed me, swallowed me whole. His beauty petrified me, his gorgeous mane of hair, his perfectly olive skin and piercing Scandinavian eyes muted me, made me feel like a jester that would loyally juggle for him forever. He was suddenly sweet, kind, attentive and interested in me, like he’d seen me all along but never let on. He had. He’d been watching me but I’d never noticed. He seemed to know me without me saying a word, which made me even more frightened.
And then I met his mother, “Disa.” Her name might as well have been Diva. She was a statuesque Swedish beauty with iridescent, silvery white hair, although she was only a woman in her mid-40s at that time. She welcomed me into their house and we locked eyes, Virgo queen to Virgo queen, and she adopted me almost immediately. Within a few minutes, we were all drinking vodka with bitter lemon, Disa’s favorite cocktail, on their backyard terrace, a beautifully crafted oasis which could have been transported from a tiny ouzeria on a remote Greek island, as we listened to Wagner and talked about Modernist art. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
That afternoon, I stayed for more drinks and talked for a few hours with Paul and his mom and he invited me to return the next weekend for a “sleepover.” I didn’t know such things were still done in college but I was only 17, just a kid from “Hoboken,” as Paul would later call me, so I readily agreed.
One week later, after spending the week in utter anxiety, primping and preening and rolling an entire cigarette pack’s worth of joints, I returned to Paul’s house for dinner with his family. His mother proudly gave me a tour of their Palisades home, which was modest in size but magnificently appointed with antique furniture, exquisite paintings and sculptures, ornate Middle Eastern lamps, exotic tropical plants and bookshelves lined with vintage tomes. Their living room resembled more of an annex to a National Museum of Antiquities in some large European capital than that of a sitting space for the family. Disa was an amateur vintage art dealer and their garage was literally packed to the ceiling with her wares, which she bought at garage sales or out of the PennySaver and sold for profit, retaining the pieces she admired.
And then I met Big Daddy. I’d been raised in the theater, so having dinner with Paul’s parents was literally like merging Tennessee Williams with Edward Albee and sitting down to “Who’s Afraid of A Cat on Hot Tin Roof?” His father, or “Big Daddy,” as the family called him, was born in Athens and spoke with an enchanting, thick Greek accent. He easily dominated the room with his presence. His manner was intense, quiet, authoritative and he possessed a dark sense of humor which I think he assumed scared everyone, but not me. I found him intimidating but also charming. He reminded me of my great-grandpa Joe, a Ukranian Jew who was driven out of Kiev by the Cossacks as a child before the Russian revolution. Big Daddy would stare you down and, if you passed the test, he would give you a big toothy grin and wink at you. I used to make him laugh out loud, a big hearty, open Dionysian laugh, which Disa, Paul and “Lexi” (Paul’s adorable, athletic younger brother), always found astonishing.
That night at their house was the first time I understood what a “nuclear family” looked like. They were a decidedly old world family living in the new world but they allowed everything to happen. Disa and Big Daddy had met in Greece in their early twenties and then moved to the United States shortly thereafter and settled in Los Angeles, where they slowly worked their way up the food chain. Big Daddy eventually became the manager of Gucci on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where he worked for the next 10 years until he was able to open his own Italian import shoe store and purchase their house in the Palisades. Although they were now upper-middle class, they talked freely, as Swedes and Greeks are apt to do. From an outsider’s perspective, it appeared as if they let their first generation children be themselves, without much restraint.
That night we drank beautiful French wine with an incredible meal of roasted lemon rosemary chicken and Greek potatoes in garlic butter that Disa had prepared. She was an astoundingly good cook, at home with a multitude of cuisines from different cultures (primarily European) and equally discerning in her knowledge of French and Italian wine. After dinner, we retired to the living room for digestifs and stayed up late discussing art, music, literature and travel, subjects in which they were all well-versed. We listened to Disa’s extensive collection of classical music, with an occasional Goth tune thrown in by Paul as mother and son took turns DJing. And then, at last, it was time for bed . . .