Catalina Island

Catalina Island is the destination of a week-long trip taken by the narrator and Dee Dee, a journey that places their shared leisure alongside his continuing inward attachment to Lydia. The island is presented through practical details—a seaplane, a shorefront hotel, beer kept on ice—while the trip’s emotional significance emerges from the gap between the couple’s activities and the poems he writes in secret.

Arrival and the trip’s setting

The trip forms part of a broader pattern of outings. Dee Dee takes the narrator on long drives along the coast and trips to the mountains, as well as to garage sales, films, rock concerts, churches, friends, meals, magic shows, picnics, and circuses. Her friends photograph the pair together, recording a public image of companionship. Catalina extends this itinerary beyond their usual outings, but the narrator’s account does not present it as an uncomplicated holiday.

The journey begins on a dock, where the narrator waits with Dee Dee while hung over. She brings him an Alka-Seltzer and a glass of water. His attention then shifts to a young passenger across from them, whose clothing he describes in detail. That distraction establishes an unevenness in the scene: Dee Dee is caring for him, while he is mentally elsewhere. The episode is characterized as horrible, although the account offers no single explanation for that judgment beyond his hangover and his restless attention.

A red seaplane from 1936 arrives, unloads, and waits to board passengers. It has two propellers, one pilot, and eight or ten seats. This concrete mode of transport gives the trip a definite, modest scale: Catalina is reached not through an expansive voyage but by a small aircraft, with the pair waiting together at the dock before boarding.

Shared leisure and private habits

Dee Dee secures a room on the top floor of a hotel directly on the shore. The room has a television and a bathroom but no refrigeration, so she uses a plastic tub packed with ice to keep the narrator’s beer cold. The detail captures the practical work behind their vacation: Dee Dee arranges the accommodation and accommodates his drinking, while the narrator measures comfort in part by the availability of beer.

The trip nevertheless does not become a sustained account of mutual activity. While Dee Dee is away for two or three hours, the narrator watches television, types two or three poems on a portable typewriter, and drinks more beer. The poems are love poems about Lydia, not Dee Dee. He hides them in his suitcase. The action makes the island stay a scene of divided attention: the trip belongs outwardly to the couple, but during Dee Dee’s absence the narrator turns to another woman in his writing and conceals the result.

Return and significance

After the week on Catalina, the narrator and Dee Dee are back in Los Angeles. One evening, unusually, they are sitting around at his place late at night, lying naked on his bed when the telephone rings in the next room. The account provides this return scene as a transition away from the island, linking the trip’s temporary setting to the couple’s ordinary life without explaining what the call brings.

Catalina’s significance lies in this contrast rather than in a dramatic island episode. The shared travel, Dee Dee’s care, the shorefront room, and the improvised icebox establish the outward shape of a couple’s vacation. The concealed poems and continued drinking expose a private countercurrent within it. The trip therefore records both companionship and emotional division: Dee Dee helps make the journey possible, while the narrator’s hidden writing keeps Lydia present in a place ostensibly shared with someone else.