Lindsey's brother Ally always reminded me of Charles Manson, same hair and beard, only smiling.
Lindsey moves in.
It was a mid-afternoon, as I recall, (it’s not in my journal, this unexpected tsunami) but it was totally unannounced, surprising and vividly remembered. I was lounging on the couch and there was a knock on the door. It was Ali, with a big smile on his face and his sister Lindsey behind him, all meek and shy, almost cowering, not knowing what reception she might meet. She had a single bag of clothes in her hand. He comes in first, then she steps just inside the door and tells me, (ashamed and looking down), that her boyfriend had just beaten her up again this morning, and many times in the last few weeks and today it would be the last time. She called her brother to come get her, (which he did, in a taxi) and she asked in a low, shy voice, if she could move in with me. Without hesitation I replied: ‘sure, no problem, you can stay as long as you want’.
This broadens Ali’s smile even more. Mission accomplished for him. Lindsey places her plastic bag on the floor and sits quietly on the other end of the couch. I’m sitting straight up now, about three feet away from her. Ali is standing in the middle of the living room and can’t contain himself. He has a story to tell the both of us.
“First he mentions (still smiling and all happy) that his van is in storage and it’s fifty dollars to get it out. Then (as if it’s not of the least importance), how he spent the night in jail and was arrested for drunk driving, all because he ran out of gas on a steep hill in S.F. and a cable car was coming up behind. So he had to back down, but with the power steering off it was difficult and he had to cut really close to the parked cars to let the cable car pass but it was too tight and he scraped two of the cars and he was drunk. But he sums it up succinctly: “I guess I fucked up, huh, sis”. Then he describes the air and boat show he saw from Fisherman’s Wharf earlier on, the tourists, the pretty girls and hanging out with the street musicians and girls dancing to them right in the street, at length, and what a great time he had. All the bad, the tickets and the money lost he just ignores — a well-tuned philosopher, to my mind. Whatever bad happens to him he just shrugs off and his native cheerfulness returns at the slightest thing. He could be happy in a drunk tank if he made a new friend.
“But they couldn’t keep Jack from feeling happy”. The Who.
“He mentioned how the policewoman, taking his blood sample for the drunk test messed up three times, putting three holes in him, till a doctor came along and did it right. This he complained of. He had been given a choice of three types of tests and picked this one as the hardest, thinking it would piss off the police but it rebounded on him, as he reasoned.
“He’s a rough-hewn soldier, with tattoos, often shirtless, and proud, as he has a great physique, being a carpenter, muscular yet slim, about twenty-four, long haired and proud of that too but with a soft heart and caring for his older sister and family, a strange combination”.
After this story Ali wanted to get home, wherever that was. He usually slept in his van. But I know Jim liked him and let him sleep at their house some nights in July and August. I gave him twenty dollars to taxi back there and he was grateful, saying he’d have his van back in a day. He left and I was alone with his silent sister, a bit uncomfortable on both sides. I didn’t know what she’d been through. She didn’t know me that much, except that I seemed like a nice guy, whether I loved her or was just doing her a favor for a few days a big question mark in her head. And I didn’t know what she felt for me, whether she really liked me or was just using me as a safe haven. So it was a rather awkward those first few hours.
She still looked depressed on the couch and I didn’t want to leave her, as if she might flee. So I suggested we look through Steve’s cupboards and make ourselves a dinner. This perked her up a bit and we began rummaging through his kitchen, finding little. But a can of peas, some frozen hamburgers in the freezer and a fresh loaf of bread I’d bought did the trick. She made the dinner while I turned on the news on Steve’s black and white T.V. set in the bedroom on his clothes drawer, next to the kitchen. There was no door between the two rooms and only a single bed in that skinny room. But we weren’t thinking that far ahead. We fixed two plates and sat side by side eating our humble meal but this cheered her up a bit as we joked about it and our lowly surroundings. Steve’s T.V. just had rabbit ears which we had to keep readjusting for even spotty reception. His bed sagged quite a bit as we both sat on it. The sheets weren’t made, or clean and the one blanket, crumpled up at the end could only be described as ‘ragged’.
We ate supper and both opened a beer. After the news and some stupid game show the only thing we could find to watch on one of the few channels that came in was a movie called ‘The Amityville Horror’. We’d both seen parts of it and both agreed it was probably one of the worst movies ever made but it was our only option. Yet all this little, petty talk and agreement was cheering her up. We began watching it, laughing together at the predictable and the absurd parts and within half an hour had our arms around each other’s waists. A half hour later we were kissing, the movie forgotten. Ten minutes later the T.V. was off and so were our clothes. We were under the sheets in that skinny, creaky bed but a love nest to us, making it creak all the more and pretty soon all our fears and worries evaporated. We woke up the next morning to bright sunshine, all hugs and kisses, smiling, and nothing else mattered. We were in love.
But the next page in my journal, three days later, and a few following, are in Latin. My books were always on the coffee table ready for anyone to open and read. But these thoughts were a little too personal for that. I’m going over what these radical changes mean to all my plans. I compare it to a shipwreck. But I have no idea how it might change or where it might lead. These were not the type of thoughts for one’s new partner and lover to read.
I wrote that I was placing my hopes and future in her but knew that this implied a loss of former hopes, including my plans to be a solitary, full-time writer (which it did). How fickle our lives were, like leaves in the wind. Then I noted, ironically, that I was writing this Latin right under her nose and she would never read it. I even added that I’d get better at Latin composition with practice and would write much more fluently soon, in my own secret language. My mind was racing on many different levels, as one always does in love.
Then I recorded Diane’s call the night before and the even greater irony of that. Finally I noted her moments of self-doubt and poor self-esteem, (perhaps from the trauma she’d just been through and which I knew nothing about). I also noted a confusion in her thinking at times, indecision when presented choices, which I would have to deal with but also her pure, loving, smiles whenever she looked at me.
Actually, the Latin isn’t that bad in parts. Too bad I never kept up the practice. It would have quickly improved. The only other time I reverted to it was when Sanita was divorcing me, exactly ten years later, in the summer of 1994.
