Homelessness
“At
a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for
me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get
married.” May 9th, 2012
President Barack Obama.
I
am floating in the abyss of the homeless.
Not, pushing-grocery-cart homeless, but that place where you don’t know
location yet. I think the most common
method is to retreat. You head back
home; however, to “go back” can be as tricky as “home.” I watched a friend recently retreat back to
the safety of the past; it is comfortable and easy sometimes, but there is no
going back. We retreat to places that
are different because we are different.
*
As
I left Austin, Texas to end my 3 months on the road, I left with sadness in my
heart for try as I might, I couldn’t win the love of a beautiful amazing woman.
Trying too hard was one of my
problems. I drove just to edge of town during rush hour
traffic, pulled into a gas station to check the van out for the 2000 mile
journey back, but it no longer felt like going home. Home is a complex concept, as elusive as the
perfect wave. It appears during certain
tides with certain swells travelling at certain speeds and touching at just the
right break. It comes and goes the way
being in love seems to fade in and out.
I had 2000 miles in front of me and a wedding to attend for one of my
best friends.
I pulled into the gas station and
started the fill up process. I went to
open the hood of the van to check the engine, but the hood doesn’t open with
only one person. It takes two. One person pulls the lever while the other
pulls up on the hood. Because I travel
back home alone, and Chico, without thumbs, can’t help with this task, I lodge
the hide-a-key box behind the lever. I
have done this many times now. This way
the lever remains pulled and I can walk around and pull open the hood. It was easier when I was travelling with
another person.
*
If
I have learned anything in these years of trying to understand home, I have
learned that it revolves around love.
They say home is where the heart is.
I have tried hard to understand what that means. Many times now I have worked to build a
home. While I do think home is wrapped
up in a location, in a neighborhood and the friends and family that live around
you, there is an intimate part that is closer to the heart. For me, home begins with a good partner. I feel, finally, to have come full circle in
all my writing about this.
*
I
pop the hood up on the van and check the oil level and it looks good. 1300 dollars and four weeks later, the van is
running again. They had to replace all
the bushings on the front end and the tie rods.
I had sheared off thee of the four bolts holding the radial arm to the
axel and the suspension. The steering
had become dangerous and I feared I would lose control completely. The steering and suspension feel better
now. Being stuck somewhere never feels
good; however, I am a person who tries to live in the moment. I tried to enjoy being where I was and with
the people there. I figured, life was
teaching me some lesson. Pay attention
dummy!
*
*
*
*
I
pulled out from the gas station and onto the highway. The van doesn’t get up to speed quickly, but
there was a long break in traffic. At 35
miles an hour, the overdrive clunks into gear.
I get the RPM’s up to 2500 and that is all there is to it. The van has two gas tanks and they are both
full now. That will carry me beyond
anything I could drive for the night. I
am driving into a Texas sunset; Chico pants in the heat of the front seat next
to me. I pet him gently. I don’t know if he feels the loneliness that
I feel with her gone from the van. I
think he had started to bond to her as much as I had. The sun is too much and he moves to the back
to sleep on his bed. Just as the van
begins to get up to 65 miles per hour, I notice the hood start to move. Oh shit!
*
This
van trip was originally an escape from home.
I figured the last adventure was to live a transient life on the road
and see what it felt like. I never
really made it. Before I was ready to
leave, I met an amazing woman. A woman
from my distant past and we surfed, walked on the beach, and I found a joy in
my heart again when I looked into her eyes.
They have this amazing green quality to them and each day I saw her, I
felt the two by fours of a home being built in the laughter I felt when I was
with her. The foundation was uneven,
perhaps settled to one side, but doable.
It felt possible. We weren’t in
great places to take on new love, but it seemed we came together in spite of
everything. We hiked out to the
beginning of the watershed for our hometown, past the sewer ditch we skated in
high school, out to the waterfall we had both been many times when we were
younger. We didn’t stop there. We decided to keep hiking. Neither of us had gone further before for
some reason. The river opened up to
meadows and rock faces with potholes filled with water. We kept hiking and I think we both didn’t
want it to end, but there came a time when we had to turn around. I wanted to grab hold of her, to kiss her, to
never leave, but we didn’t. We walked
back down, Chico running ahead, got in the car and drove back to town.
*
I
had a few seconds to react as the hood fluttered, but I didn’t. Then with a gust it flew up into the
windshield and I was blinded. Time slowed
down. The shoulder was blocked by cement
barricades because they were working on widening the highway. I looked into my rearview mirror for traffic
coming. I fumbled around for the hazards
as I swerved all over the road, slowly breaking. I watched the cement divider out the passenger
side window as I pulled away from it and then close to it. It pulsated towards the car and I hoped there
wasn’t any quick turns coming. There was
only one driving lane, the center lane, and oncoming traffic. I looked out the window to avoid traffic as I
tried to slow the van down. It doesn’t
stop quickly. All I could think about
was totaling the van after just repairing it, about calling her up back at her
dad’s house and saying, uh…come get me, I just wrecked the van. It couldn’t happen. Life wouldn’t do that to me.
*
*
As
I slowed the van down I tried to pull as close to the cement barrier as I
could. I quickly jumped from the car,
but as I opened the door a purple Dodge Charger with horns blazing careened
around my van just missing the open door.
I jumped around the van, pulled the hood off the windshield and slammed
it down. It clunked, but didn’t close. I still forgot to remove the hide-a-key, but
it would have to do. I jumped back in
the van and tried to keep driving down the freeway. People were backing up behind me, but I drove
slowly, watching the hood again and looking for a place to pull over. Finally, a break in the cement barriers and a
road that I pulled down, but still was too shocked to react. I drove for a second, unable to make a
decision and to really pull over.
*
As
I left Arroyo Grande, I drove up to Chico to pick up the rack for the van, then
to Truckee to see a friend, then to Idaho to my Dad’s, and then to Utah to my
house. The whole time, I dreamed about
her. I texted her, wrote poems, shared
my past and wished for a future. She
wasn’t happy in her life and dreamed about getting away. Finally, I talked her into flying out and
meeting up with me. Hah! Who says studying writing doesn’t pay off?
*
The
hood was bent, but it did shut, just won’t reopen now. As I pulled back onto the freeway it started
to settle in how close to wrecking I had been.
After everything, after weeks of waiting for parts and sleeping on the
floor on her step-father’s studio, after a few fights, and almost blowing my
chances with this amazing woman, I had to hit the road. While I was supposed to be writing my
dissertation, I spent all my time trying to be close to her, trying to win her
heart. Instead, I was overwhelming her
and smothering her. Now, I had four days
to drive 2000 miles to get to my friend’s wedding. I was supposed to be the best man and I had
to get there.
*
After
Utah, I drove to a conference in Estes Park, over the Rockies to Denver to hang
out with a good friend, down along the East-side to the Great Sand Dunes, and
then crossed the Rockies again to see some old family friends in Pagosa
Springs. In Pagosa Springs, I thought
often about the first home I ever had.
These were our neighbors. Their
daughter was like my Winnie Cooper. One
night, when I was about 7 or 8, she slept over on the floor in sleeping bags in
the living room. Late at night, she
reached into my sleeping bag and held my hand.
I did my best to never move the rest of the night, my hand sweating into
hers.
I spent a week in Pagosa Springs
reminiscing about the past, but my mind was dreaming about the future when this
new woman would fly out. She bought her
ticket to fly into Durango, CO and my heart floated in desire.
*
I
was driving with a destination and a time-frame now. Tonight, I would drive until I couldn’t drive
anymore, until my eyelids feel heavy.
Cruise control, a Texas oil field sunset, the passenger seat empty now,
I pull behind a big rig, try to match their speed, and drive. I have found that I like getting behind the
rigs and letting them run blocker for me.
I put enough space between me and the truck so I can stop, and if they
can’t stop for something in front of them, well, they should clear the path for
me. So, I find my spot behind a
Mayflower moving truck and stay there until one in the morning when I pull off
near Fort Stockton, crawl into the back of the van and crash into sleep
dreaming about the girl I left in Texas.
*
In the morning, the wind whipped
cold sand against the van. Rather than
stay, we decided to keep heading south to look for warmer places we would never
quite find again.
*
I left Texas and into New Mexico seeing
sites we saw together. I passed more
signs of places I had hoped to go to on my return home: Chiricahua National Monument,
Tombstone Arizona, Sierra Vista (where I had hoped to see an old friend’s
family, a friend who I was supposed to be the best man at his wedding, but I
was too lost at that time to recognize the honor), Coronado National Forest,
Santa Catalina, Tucson, and Sonoran Desert National Monument. The desert was blooming. Ocotillo lit like torches against the desert
beiges. What had I done? Why am I passing all of these up?
I stopped for the night at my
grandfather’s place outside Phoenix. I
ate some food, said hello, and crashed into sleep in the van parked in his
driveway. In the morning, I ate breakfast
with my grandfather and we talked about life.
Growing up, he and my grandmother were the models I had for love. My grandfather, a stoic man from my childhood
who watched the news and grunted at us kids, was sitting in a rocking chair
watching the morning news when I noticed that my grandmother’s name was
hand-written at the base of the chair. I
didn’t want to ask why. It has been some
years now since she passed, but I would do anything to talk with her about love
now that I am old enough to respect what she would say. I talk with my grandfather nonetheless. In their final years together, I saw how much
he loved her. I saw what it means to
have a partner together, and now I see how you move forward with love. He is newly remarried; he and his beautiful
wife sold this house and were moving back to California to start a new home
together. Yes, it does make sense why
we do what we do.
*
From
Bisti Badlands, we went to Chaco Canyon, from Chaco to Albuquerque, then over
to the Gila Wilderness, the Catwalk, Aldo Leopold, the cliff dwellings, we
looked for warmer places. At the
southern end of the Gila National Forest, we found hot springs. We seemed to slide back from lovers and into
friends and I hoped that was OK. At
night, while she slept, I crawled into the hot springs to try and understand
why I was doing this alone. In the hot
springs were a Lakota medicine man and his longtime male partner. They were happy. They offered me an orange and water and we
talked about our lives for a while. His
voice was calm and soothing. They had
just finished a fluorite mineral hunt and were relaxing before heading back
towards Albuquerque.
When I finally crawled back into bed
with her, I told her about who I met. I
had hoped she would feel jealousy at my great experience she missed out on, but
she just went to sleep. I wanted to
steal her away from her texts on her phone, but I couldn’t.
*
From
Phoenix, I drove to LA and saw one of my best friends. He and his fiancé had moved their recently
because of their business, but also because they were looking for a life
together. Business partners, life
partners, and their home just kept getting better each time I see them. From LA, I went north to Arroyo Grande, left
my dog at my sister’s home, jumped on a train, and took it to Chico, California
just in time to fulfill my duties as best man at my friend’s wedding. I didn’t have much to do really—walk down an
aisle, pass the rings over, walk back down the aisle; however, I did have a
speech to give.
*
*
I think life is all about friends,
family, and partners. You find people to
love in the world. People you are
willing to tie yourself to in the event of any danger, any trouble, and love. It doesn’t matter the sex, the gender, the
age, or anything else some culture deems correct right now in history. You never know how long it will last. Maybe just a van ride…or half a van ride,
maybe 50 years, and I’m not sure if we hope for life, but that seems logical to
me. Nonetheless, you take a hold of love
when you can and let it go when you have to.
There is this wonderful line in Harold
and Maude when Maude is dying and Harold tell her he loves her. She says, “That’s wonderful; go love some
more.” Letting go can be the most
difficult I have realized. Yeah, love blinds
us, it crashes up into the windshield and sometimes you just might crash and
burn, but you get up, you fix it, and you love again. Why else live if not to love?
I'm glad you're not hurt. San Antonio is beautiful...
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