“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” — Romans 7:15
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws. Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” — T.S. Elliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Out West: A California Memoir
1
The Pacific
Yes
as we step out into the blazing bright California sun of the city of angels I become planted through the concrete deeply rooted in ancestral soil I throw my head back spread my arms wide and breathe in deeply the Holy Spirit sun yes a new son a second life a small moment forever and so it goes yes
The day after my twenty-first birthday, I feel solid ground beneath my feet, below the concrete, with my arm around Paula. After living our lives on Long Island, we are off on a great adventure. It seems that whenever we were together before leaving, we heard that song on the radio, Sailing, by Christopher Cross, and felt a deeper connection, a stirring in our hearts, an affirmation of our destined journey … and we hear it again on the radio playing over the speakers outside the terminal at LAX—“Sailing takes me away to where I’ve always heard it could be/ Just a dream and the wind to carry me/ And soon I will be free.” It is our song. I sang it during our romance in a rowboat on Wells Lake in Smithtown. We are an unorthodox couple. She did the rowing. We fit together perfectly like the first pieces of a new puzzle at the right angle. Her straight blonde hair cascades just past her lean, muscled upper back, shining a new bleached brilliance. We sit on our suitcases and wait and watch the people: happy, hugging California sun people, with their tanned skin, muscular surfing bodies in shorts and sandals, bright blue and hazel eyes, and their deep brown skin, longed baked through the centuries, with many tattoos, short, dark black hair, dark brown eyes, wearing khakis and white, sleeveless tee shirts, and their pale skin, Asian eyes, restrained embraces, and their bodies, multiple shades of black glistening arms and legs, afros, and cornrows.
Teresa and her boyfriend, Brad, come slumbering up, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, apologizing for being late; not Sonny and Cher, more like Shady and Cher to me. Brad long and lanky with light brown hair, has a thin mustache and goatee, and a slow Southern drawl. He’s originally from Florida and calls Teresa “Darlin’.” With the sun setting soon, we decide to smoke some weed on the way to our new home but to first go to the beach off the San Clemente Pier to see our first first Pacific sunset. Taking I-405 South to I-95 South, we have plenty of time to party, packed into long lines of people driving home after work as the rays of the sun bounce off hoods and windshields. But I notice an immediate difference compared to driving back east on the Long Island Expressway. We don’t hear any angry horns honking, just the sounds of motors running, and music, a blend of Spanish Folk and Classic Rock.
By the time we get to the Pier, the sun is halfway gone below the green horizon, painting a brilliant portrait of colors with brushes of clouds—pink, orange, lavender, red—beautifully diffracted by the polluted sky. There are only a few surfers riding the gentle waves. The second we park, Paula jumps out of the van and sprints toward the water, her blue-and-white-striped sundress flapping in the breeze. She runs straight toward the golden path glistening along the surface, calling her. She walks in, and as she heads out toward the edge of her world, she lifts the bottom of her dress as each wave splashes through her and crashes to shore. We sit on the sand and light another joint. Eventually Paula emerges and slowly strides back in. She has great posture but there’s something majestic in her gait, something new in her eyes. Beads of water sparkle from her hair and drip down her face, so at first I don’t see that she’s crying. We embrace and the trembling floodgates open, then slowly subside into deep breaths. She suddenly realizes that her wallet is gone with the waves. It slipped from her pocket, with all her IDs, as she raised her arms in worship while trying to keep her dress dry. And she starts laughing in the joy of Christ, who baptized her in the Pacific and gave her a new identity, a new life.
Ray Lopez, evangelist, writer, ordained minister, ministering to the hardcore, one at a time. 