PRIVATE LIVES, PUBLIC PLACES : Golden Boys, Princes of Darkness

It is a perfect afternoon on Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point. All over the world, people dream of such an afternoon as this. The strand nestles into a cliff covered in flowers, the triumph of an army of gardeners. There is a deep and velvety turf newly laid in the public park. On the sand, milky-white children run into the waves on well-fed legs, squealing with fun.

In the distance, brown-bodied, golden-haired youths ride the surf, their courage and limbs full of blessed grace. The boys and the waves are one; Greek gods were once seen thus.

In the shimmering afternoon, it is as if this picture of careless happiness, full of light and gulls’ cries, will go on forever. Not here, not yet, the shuffling homeless, the angry have-nots. On the cliff-top above, the Ritz-Carlton looms, the image of spoiled luxury. Is there a house for less than $400,000 on this Mediterranean skyline? In this gated time warp, let us make believe innocence and plenty. O golden America.

At some time, when the surf gentles or the long day palls, the boys climb from the ocean, peel back the Body Gloves and toss surfboards on the bushes. And in this one gesture they tell all: of easy money, of confident days. From the water’s edge, they can be seen winding toward the small cafe that ministers to this beach.

This cafe opens early when the surfers come down before school--for egg burritos and the camaraderie of ocean sport. Jiannis Efstathiou leased the cafe from the county three years ago. He remodeled it with his savings, bought deck chairs, umbrellas, surfboards to rent. He bought freezers, cookers; hamburgers are $2, hot dogs $1.35. The cafe is his pride. He is American now but he was Greek once: He grew up watching the sea, the boats, the danger and hardship of wrenching a living from a cruel taskmaster. To him, these beautiful boys playing like dolphins with the waves must have seemed a miracle. At first, that is.

So on this afternoon, trouble, when it comes, is an ugly shock to all but him. The youths jump up onto the roof of the cafe, run across and down onto the tables, kicking aside children’s drinks, visitors’ picnics. They bang on the cafe counter: “Gimme a f------ straw.” The straws, as Efstathiou knows well, are for filling water balloons. Soon, young surfers are running to and fro on the promenade, hurling their balloons, racial filth and sexual slurs at all they consider outsiders.

When a male couple, jolted with sudden horror, leave the beach, the boys turn on a Japanese family picnicking nearby. But the father is not one to run away. He walks slowly forward and seizes a boy by the hair. “Let me go, I’m a minor. My father will sue you. . . . “ comes the shriek, of fear, of privilege, of gilded youth. The Japanese are visitors. Lips curling with distaste, faces implacably hard, gathering their frightened children, they depart.

The sheriff’s department has been called. A young officer, Deputy Patrick Duff, drives down alone in his car, circling slowly, uncomfortable at being pushed to do something. “What can I do?” he asks. “They’re kids.”

The kids have taken to scrawling on the cafe walls. Their cruelties referred first to Efstathiou as an Italian, then as a Jew. Dark-haired, black-eyed, a thing of darkness to the beach blonds. Boys, 13 and 14 years old, playthings of hatred--not one of them would survive, surely, in places where such hatred kills.

An older surfer knows the boys, says that they are all locals. So why would the sheriff’s man not take them home to their parents? He shrugs.

Do their parents know? Is this what the three-car garages, the cars at Sweet Sixteen, the $50-beach shirts are for? Where did they learn to hurl such bigotry into the air, to think that none of it matters? What horror crawls from under the landscaped rocks?

And which is worse: the absence of any parents to recoil in shame? the fear of Efstathiou alone on this deserted beach?

No, worst of all is the deathly silence of those who stand around the cafe on this perfect, shimmering afternoon and pretend that this is not happening. Fathers wipe chocolate ice cream from small, wide-eyed faces. Cyclists fiddle suddenly with their change purses. The languid melt away up to the Ritz-Carlton.

Hundreds of polite, well-behaved adults stand by and let victory go to the brutish, to the true things of darkness in this golden land. Salt in the wound at Salt Creek, a cracked note in the idyll.