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Narrator
It was a surfer's dream. It was just after dawn on Santa Monica Beach, December 4, 1983. A magnificent clear and cool winter Sunday morning. The kind of day when the Pacific is cold but the surf is up and the waves sweep to the beach in perfect breakers. And no intrepid surfer can see the ocean without a sigh. But on this day, Dennis Wilson, a surfer since he was 10 years old, hardly noticed the Pacific at all. It was the morning of Dennis Wilson's 39th birthday. Dressed in green army pants, T shirt and flimsy jacket, he'd just sleepily hitchhiked his way from a friend's house to the Santa Monica Bay Inn, a beachfront motel. Here, his estranged 19 year old wife, Shawn Love Wilson lived with their 15 month old son Gage in a $125 a week kitchenette. Dennis intended to pay them a surprise visit, but it was he who was in for a surprise. He was about to find his wife asleep in bed, fully clothed with two men. The Bay Inn, as it's called, is a large three story motel with 100 units located just two blocks south of the Kearney. Like Santa Monica Pier, not far north of the drug ridden artists beach community of Venice, the Bay Inn, with its reasonable rates drew a transient crowd of young residents attracted as much to the area's drug activities as to the year round beauty of Santa Monica Beach. It wasn't exactly where you would expect to find Dennis Wilson, a man known for his expensive taste and style, his Rodeo Drive wardrobes, his Ferraris and Rolls Royces and his six figure income. The drummer and middle brother of the Beach Boys then has had for two decades been the personification of American virility and derring do. It was Dennis who embodied the spirit of the Beach Boys. To tens of millions of teenagers around the world. He was the epitome of the surfer playboy. But if Dennis was every teenage Walter Mitty's fantasy of the California playboy surfer, the Dennis Wilson who hitchhiked to his beloved beach on his 39th birthday was not the same young stud revered around the world. And as the essence of the California myth, he could have easily been mistaken for a man a decade older. Instead of the muscled and tanned athlete familiar to his fans, he was pudgy and overweight, bloated with edema from drinking drugs. What had once been the brine and vigor of sailing in the outdoors was now the gray of heroin and cocaine. His bearded face was lined, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. He spoke in a roaring, rasping voice worsened by several operations to remove polyps from his vocal cords and the consumption of at least two packs of Lark or unfiltered Camel cigarettes a day. Over the years, in various alcoholic accidents, he'd cut or broken almost every appendage of his body and everything ached. And if you looked carefully in his eyes, you could see a deeper damage than that self inflicted by drugs or booze. Dennis was being eaten away. His recent marriage to Shawn Love had only worsened his problems. Sean was a round faced, doe eyed blonde teenager with a shag haircut and a pug nose in a byzantine twist. Shawn was the illegitimate daughter of Dennis first cousin the Beach Boys Mike Love. She'd been conceived in a one night liaison with then secretary Shannon Harris and subsequently born out of wedlock. Her mother had sued Mike Love for paternity in Santa Monica Superior Court two decades earlier. Shawn reportedly won an award of $300 a year in child support and the right to use the name Love. When she turned 18, her father shunned her most of her life and she and her mother appeared to remain very bitter toward him. Some would say they harbored a vendetta against the Beach Boys. To make this volatile situation even more explosive, Dennis Wilson and Mike Love despised each other. Since they were children. There'd been a hostile and open rivalry between Mike and Dennis that even led to public fisticuffs. Mike, it was said, resented Dennis image as the group's sex symbol. He considered Dennis a child overindulged and uncontrollable, yet adored by all the Beach Boys fans and almost forgiven by an indulgent family. Mike, by contrast, was a hard working competitive man. A devout vegetarian and transcendental meditator who never drank or smoked. Dennis, naughty child that he was, goaded and provoked Mike at every turn. Indeed, for Dennis to have married, Mike's illegitimate daughter could be seen as nothing but the most bitter spite work. She was only 15 when she first started living with Dennis in a small house on Wave Crest Avenue in Venice Beach. Dennis swore at first that the relationship wasn't sexual, that he was just helping straighten out a mixed up kid by putting her up in a room in his large house. But soon they were sleeping together, not long after she was pregnant. During the short time they were officially husband and wife, Dennis continued to see other women on the sly. But he remained sexually faithful to Shawn as he saw it, by only allowing himself to get blowjobs and thus avoiding the possibility of contracting a venereal disease. Such loosely defined fidelity did not work both ways in Dennis Chauvinistic rulebook. The thought of Shawn with another man was something his fragile ego could little deal with. And of late, Shawn had been friendly with a young man in his early 20s named Brandt, not his real name, of whom Dennis highly disapproved and was violently jealous. Yet through all the torment of the relationship and even with their divorce impending, Dennis could not bring himself to stay away from her. Their infant son, Gage, kept them coming back over and over again. Dennis loved and adored this towheaded, precocious little tot whom he'd come to visit that early December morning at the Santa Monica Bay Inn. As he made his way up to room 353 of the motel's north wing, Dennis didn't stop at the front office to phone ahead because the management had already thrown him off the premises on several occasions anyway. Most of the time when he called the room, Sean wouldn't take his calls, and then he was left arguing with the operator. Already the switchboard had logged dozens of pleading phone calls to Sean, which she'd refused to answer. Yet Dennis needed to see Gage with an uncontrollable passion in a way very few people understood. Dennis needed the baby more than anyone in the world needed him. Dennis would replay over and over again for friends the scene that greeted him that morning in Sean's room. According to Dennis, when he entered, he found Sean asleep on the bed with two young men, one of them her steady boyfriend, the other a relative stranger to Dennis. All three were fully clothed, and it appeared they'd innocently fallen asleep together. What the fuck is going on here? Dennis rasped, rousing the threesome from sleep. When he screamed with his hoarse throat, it was like a great lion's roar. What? Are you fucking crazy? He shouted to Sean. Before the occupants of the bed could compose an explanation, Dennis went berserk and began ripping apart the hotel room. He turned over furniture and punched holes in the door and walls while all four screamed at the top of their lungs. Sean. With an incessant chorus of get out, get out. A tug of war ensued over Gage. Dennis reportedly threatened to have Gage legally taken away from Shawn because she was consorting with drug users. The frightened child shrieked hysterically while Dennis threatened to call the police and have them all arrested for possession of narcotics. Then Dennis suddenly snatched Gage away from Sean and raced out of the room with him. With the child howling and squirming in his arms, Dennis flew down the three flights of steps, past the pool area and out of the motel onto Ocean Park Avenue, darting in and out of traffic. He ran Pell Mell across the broad palm lined boulevard and took shelter in a cool, dark bar called Che J, located almost directly across the street from the bay Inn at 1657 Ocean Park. Shay Jay was one of Dennis favorite hangouts, a small and quiet bar, its interior was lighted mainly by multicolored Christmas lights strung along the ceiling down the center of the room. The owners and employees all knew and liked Dennis, and Alice Fiandella, Jay's mother, who owned a small hotel next door, was there that morning with the cleanup crew when he came in. Dennis, frantic and near tears, told Alice he needed a taxi to take Gage to a friend's house. Alice called one for him while he tried to calm Gage. After a while he laid the infant down on a maroon Naga hide banquette beneath a red and white checkered tablecloth. It was cool in the dark bar. Dennis took off his jacket and wrapped it around his tiny son, who shortly fell asleep. While Dennis waited for a taxi, he sat in the booth next to Gage, nursing his vodka and orange juice, which he often carried with him in a pint bottle. Ironically, this morning's events were no special trial for him. In fact, they seemed like just another thread in the incredible tapestry of his life. As he sat at the table. The past few months fell heavily on him and he began to wee. It's it.