PAGAN LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS

20. Dancing in the Rain

        It’s weird to be homeless. One day you have an apartment; the next you are out in the streets. You can’t hide. You don’t have much privacy. People are rude to you. As I wandered around the streets and beaches of Laguna with my bedroll on my shoulder I remembered my apartment. I walked by it sometimes and wondered who lived there now.

        I saw Tammy a couple times. Things weren’t like before—they were very different now that I was sleeping in the sand. It was occurring to her that she had been a fool to even consider flying off with me, and that her father had been right about many things. I was a veritable outcast in her eyes. To think she had almost traveled north with me! If she had gone with me she would have become an outcast, too! And now I had returned to Laguna and we sat together on the beach a few blocks from her parent’s home. She had a real good opportunity to view me in the element she would have shared. She sniffed at my dirty clothes and made a face.

        “So you have no place to live now! Where will you shower?”

        “Oh, that one is easy!” I answered. “Sometimes it rains!”

        “In that case your clothes could use a little rainfall too!” she fired back.

        As she walked off I could see she must have been thinking she’d had a close call with fate. Tammy the gypsy. I could still see it -- in my dreams.

        Homelessness can get a person down. The trick is to buoy up your self-esteem somehow. But if the method you choose isn’t based on a foundation that is real you will end up blithering to yourself amidst the crowds. I mean like some people think they are Napoleon, or Santa Claus or Cleopatra. The fruitcakes are doomed by their confusion. To live on the streets with your mind clear you must not delude yourself; you must know who you really are. I was more fortunate than most: I knew I was really Pan.

        I remember the day when Tammy realized I was really Pan. She had never conceived of such a ridiculous idea before in all her life. So the realization made her sit back and her eyes got real big like all the computer files and programs in her skull were suddenly spinning-out different answers: like the odometer inside was doing the biggy and all the numbers were turning to zero. She accepted it pretty well. When “Pan” was her boyfriend’s silly nickname that was one thing: this was another.   We sat on the rocks watching the breakers. I told her we each must create our own lives from the debris and rubies, the sands of time. Her perfectly combed waist-long red hair shimmered in the wind and the sun.   She was wearing one of her typical hundred dollar sweaters, a nice pleated skirt and designer leather sandals; jasmine perfume and a little lipstick, not much.

        I knew I wouldn’t be seeing her much anymore.

        The city of Laguna was engaged in the weighty task of dislodging the homeless people from her shores. The officers who patrolled the beaches and the canyons looking for sleeping sick-os were paradigms of quality Aryan breeding. None of them had ever missed a meal in their lives. None of them had ever lacked so much as a desert. They were Laguna’s finest and we were up against them; with seaweed in our hair and day-old donuts and last night’s wine on our breath; with duck tape wrapped around a shoe to keep the sole from flapping.

        It takes awhile for the cops to really notice you — one bearded sleeping-bagger looks so much like every other. Once they differentiate you from all the rest they will try to discover where you are sleeping at night so they can harass you until they drive you out of town. So, how successful you are depends upon how smart you are—or how dumb you are—or how wasted you are on drugs or alcohol. If you are none of those latter varieties and if you use your head you have a fair chance of getting away with a night’s sleep undisturbed—and you may even endure in the locality for a significant duration.

        You have to find someplace that hasn’t become an obvious favorite of a thousand vagrants before you. So if there’s a rat’s nest of junk in a cleared space within some park bushes you can pretty well figure its one of the first places the cops check every night and that they have busted twenty different people in there over the previous year and you’re gonna be next. Avoid it, no matter how comfortable it appears. What you need is somewhere unique. Somewhere hard to reach is also good. Cops don’t like to get their clothes dirty or torn. And it’s best to diversify: have two or three good spots and alternate. Your spot should be totally invisible and no one should ever see you enter or leave it.  Always leave early in the morning at the end of the cop’s graveyard shift when they’re tired and anxious to get off work and not running around like busy ants looking for sleeping law-breakers. That’s when you arise with the sun. It’s the best time of day anyway. You are fresh and alert.  You go find yourself something to eat and a cup or two of coffee. Another mistake to look out for: all the natural woodsy lifestyle things you’ve learned… Fancy wilderness food preparation? Forget it. If you build yourself an early morning fire to cook yourself some eggs you are asking for a uniformed visitation. Go get a sugar-donut. One more thing. Try not to get your donut at the same place and time the cop is getting his. Have some class. Choose the company with whom you sup. Avoid confrontation, for it will not be a meeting of equals in the still morning light…

        In the beginning I bravely slept out in the open on the beach against the cliffs where late-night or early morning wanderers were less likely to stumble over me. If the police came along I intended to show them my Vermont driver’s license and tell them I’d just arrived in town and didn’t know the local laws. If you have just arrived from a place three thousand miles away the cops are more likely to yield to you a modicum of respect and deference. When they looked at my Vermont license they didn’t have to know that my family lived just a few miles away in Huntington Beach. Isn’t it funny when you have to trick a small amount of humanity out of another human being? In fact various cops did find me on the beach and the ruse worked most of the time, but I was always looking for safer situations. It seemed getting away from the beach entirely at night might be smartest. So I tried taking the time each evening to walk inland a couple miles to sleep among the shrubs on the hills above the uninhabited areas.

        Rude awakening! I thought it was remarkable that two cops would labor up the side of a canyon wall to bust me for sleeping! I considered sending a letter of commendation to their captain but I never got around to it. I’d really thought I’d been careful but probably some watchful resident observed me and called them. I’m lucky Demetrious hadn’t been with me. So, they booked me and I spent two nights in the Laguna Niquel jail. I knew I had to be a lot more careful—because each time any person is brought before the judge for this offence he receives a greater sentence. Thereafter I never went to wherever I intended to sleep before the night was pitch-black. Also the canyon was too far away; I found some great spots in the center of town.

        The one that served me longest was up a cliff near the main beach, just beneath the fancy Victor Hugo restaurant. I even kept my bag stashed there. I cleared a small dirt platform behind some tall bushes and I was home. I never used it when rains made the path muddy. My trail would have been obvious. And I alternated with a few other spots.

        Another one that was especially good for rainy nights was underneath a beach house. Large wooden timbers raised the front of the house off the sand: a wall of plywood covered the timbers; and there was a hole where a person could crawl under and come up in a large sand-floored area. Perfect. Of course, someone lived upstairs, a family.   I had to be real quiet, I arrived after dark and left at the crack of dawn. The place served me off and on for many months.

        When I could not sleep well at night I could usually grab a few hours sleep during the day. Dozing on the beach is common everywhere and the police, didn’t make a stink about it in the daytime, especially when the beaches were crowded. So I sometimes parked myself on the less frequented north beach

        I was surprised one day to meet up with a fellow I had known in prison. His name was Daniel and he was dying, albeit slowly, from lead poisoning. He had an unremovable bullet lodged in his brain, the result of a bank robbery gone sour. He’d robbed many banks in his life, and gone to prison many times for them. Now he was in his mid-forties and had silver-white hair and beard. Doctors gave him only seven years to live but you couldn’t tell it by looking at him. What was remarkable was his adroitness and his trim physique; a karate expert, he practiced every day. Daniel rented a small cottage across the street from the boardwalk and I went to visit him sometimes. He usually had several of his friends hanging out whenever I came by; they practiced Karate together. I know nothing about martial arts and wasn’t into taking the time necessary to develop those skills. Also the inherent violence does not appeal to me.  Dan and his friends considered my views on this subject to be inane but we had some other areas of common interest.

        There were two sisters, real Mediterranean-looking women, who often visited Daniel. The girls were about twenty years old. They all did acid and smoked hash together—maybe harder stuff, I don’t know. People who do it don’t discuss it with people who don’t. So there were dark areas in my knowledge of Dan’s doings and I think that fairly well describes the scene. All I know is he had a neat thing going-on with those two olive-complexioned passion flowers.

        I was visiting him once when one of them showed up. He began making-out with her and getting her undressed and then another fellow started with her too, and then another—all at the same time. The three guys were getting her all horny, so I jumped in too, and we all had a wild evening. She was one hot sister. But usually I wasn’t invited to Dan’s parties. I was too different from him and his buddies. They were counterculture but very different from “my” counterculture. To be accepted in that group you had to be open to bankrobbery conversations and knowledge, hard drugs, guns, and martial arts. I was way outside their perview. My dog was too. They only thought attack dogs were of any value. They said my St. Bernard was utterly useless, and when they talked about eating him, they sounded very serious. Too serious. Going to visit them was always a headache. I stopped.

***

        I love sleeping under the stars. One morning I awoke at the crack of dawn to observe a beautiful tall blond woman totally nude walking out into the ocean; not a normal sight in the middle of a city, not even Laguna; and especially at that time of the year—technically it was still winter; Normally no one would have seen her on this lonely beach along the cliffs where there were no buildings. When she noticed me watching her from my sleeping bag she was happily surprised and came dancing over dripping wet and sat down and we talked while the cool morning winds dried her off. She began to shiver and her teeth to chatter. I still lay in my bag and our conversation was going so well that I offered to share it with her and help her warm up by giving her a bit of a massage. She asked me if I was sure I wouldn’t mind. Honestly, I don’t understand what sort of up-bringing beautiful women receive to even be capable of asking such a silly question! Of course I told her I most certainly did not mind! I made room and she squeezed in.

        Our bodies scrunched tightly against each other; mine very warm, hers very cold. We cuddled and hugged face to face and she whispered exuberantly into my ear how nice and warm I was. I was in heaven with her pubic hair pressed hotly, wetly, against my thigh and her cold hard nipples sticking into my chest—and the softness yet firmness of her breasts, not to mention the thrill of her blond hair cascading against my face and the playful twinkle in her eyes inches from my own. I observed she possessed a downy mustache and beneath that her beautifully proportioned lips were puckered, inviting. Spontaneously we shared one explosive tongue-searching kiss composed mostly of new-found friendship but steeped bountifully with passion, too. But only one -- neither of us wanting to go too far, too fast. I gave her a massage for ten minutes with one hand as best I could in the constricted area of the bag. I guess she’d really wanted—needed—some gentle attention; I believe fate brings people who need each other together. Finally we did kiss well and long and much, and lastly we made love. We didn’t rush things, but still, from first meeting to consummation we’d been together for no more than an hour.  And she wasn’t cold anymore...

        Her name was Diane. She didn’t come every morning, but she came often. I couldn’t sleep in the same place waiting for her without challenging Aryan fate, but I could awaken a little early and walk to the spot and sit in the sands and wait. I did that and I showed her where the shelter under the beach house was located, and that became our favorite place to get away from the world. Later when the weather warmed up we surreptitiously crept often under there and made love undisturbed—with a couple hundred bathers and baskers just a few feet away.

        Diane was interested in Yoga and she wanted to try all kinds of exotic positions; our favorite became the sitting position with her in my lap with her legs wrapped around me. She was another sweet sister who begged me not to pull out but her reasons were different—she wanted to get pregnant and have a baby. Well, she was old enough to know what she wanted and I obliged her at every opportunity. Her taut feline form didn’t have any observable fat. It was an athletic swimmer’s body and all physical exertion was sport and yoga and art mixed to her—especially lovemaking.

        Diane was twenty-two years old and she had a boyfriend who I heard a lot about from her and came to feel I knew personally—but whom I never met. From what she told me he had his good points which was why she remained with him—but he also wasn’t too cool in other ways—like he knocked her around some. He gave her a black eye once and it lingered for nearly two weeks. I didn’t like to hear about him much after that.

        I think he was a dealer. They rented a house and had a lot of friends. She told me I was a welcome diversion to her from that crowd.  Naturally I didn’t want to get involved with her community; actually I suspected I might not like them, but mainly I foresaw that meeting them might easily make my relationship with Diane impossible. Some things are best kept secret, or low-profile anyway. And I sure as hell didn’t want to meet her boyfriend. On the other hand she didn’t want to ruin her thing with him—but there were days too when she just wanted to drop everything and run away with me, anywhere, forever. We talked about that a lot.

        In this manner the end of winter passed and also the spring. I became anxious to leave to get my motorcycle and bring it to California. Laguna might be a whole different scene with those wheels…

        In June when I hitchhiked east to reclaim my bike Diane almost came with me. Almost.

      That woulda been nice.