WELCOME TO SAN CLEMENTE
I arrived under a night sky of lavender streaming with clouds picked apart like cotton candy on a windy day. Everything was just as I had remembered it: the shops tucked neatly along the street; the small groups of friends gathered around fire pits, inviting others to join; wayward youth smoking cigarettes and marijuana in the small alcove aside the train tracks where only the moon shines; pure, unadulterated Southern California lifestyle.
Surf stickers, punk emblems, and liberal “Save the Whales!” paraphernalia brands almost every sign, auto, and mailbox—even in the thickest residential blocks far from the main street. There is an unmistakable sense of identify forged from the sea.
People greet each other with confidence and clarity as they go from place to place in the small downtown district. Indeed, I had been invited to share the company of a group of youths at the strand on more than one occasion in the past—and tonight was no exception.
Much later, I reached the gas station just off the highway. It was vacant, the pumps glowing lifelessly under the empty hum of the fluorescent tubes overhead. I padded slowly to pump number six and traced my fingers lightly over the keypad. I had been here before.
Casey
I was living in a cracker box in downtown San Diego at the time, seven stories up, on the fringe of Centre City. Originally my plan for that night was to stay in and get some rest, after keeping tradition and walking some city blocks to get two slices of cheese and a coke. I would always sit facing the window and watch all the dames walking to the Gaslamp Quarter to spend too much money on too many drinks.
With polished jeans, glossy lips, and earrings wide as freeway loops, the women would trickle down from the cheaper parking near Little Italy, Kate Spade in hand as they barreled headfirst into the fray...
On Friday nights I always walked and never took the trolley. Like a serpent, it winds through the towering buildings with a quiet, electric lull, buzzing warning blasts in hushed tones that I could hear from my room. Usually, I would go out and get drunk with my mates after a long week at work, but instead I returned to slumber.
What woke me I do not know, but shortly after midnight I was roused suddenly by uneasy butterflies in my stomach. Insomnia. I grabbed my skateboard and headed out to the streets to pass the time until I could sleep.
About two hours later, I made my way back towards the bay and sat on the steps of the Torrey Pines Bank building. A true testament to San Diego, the skyscraper has no doors to the lobby. It is attended every single second of every single day by a person sitting behind a large, circular desk of wood and marble, and on the rare days when it rains, floor mats are placed near the entrance.
“Do you know what time the next train leaves for Los Angeles?,” he said.
His tattered clothes and worn shoes led me to believe he was homeless, and as he set his backpack down next to me and removed the veil of his hoodie, I was quite surprised by the brilliance of his flaxen hair. It was rather stark for a person who appeared homeless, and he was young—my age—and did not fit the stereotype of the bums I knew.
His name was Casey.
A band he followed was in town, and he had arrived in San Diego whence they came. His eyes were swollen but alert, and he was chatty with a tendency to ramble; he was a tweaker.
In spite of this, we were able to make aquantancies. I learned he was from Utah, but he was vague with details of his past. But I suppose we all are sometimes. He was rather smart, and asked if I knew what the Socratic Method was, noticing my habit of finding information by asking too many questions.
From the moment I met him, I felt attracted to Casey, but it was not sexual in nature, nor romantic. And it was not the feeling I knew of friendship. A feeling of coincidence is what I’ve come to suppose it was. Like when something remarkable out of the blue happens in the course of everyday life, in a certain place at a certain time.
He correctly guessed that I was a Virgo, and also asked about my sister. I had not mentioned either to him, but in the course of our deepening conversations—centering around life, drugs, and music—he seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense these things.
I told him the time the next train left in the morning, and the price: twenty-eight dollars out of his reach.
Then I’d offered him a ride to L.A.
I felt like I had known Casey for more than only a few minutes, but the stark reality of our having only met often crossed my mind while we waited for the trolley to start up the next day out of the city to the Old Town Transit Center, where I parked my car.
If even only for a few hours, as a pair we roamed the streets of San Diego as friends. We liked the same music, and he was as smart as I. This is a rare combination, to say the least. There were few streets we failed to walk—downtown is not so big—but with each passing block my understanding of Casey’s way of life and his ideas became clearer, as did his obvious addiction to crystal meth.
When I asked about it, he would speak with hushed pride and offered to explain the tools of his trade.
“Bic lighters are the best,” he said, “that’s the right kind to use. Then you just hold the flame to the glass and turn it slowly. It crystallizes your lungs...which sucks.”
He had a sparse cough, which would plague him from time to time, but never for more than a few moments.
I did not press my concerns with him; knowing what I do about the difficulty even an employed person has finding affordable housing and dealing with social challenges. He never spoke of his parents, and I figured he left home for one reason or another.
But a reason is always a start and never an end, and in the course of the journey, reasons hits the ground running with such force that by the time all is said and done, they are gone.
Who am I to judge another person's choices?
If I had the money or a larger place, I could have offered one or the other, but as it was I had neither. All I had was a way to Los Angeles, and we arrived back at One America Plaza in time to catch the first blue line train.
We talked more on the drive, chasing the night away on the I-5. We had to stop for gas in San Clemente, and by then the sun had begun her ascent to the sky, slowly bringing light to the dark hills and boulevards surrounding the small gas station. As I leaned against the car, looking off to the sea, he slowly emerged from the passenger side and walked around to where I was, and leaned about in a similar fashion. He offered me a handful of singles, to help with the cost of gas.
“This is all I have,” he said. Despite his dire poverty, he seemed rather content with a life lacking in material possessions. What is money if you don’t have happiness? Cash doesn’t mean shit to me. I told him to keep his bills, and asked if he would like a cigarette.
After I handed him a cigarette, he suddenly said, “let me see your cigarette pack!”
He shook his head, met eyes with me, and explained the lucky. When a pack of cigarettes is first opened, one must take a cigarette—any cigarette—and flip it so that the filter is facing down, then gently place it back in the pack. This cigarette must be smoked last, and never in any other order. He practiced this ritual habitually, and now, so do I.
At the station, a woman with a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” balloon in the backseat began pumping gas opposite from where we were. I asked Casey his birthday.
He was born on the same month, day, and year as my oldest and best friend I’d known since before kindergarten: 17 October 1986. Strange.
When we finally reached L.A., I pulled off the street and parked the car. He asked if I was going to hang with him for a little while longer, but I was tired, and so we bid each other farewell. I reached my hand out to shake his, but instead he hugged me and said, “thank you.”
That was of him I saw.
