Delightful Trespass

Occasionally, I have written stories, mostly fictional, but based on the smallest of facts. I have long since given up trying to sell them to some journal or paper. I have never sold the few I did submit. Perhaps I am not good enough.  Perhaps I am, but not lucky in this respect. Either way, with the passage of time, it no longer worries me and I have this outlet, the blog.

I ran into this story I wrote some years ago and had buried in a folder. I like it because the heroine, though living much as I have all these years, reacted in a way I never would have in so risky a situation.

DELIGHTFUL TRESPASS

"Nothing exciting ever happens to me," said Jen to her companions as she exited the car.  They had been talking of mutual, and unlike us, married friends who, late in life picked up and moved to Australia.

"I love you guys," Jen continued, "but once it might be nice if my Saturday night was about more than watching a long dead movie star in a black and white film at the Egyptian and you two mocking the other movie goers.  And it doesn't have to be a sixteen hour trip. Me, and someone who 'gets' me."

"Tell it to your therapist!" the driving member of the two college friends chided, flashing an "I've heard this before" smile, as he restarted his motor.

"I did, and then he died". Jen paused. "No connection, I hope!". Jen's tone was light, keys rattling as she approached her vestibule. She knew these lovely men saw her through the prism of their long friendship, a solid one, but carefully constructed not to delve much into the emotional depths among them. The single thing her therapist ha made both gloriously and painfully clear was that relationships should be a lot deeper than those to which she had been long accustomed, even sought out.  Losing her therapist had been a blow, and the depth of that rare experience was something she had never been able to repeat for "real".  She had lots of insight, but the will to change had remained recalcitrant. Still life was basically good. She really had not complaints.

"So to Facebook, then to lament are we?" queried the bemused passenger out the window. She remembered a little sadly that he had once compared their relationships to a "three legged stool.". Ugh.

Jen waved and bowed.  "I shall recount that a most pleasant tie was had by all."

She watched as they drove off, took a deep jasmine filled breath and looked up at the few stars she could see.  This was the life she had composed.  Deal with it.

The four unit building was completely empty.  Two neighbors were out. Twenty years her junior, the were always somewhere far later than she, that's when they were in town, since they traveled hither and yon for their respective businesses.  The remaining apartment, across from hers was awaiting a new tenant willing to pay market prices for what was becoming finally a trendy-ish area.  Jen reaped the benefit of long term residency and rent stabilization.  No doubt they would take her out "feet first" when the time came, hunkered down New Yorker in Los Angeles to the end.

She went into her rooms and poured herself a night cap, Protect, a current favorite.  She abandoned herself to her deep leather chair and looked into the night from her ground floor window. Crickets and the occasional passing car punctuated the quiet post midnight.

And then she heard the water whoosh of the shower in the supposed to be vacant apartment.

She got up. "Maybe I'm hearing things. The delusional spinster."

Jen went to the utility porch and opened her back door closer to the side on which the bathroom of the apparently temporarily occupied apartment was located.  Yes, definitely the shower.

And then the sound stopped with the squeak, squeak of the handles.  She saw that the bedroom window was open.  Not broken, just open.

Jen went back through her place to the front hall doorway.  She opened the door, a crack.  And then, despite herself she walked across the hall, paused and knocked. It was reflexive, a surprise even to her.  She did not run, although she angled away from the door, just in case.
He was at ease.
The door pulled open.  A man gazed at her sideways, his straight black hair glancing his forehead. He brushed it back with his left hand, and finger glanced his graying mustache. He was at ease.  He had dressed, old jeans and an old jean shirt of a slightly darker color, rumpled but clean. Had she not known better, she could have believed that this was someone who had every right to the apartment.  He looked at her unflaggingly, but with a most disarming kindness, "Hello, I'm Damien."

Despite a passing thought of Ted Bundy, she maintained his gaze, pointing to herself.  "Jen."

He waved her in, opening the door a bit wider, revealing on the otherwise bare floor a blanket with paper plates of bread, cheese and a bottle of a serviceable, but inexpensive red wine.  The room was lit subtlety by three or four votive candles.  His straight hair, she noticed, was still wet.

"I planned for the occasions, a respite, if you will," he said in a quiet, pleasant voice. "But I didn't plan on a companion in it.  An odd request, perhaps, but would you join me Jen?".

The way he said her name touched her very center.  She felt totally safe.  How could any of this be safe?  He was a stranger.  He was a stranger and a burglar.  But all he had done was to cleanse himself and to seek an indoor meal, how could that be dangerous?  How was it even wrong?  Despite herself, Jen went inside.

They sat on the floor, across from one another, the blanket and food between them.  He had small paper cups and he poured the wine as if once his life had included such social intimacies. 

"It matters to me what you think about how I got these provisions we're sharing.  While perhaps not quite an honest day's work, it was an honest day asking for the good will of others at La Cienega and San Vicente.  You'd be surprise how far twenty dollars goes.".

She took the cup had he slowly withdrew his hand, his gaze once again steady.

"The wine, a Barefoot red, $6.99, the cheese, cheddar cubes, just under 3, the bread, a mere $1.50, the cups less than that.  The blanket I had.". He broke he bread. He handed her a piece. What she was feeling was not logical. A line for an old movie, "Wuthering Heights" burst into her head. It was what Cathy said of the brooding Heathcliff, "He is more myself than I am."

Tentatively, she asked of him how he came to be homeless.  "A kaleidoscope of reasons, accidents, fearful interactions, but misty bad choices for which only I am responsible.  I'd love to blame someone.  But this is the life I have composed."

Jen's stomach jumped hearing those words, which she had thought only a short while before, considering the tides and eddies and choices in her life.

Damien, seeing her slightly sad reverie interrupted it, "Jen?  Where have you gone?". Breathing out expansively back to the moment, Jen confessed, perhaps for the first time admitting to herself, "that's how I have come to be alone, accidents, fearful interactions, but mostly bad choic3s for which only I am responsible.  She glanced at him; in the candlelight it seemed as if his eyes were beginning tears.  Instead of running from her words in favor of his own, he sat silent with her. 

"So, what's next Damien?" she finally broke the moment.

"Well, I think" said Damien, "that maybe I am just about to turn a corner.  I am hopeful.". At that, there was a sudden flapping sound, and a flash of swirling light, which both of them at once realized was a police helicopter.  It's proximity to Jen's building could be no accident.  Someone had heard him, them, and called the police.

They got up beyond quickly.  He dislodged the blanket from the stuff on top of it, like a magician. 

"You have to go Jen. Now.". He took her hand for an instant and kissed her on the cheek with a gentleness Jen could never forget.  And then he was gone, out the back window into which he come.

Jen sprinted back to her placed. And listened to her pounding heart. 

Then she heard the heavy steps of police and the sound of radio calls.  And then one of them knocked.  She answered with as fake a calm as she could muster.

"Ma'am. We. Got a call about someone breaking into the apartment next door.  Looks like someone was in there.  Did you hear anything?"

Jen was no saint and like any human being she had lied in her life.  But never as willfully as this, "No officer, I was in the back in my bedroom.

It never would have occurred to him that she had aided and abetted a trespass, and had enjoyed it.

"Thank you ma'am.". And he was gone.

When Damien did turn the corner, it was her devout wish she'd see him do it. 

And maybe she'd turn a corner of her own.  

Pentecost in West Hollywood

Yesterday was the official end of the Easter season. Pentecost, the celebration of the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and other disciples in the upper room, where all of them cowered after the death, and despite the Resurrection of Christ, was no different at St. Victor than at any other parish in the world.

It was, maybe, harder to get to the Church here in West Hollywood than anywhere else, at least in the United States, because the Holy Day coincided with the yearly Pride parade. Over the 30 or so years since gay pride has been marked, the city staff and we Weho dwellers have gotten good at managing the traffic, the helicopters and the crowds spending a festive day, but still getting to a scheduled Sunday service smack in the middle of it all remains a daunting effort. That is, if you take a car. I happily live within about a mile, and so I figured I'd enjoy the walk in the late morning sunshine. 

We didn't have our usual complement of servers. And the number of attendees in our already small parish was only about 40. But the guest priest made it in less time than he had anticipated, and though we did not have enough servers to process in with Crucifix and candles because of street diversions and traffic, the moment the entrance hymn played, "Come Holy Ghost", it was as always, a short 45 minutes to hear about God's revelation to us out of His relentless love.



I think, aside from the story of Thomas insisting on seeing the resurrected Christ and His wounds, the story of the Descent of the Holy Spirit on those timid, terrorized followers, is a favorite., because I am a timid follower.  Peter, who denied Him emphatically and repeatedly. The rest of the apostles, except for John, no where to be found near the Cross. They would never have left that room but for those tongues of fire from the breath of the Spirit.

God gave His physical and spiritual signs of Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and when that still did not make his disciples willing to risk their lives, He sent His Third Person to inspire with a Force we can never understand in this world, and which made them brave for the rest of their earthly existences.

And on that day, we too receive the Spirit, so that we can hear His "Peace be with you" and his soothing "Be not afraid."

It was a quiet service, much like the daily one, which is rarely attended by more than 25 people, but it was an Infusion, perhaps not as dramatic as the one 2000 years ago, but just as certain.  I may not yet be ready to leave the upper room, but at least after the service I was praying one day I might.

And then I walked back toward my apartment, stopping on the way for a salad at Gelson's. Shared a table briefly with a young woman on her Facebook page, and read about Malibu in one of those freebie magazines. I marveled at the focus and dexterity of the city workers who dismantled the various barricades  and cleaned the streets of confetti from the now winding down parade and concessions, and reopened the streets to traffic. I turned toward the uphill portion of my walk.

Small Great Pleasures

For the better part of a year, maybe more, in the fifteen minutes before the noon mass at St. Victor, I go outside into a little non-public patio to watch the plants, and the birds. The mockingbirds make nests in the bougainvillea and steadfastly chase any creature that intrudes on the space around the bushes. Sparrows pop onto the grass and into the trees. Hummingbirds take their nectar from all the other colorful plants.

In those few minutes my belief in God cannot be shaken. And I breathe the air of paradise. And wish I could stay there henceforth. Of course, that is not to be, yet anyway.

All of this activity is going on in the city amid our bustle. Ever notice when you are at a stoplight that the sparrows have made nests in the openings of poles holding electric wires? Outside the office window right now, a bevy of bees are hovering over leaves as the kids on the other side of the bushes play an idle game of basketball. Peaceful co-existence.

At any rate, I almost need that little prayerful space outside the Church every day, as much as I need moments before the Blessed Sacrament inside the Church. I have always been let's say, "high-strung" and of late various tasks that have come to me in "retirement" have triggered all my fears and anxieties. So those moments of whistling birds and wispy breezes close to the noon hour are indispensable to my body and soul.

Prayer comes easy while observing the markings on a sparrow, or the iridescent tiny neck of the hummingbird.

Hmmm, just now I went out into the afternoon sun to get the parish mail. And I noticed that a cloud looked a great deal like a sleeping German shepherd. That really brightened the day!

I was thinking that perhaps the best way to approach life, and it is no new idea, is to recognize that daily life is just plain hard, and every so often it is interspersed with these brief experiences of what our lives ought to have been, had we not been willfully grasping at becoming gods ourselves. People say, rationalizing, that it would be boring, this everyday a paradise.  Really?  I don't think we would know what boredom is because our lives would be entire, whole, infused with Divinity. What a mess we made.

But at least there are these small great pleasures that remind us to hang in because it has been recovered for us, this paradise, if we persevere now, here, in that daily grind. At this moment I am willing. I know that in an hour or less I could be in a lamentable lamenting state.

And then I hope I can abandon myself into God's Hands--just long enough to get back on track in anticipation of eternity.