My brain sees it as this wild amalgamation of 80’s movies and cartoon machismo, but I was twelve years old at Regina beach one day, and this happened.

Radios were blasted. Greasy bags of salty, salty fries were wolfed. Car tires screeched their complaints. Cigarettes jutted out from under many a high school moustache. Bikini’s were worn and sun dappled cheeks sweat under a prairie sun. Breasts moved and shifted in space independent of their owners and absolutely none of it had anything to do with me. The wind and winter snow in Saskatchewan would leave scars across the land were it not frozen solid. That gets all the press, but a summer day on this square patch of land smack in the centre of the country, it is fucking KILN-like, kid.

Ok, Regina Beach. This sore thumb of a twelve year old black kid on this main drag type thing. Amid the din of the cars and kids to my left and the BLEEP BLOOP BLEEP of an arcade on my right, the throngs on the beach ahead, I’m standing there in orange and yellow “Cougar” sneakers and red gym shorts. There’s an untamed afro on my head. I don’t have any pimples yet but they’re in the mail. I’m wearing a union jack sleeveless shirt because of Joe Elliott and a RED VELCRO WALLET on my WRIST that MOM got me so I don’t LOSE my MONEY ‘cause “I’d LOSE my friggin’ HEAD if it wasn’t SCREWED ON”. God help me I don’t know who the fuck I am (who would, in this get up?) or what I’m supposed to be doing. There are girls everywhere and I have exactly what I am supposed to have right now, and that is all the charm and style of a twelve year old with a RED VELCRO WALLET on one wrist and a calculator watch on the other. I move to the arcade just as a bunch of high schoolers pour out the door and hang right in front of it, blocking my entrance. Curses! I don’t wanna get beat up or have illegal drugs pushed on me by these obviously illegal drug pushers. I mean, JEAN VESTS? Criminals, gotta be. I move off of the sidewalk to go around them I HAVE NO DESTINATION IN MIND IM MAKING IT UP AS I GO ALONG and just praying nobody asks me what I’m doing ‘cause I would turn to them and scream, scream that I don’t know. Two banana boards under the feet of more teens whip out and scare me back onto the sidewalk. I move past the arcade boys and walk and Oh god I’m heading beach ward and what the fuck am I gonna do there and this blue Camaro comes out from between two buildings. Just misses plowing into our hero. A late reaction on the brakes leaves the car half in the road and half in whatever alley or driveway it had come from. A car full of girls. Jesus. Just what I needed. Laughter from the back and the driver, a blond girl, hadda be eighteen, has her left hand on the wheel. Passenger seat girl hunches down to get a look like you do when your’e in that position. There is beer in her lap. The driver is blond and her hair is feathery feathered, the style at that time. She’s wearing these mirrored sunglasses and lipstick to match her red bikini top. There is this guitar riff blasting from the car radio and I’ve never heard anything like it. Like a stomping riff with this punchy keyboard holding it aloft. I’m standing flat-footed, directly in front of the drivers side door and I see an image of a complete dork reflected in her shades. Lord. Just then out of the speakers of this Camaro, a voice that I now know to be Ric Ocasek’s, drools the words “Summer, Summer, Summer… It turns me up side down…” Laughter from the back seat and the driver, like some woman out of time, looks me up and down. Left hand on the wheel her right hand comes up from the shifter or whatever and pulls down her sunglasses. The words ribbon out from between her lips. “Hey peck. You’re kinda cute.”, she breathes. Like a starlet might.
Ok so now there is this electricity shoots out from the centre of my chest. My throat closes and my head swims and my ears are hot. This jolt takes forever to reach my extremities, but it all happens in a heartbeat and all of my fingers are numb and If my knees buckled i don’t know, cause I couldn’t feel my legs. I don’t think they buckled. The shock collapses back into my chest, then sinks down to my groin, bouncing around in my tighty-whities where it remains to this day. She smiles. My mouth is agape. Probably have a lil boner at this point. Tires crunch gravel, bump over the curb and off they went. There I stood in that moment, in their rear view mirror. And it was something man. It was fucking Magic.

I think about her sometimes, that faceless beauty. Where she is or what she’s doing or if I heard her correctly and If I did, what she meant. I don’t know what a peck is but that day, that moment, I was one.

The truth of this all is that it was a Saturday night, Sept. 14th, I spent drawing pictures and listening to music with the headphones up high sipping a little rum. I mean I’m fucking middle aged, man. And that song came on. “Magic”, I mean. And I was brought back to that day at the beach. Do you want to know how I know it wasn’t the hour or the rum or rain on the window brought me back? I know because hearing “Magic” always brings me back to that day, that moment on the sidewalk, every time. And at or about 1:30 am I swore to myself that if Ric Ocasek ever passed away, I would write about what that song means to me, where it takes me and how wonderful it makes me feel. I’d write about how that woman and that song to me are timeless. I’d write about how at that point in a boy’s life, they stoked all the wonder and hope and fear a boy could have. And most importantly, I’d tell you that there are some sounds in that song, some interminable moments that I believe are mine alone. Sounds that make me close my eyes ‘cause they break my heart every time I hear them. The next afternoon the news tells me he is gone, at 75 so thats what you just read.