During afternoons on the beach I read Boris Pasternak’s, Dr. Zhivago, and looked forward to seeing—if only for a few moments—the extraordinary beautiful, Karolyn. She owned the place I was staying, and she was in and out. She was a princess who had actually been kind to me.

I was twenty-nine years old at the time, miles away from Tahoe, and I had no notion of what to do or where to go next. If someone asked, I said I was a writer, even if it was a fib. I’d been published in college, but my writing career was mostly assorted unpublished poems, letters to friends, and a few low-dollar, skiing articles for fledgling publications.

Still, I called myself a writer. Because if I wasn’t a writer, I was nothing but a drifting boat bum. I was desperate then, but I had been desperate for a long time.

As I walked along Jensen Beach, I figured I’d get a job like I always had: laborer, dishwasher, deck hand, bus boy— something. But I didn’t really want a job just then. I preferred to let my mind wander.

One night I pedaled a neighbor’s bike towards the nearby hotel strip and I was drawn to a swelling disco. There I discovered Karolyn solo dancing amidst a swarm of admirers. She had the haunted look of an animal that had slaughtered its first prey. I was surprised, almost frightened, to see her at work at her profession. I felt a terrible tension of wanting to go over and punch somebody in the nose. I didn’t.

Her dance and the swarm finally drove me out of the disco. I pedaled home, a crazy kind of insanity swelling in my brain.

I had never felt so alone. It wasn’t that I had fantasies about Karolyn. I was too lost and too broke to approach a woman who was numinous to me. Her dancing was the limit of what I could take, and it was enough.

A few days later, Karolyn walked out on the beach to where I sat and tossed a newspaper next to me. It was an issue of The Spectrum, a part of what is today called “alternative press.”

"You call yourself a writer," she said. "Well, these people need writers."

The paper was published out of a small bungalow along the Intercoastal Waterway. I walked there. The rooms were jammed with desks and people. In the confusion, I found the editor. I handed him some stuff I’d been working on about a boat delivery.

He didn’t ask any questions, not even where I’d come from. He just opened the manuscript to the middle, read a few sentences, turned to the beginning, and then to the last page.

"A writer, huh?" he drawled. "But what do you know what to write about?"

I was nervous. Even embarrassed. A shiver ran up my spine like steam in a riser pipe, and I felt my face flush. I told him I enjoyed sailing.

"Everybody loves boating," he said. "I’ve got a dozen people to write about the damn ocean."

I said softly, “I just want to eat, man."

He paused. "Then you be our food critic."

I was a little dazed. I’d never written about food, never really given it much thought. However, the man had looked into my eyes, had read a few of my sentences, and he seemed to have faith in me.

The gratitude I felt towards him then, I feel still. He had bypassed all the ways in which one gets a job. He'd looked past my embarrassment, my broken thongs, my obvious
awkwardness, and somehow he had seen what I might be.

I thought then, and I think now, that to be seen in this way by another human being is the most precious of gifts.

It was a great job. Once a week I was able to eat a splendid meal for free. For somebody with less than $20 in the world, I was very fortunate.

I had no typewriter and wrote by hand. When the editor read my first review of a beachfront lean-to that served the best steamers I’ve ever had, he stood up and announced to the room, “Gang, I think we got something here."

Several people clapped. One patted me on the back. I excused myself to the bathroom, looked into the mirror, let my face relax. Happiness spread over it.

Later that day at home, as Karolyn was going out the door, I didn’t feel so distant from her. Perhaps she would even read what I wrote. I would dance now, too, in my way.

All this was more than twenty years ago. A lot of water has gone down the Truckee since then. I’m still broke, still mostly jobless, and still desperate. I write this now (2005) by way of celebrating my anniversary as a committed writer and to give thanks to Karolyn, to that Spectrum editor, now deceased, and even to the people who’ve read me.

That’s all a writer could ask for.