jeremyejones

I left my new home last night around two in the morning. I had been thinking about re-shearing my hair, but didn't want to make a mess in the bathroom. So, I concluded that instead I should make sure I do it in the shower, with the water running continuously, so it would keep washing the hair down and never clog. Then I realize how foolish it was to think of shearing my hair in the shower with the water running using electric clippers. That was when I left.



I wore my hooded red jacket under my black jacket with the worn brass button. Beneath all that my "What Would <Batman> Do?" t-shirt and a green thermal, the sleeves stretched down over my hands with holes cut for my thumbs. Under the makeshift thermal gauntlet I slipped on my skeleton gloves, the fingers cut off. I wear the red hood all the time these days, pulled full over my head to keep it warm and my face shadowed. At the same time it makes it so I can't see to my sides or above me, only straight ahead. Like blinders, for a horse.



I saw an impossibly fluffy little creature trotting up the sidewalk, bouncity-bouncing with its stupid-fuzzy tail flopping about in the early morning golden-red seaside mist. Once I'd caught up to it enough I realized it was a skunk. I still wanted to pet it. Then I heard foghorns in the distance, calling out to eachother like horny whales. Maybe they were whales, I thought, so I decide to walk to the ocean and find out.



I took a roundabout path through the tail end of Golden Gate Park, seeing how well I could wander through the dark foresty parts, wishing I was some beast man. It's something I daydream about a lot; just running keel-haul through the forest, leaping through the trees and vines and tearing the world apart. Maybe as a release, maybe because I just want to be on such a primal brainwave that I won't think about all those things that keep me up all night anymore. I got spooked, like I always do these past several years, and left the forest for the road.



I made my way down to the cliffs. I hopped a white-picket fence and snuck down behind little restaurant because there were two cars parked nearby, one of which still had its lights on, and the place I was going is supposed to be cordoned off until March. I took the high road first, and hiked up to a cemented overlook to the ocean. I saw a ship out there with its searchlight on, probably the same one making all that noise earlier. The waves on the ocean were storm waves, and they had a glitter and glow on their crests that I figured must somehow be from the lights of the boat but couldn't make sense of the source placement. I lifted my hood finally, feeling safe that I was far from view of any observers. I was instantly amazed by what I'd been missing: the full moon overhead, the clear, starry sky. That's what was making the sea shimmer.



I turned around and climbed up the rocks to find a little trough on top full of rainwater and trash. I slid back down to the overlook and I climbed over another security gate and down some broken and dilapidated steps to a long forgotten little area. In some spots there staircase was completely eroded. I knew the low road I hadn't taken earlier lead to a little cave-tunnel and I wondered if I could make my way off the cemented area and across the rocks to there. As I navigated the waves kept crashing closer and higher to the rocks, the foam washing over the rails and broken-down walls sometimes. I found part of me wishing it was out on that boat, but when I looked it was much, much further away now.



When I got to the cave, it was black like pitch save for the moonlit rocks on the other end. I wanted to go in and be safe inside there, like some seaside incubator but something kept me from it. I turned back and followed the trail back up to that restaurant. There was only one car now, its lights still on, but I couldn't tell whether there was anyone inside or not. On the windshield, secure under the wiper blade, were some postmarked letters and I wondered if someone lived in that car and had their mail delivered there. "Please forward all mail to 'little blue car by the ocean,' please." I followed the bend to the Cliff House where I could hear dishes being cleaned and read the history kiosk mounted outside.



It was from here I spotted three dots in the dark distance on the beach. I thought about how even just a little over a century ago seeing fire in the distance was a sign of life, a sign of respite, a reason to make it a few more miles before your legs gave out. And then I thought: it still is. Only people make little fires like that. The artificial lights of the city will never be mistaken for the flickering, shaky lights of campfires. So I decided I'd walk on to those fires before I went home.



I walked along the beach and I'd forgotten how it felt to trudge through sand, or how it ruined your shoes and socks. The road running alongside the ocean was as deserted as the late night country roads in Indiana, but felt much more desolate. When I made it to the first of the three lights I was surprised to see it was just a few embers burning on the end of a chunk of wood. How did I spot that from so far away? The next two were larger, but still only small handwarming piles inside fire pits.



I made toward the first group, but not so near to cause notice. There were four young guys, one girl, smiling and some shivering a little while they made small talk. I kept going until I passed the second group, another set of five, but this time two older men were mixed in, and I never stopped my stride and instead went ahead to the shore. I walked right up to the ocean. The sand transitioned to more compact, harder surface as I approached. This is the best spot to run, if one were inclined to run on the beach, I concluded. I pulled my hood back again and felt the wind against my shorn skull. I watched the waves roll in and placed my hand just where the water reached and retreated, so I could feel the ocean, touch it, as it pulled away and returned into itself.



'If I were a fish, you'd be the sea. I'd breath you in and live inside you. And I could hold you deep within me, keeping my heart pumping, and feel you all around me. And if you were the sky then I would be the sea, and I'd drain myself dry so I could float up to you like vapors and sleep in the clouds together.'



I turned and was making my way back to the road when someone called out. "Hey, Red Hood!," I heard, and I turned just in time to hear his girlfriend urging him not to bother before he called out again. I approached and he introduced himself as Matt, and asked if I'd like to go gather more wood with them and join the fire. I thought it over for a while and with a little urging acquiesced. Matt and his girl rode up front in his truck while me and another guy, James ("Like my brother," I told him) hopped in the bed. I was still unsure whether this could be some trap or setup, and felt the warm metal of my knife on my fingertips inside my coat, just in case.



We went only a few hundred yards down the road to a fenced in construction site. Here James asked me to pull back the fencing while he climbed over and began tossing wood into the truck bed. A street sweeper was making its rounds and every time it passed me and Matt would run over and duck down behind the cement walls separating the beach from the road. Here he'd tell me about himself, how he was from Texas and worked as a cook and formerly lived in the Tenderloin, just like me. Nice place.



Not so much.



We finished our thievery with a particularly big wooden sign that I had to help Matt pull over the fence and then I climbed onto the pile of wood while James held onto the tailgate on the ride back. We pulled right up to the beach and I pulled two planks from the pile. I made my way over to the group at the fire with my hood still obscuring my face and dropped the wood. I could tell the group was anxious and maybe even scared until James came with the rest of the wood and told them about our trip. I helped Matt carry the big sign, the rusty nailed side down, over to the fire. Neither of them ever explained me to the group, and I never offered my name or face. Across from me was one of the young ladies, wrapped in a leopard print blanket and keeping close to the boy at her side, but still watching me, I could tell.



The two older men introduced themselves to me. One was Paul, and he was there that night because he'd met a lesbian in a bar who told him to meet her there at sunrise, so he planned to keep that promise. The other was Brad, from Colorado, who planned to sleep there and seemed to be looking for work. It was Brad's first time ever being on the beach at night. Matt passed sand-covered cans of beer around, but never bothered me with one, which I liked. Paul made a toast to the sky, thanked it for doing what it did and wished it a happy birthday, and then promised not to get spiritual again except to say that good energy begets good energy.



Then the majority of the group excused itself. One of them said it was nice to have almost met me. Then it was just me, Paul, Brad, Matt, and Matt's lady. Paul jumped up and down on the wooden sign, making the fire strobe in and out. There was a rectangular opening in the wood, and the fire billowed up out of it in shoots with Paul's motion. He called it 'flame surfing' and excused himself repeatedly. Matt told us about his adventures in rehab. Brad showed us a photo of his daughter. Matt surprised me by showing one of his own, Sophie, in a photo from when she was "still tame," he'd explain. Now she was a little ball of energy, running around with a full head of the reddest hair you'll ever see.



The heat from the fire was getting so hot I could feel it burning my leg anytime I let my heated jeans touch the skin. Paul was telling me it was the final night of the equinox and that was why the moon was so high and bright, lighting up the sea. Matt told me that most all of South San Francisco was built on top of the old graves and even buildings of the city past. I asked if maybe I could find a way down into it to explore, like in that movie "Big Trouble in Little China" and Paul exclaimed that "that movie was too Hollywood, nothing like the truth of the matter."



Paul continued on to tell us about his friends in the Chinese mafia and his early morning drinking sessions on the beachside benches with Robin Williams where Robin would make fun of his small dick and he'd call Robin fat and how Danny Glover bought him breakfast once and how he probably has a couple dozen kids all over the country, maybe a few in Mexico. It was after all this that he asked us all for some spare money for a little food.



I asked them if it bothered anyone else as much as it bothered me that you could touch something, taste it even, but never see the end of it. The ocean wasn't like outer space, like the stars. It was something entirely unbridled and free and limitless that you could experience, but never expend, never find the no one was paying attention. Aroo.



It was a little after this that I told the guys I had to take off and get home before the sun came up. Matt's girlfriend pulled him aside and when they came back his phone's alarm suddenly went off and he exclaimed, "Oh! It's my alarm!" and his girlfriend added in, "That means we have to go, remember?" in her best Thespian. I said my goodbyes and Brad was touched I'd remembered his name. I never told anyone my name but they got it from the button I wear on my jacket to keep my scary factor down just enough.



I walked home and pulled the cornbread Garret's mom had made from the fridge. I threw a slab of butter on top of each of two pieces and heated it up, eating it with a little glass of coke, some cough syrup, and some sleeping pills while I finished up writing this. After that I put in my headphones and lay down with the stuffed dog, Max, that I've had since I was five. And I wait.



And that's how I spent my Christmas eve.



Much love,

- Jeremy E. Jones, Dec. 24, 2007