Five Places I’ve Lived …
1
For a couple of weeks some years ago, my home was a culvert under a highway in Huntsville, Alabama. I drug in a reinforced plywood sheet so I could sleep on a plastic bag full of my old clothes over the drainage water that, according to the rainfall, trickled or streamed through. At night the traffic was like a lullaby, though sleep was never deep or peaceful. A block away the Salvation Army served lunch, usually a cup of soup and a cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwich; I was always grateful for it.
When one lives in a culvert, he eventually vanishes. Sometime during the second week I realized I had become invisible. For all my size, I still am.
2
As a teen I lived in Kadena, Okinawa. There was a street off-base lined with bars and nightclubs — many lacking the official red “A” approval of the United States military — where working girls would grab my arm and tug me toward a doorway, saying, “You cherry boy? I make you feel supergood.”
Once I strummed my guitar and sang “Hey Jude” to an adolescent Japanese girl wearing a blue high school uniform over a white blouse with a little blue necktie. Without a doubt she remains the most beautiful human I have ever seen. She was exquisite, from her dark doll’s eyes to her Cupid’s bow mouth to her gracefully fluttering hands. Though I went back a hundred times to the place where we met, I never saw her again.
3
In Decatur, Alabama, I lived for a while in a house nicknamed the Bus Station. My then housemate remains one of my very best friends.
One night we had invited a couple of women to the house after the lounge we frequented closed. To our surprise they accepted the invitation and we chatted and played music and drank something — I think it was either Kool Aid or iced tea. When one of the women asked about the ladies’ room, my housemate pointed down the hall. She entered the small closet and promptly shrieked the way Janet Leigh screamed at the moment Anthony Perkins brought down the knife in “Psycho”. She and her friend hurried across town to the Texico station so she could pee. The last thing she said to us was, “Look, we like you boys a lot. And we’ll be happy to come back any time you want. But you must clean your toilet.” That was the first time I noticed something slimy and green growing around the water’s edge in the porcelain bowl.
When I stumbled out of bed the following morning, my housemate was already busy in the bathroom, vigorously scrubbing every cleanable surface to within an inch of sandblasting.
4
Once I spent the night on the hardwood floor of a beautiful blonde woman. We folded over several quilts to make a crude mattress, and I slept under a single sheet. She gave me a pillow from her bed. The pillowcase was scented with her soap and perfume.
“The sofa makes a bed,” she offered. “You’re more than welcome to sleep there.”
But I insisted the floor would be fine. I had a romantic notion that she would get out of bed at two in the morning, wearing her loose hippie nightgown, and she would climb under the sheet with me and we would make love until sunrise. I lay awake in anticipation, staring at a chalk statue of Marilyn Monroe. It never happened. The blonde padded barefoot into the living room at nine and asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
5
On vacation when I was eighteen I lived for a week in a pup tent with a close friend, two weight ounces of marijuana, and a case of Yago Sangria. We pitched the tent in the back yard of a family with seven daughters, ranging in age from 21 to 3. My friend had known the family all his life.
Every night the older girls would come into the tent one at a time to drink wine or smoke pot with us. They were gorgeous, each more lovely than the last. I’m pretty sure my friend was involved with one of them, though like me he might have been hot for all of them.
Eventually one of the sisters necked with me in the woods behind the house. I touched her breasts inside her bra, but she wouldn’t let my hand creep higher than mid-thigh, insisting, “I’m a good Catholic girl.”
The last night of vacation we had to finish up the wine and pot. A lot remained to be polished off. The next day, driving home in a gray Volkswagen Beetle, my friend often pulled off the side of the highway so we could vomit.
6
Unless prompted by God or forces outside my control, I will never again live in Anchorage, Alaska. Never.
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