Florida, Veronica and Class Struggle

Funny Ryan should be writing about "his stint working at his local country club the summer after high school" as I pack to visit Veronica in Florida. Her family was one of THE FAMILIES in our town (meaning millionaires). They were golfers all, and members of the Country Club, known to insiders as "The Club".

We were best friends since kindergarten, and Veronica's home, spacious and with a beautiful kidney-shaped pool in their expansive back yard tended by Mexican laborers, was my second home.

It wasn't until I was around 15 years old that I began to rebel against the social class boundaries of the town (and other ugly hidden rules that we were required to live by), and naturally Veronica's family fell into that category that I needed to distain at the time. We had a "falling out", which actually started in Florida when we were in ninth grade when I accompanied her family to Hollywood for their yearly winter retreat from the snow. By the time we returned six weeks later, our relationship was indelibly changed. I was bleaching my hair blonde, skinny-dipping in the Country Club pool after hours with the wild Catholic kids and adopting terms for that local bastion of wealth and privilege, like "The Cunt Club". Veronica, although always wild (our habit was to steal fifths of Canadian Club from her father's supply of cases in their basement/lounge and drink till we vomited) always held on to her birthright - her desire for a certain standard of living. I leaned more toward living out of backpacks and being attracted to bad boys.

But I, like Ryan, have a history of being intimidated by wealth and power. Hell, how could we not, being raised in a country where money = respect and power, and working to make others rich = acceptance. It's not easy to cross class boundaries, especially when all of our folklore supports working hard and buying into our own oppression.

So this trip to Florida has much underlying history, practically a whole lifetime, as Veronica and I have remained "family" even with our class differences. She has an intelligence and humor (and an ability to forgive and forget) that I love, and she loves me, flaws and all. And things do change. The Cunt Club is now a public golf course where the local hoi palloi rub elbows with the (actually middle) class snobs, who are full of class panic and pretence.

While I, on our sojourn to the Keys, would have chosen to camp and be a real beach bum, she needs to stay at the ritzy hotel with the ocean view, and that's OK. On the tip of Florida overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, what can be wrong? I'm not greedy for anything from this trip, not planning on "getting" anything, unlike last summer when I was after (no less!) a new life. This time my goals are a bit subtler. I'd like to see an alligator, and taking Ryan's advice I'm going to pet the stingrays, wave to the dolphins and then float on my back in the ocean, arms outstretched. I'm going to let Veronica take the lead and flow with it. See what happens.