Dirty Sleep

Mission 1. Hook up with someone as old as my mom (54) and as young as my sister (20) in a month.
Mission 2. Live a completely gay lifestyle (without the gay sex) for a month.
Mission Three: Live without an apartment for a month.

I’ve been hibernating from the world. Entering a habitual landscape devoid of errands, cell phones and men’s magazines. Where time is only meant to remind rather than propel. It is a place called Topanga Canyon, and it has been my home for the last three sunsets.

Days and nights floated by effortlessly as I found my Walden in Topanga, a mountainous expanse of dirt, rocks and trees filled with not much more than a few funky storefronts and a 60’s mindset. It is a place I have come to love over the years. It is an escape from the plastic L.A. hardscape.

Driving through the canyon in the past, I would always see milk-crated bikes parked in bushes or other reminders of illegal inhabitants. These were society’s lost citizens, hidden away in makeshift tents, burrowed into caves or veiled atop a rocky crag. They were the fringe people, breathing off the dust of nature. They lived their lives merely to live them. It made me apathetic in one breath and jealous in the next. I hoped this was not the only path to absolute freedom. I hoped that living incompletely was not the only way to be complete.

With every past trip through the canyon, I always would wonder what would happen if I deviated the stretch. Where I would end up if I pulled over and walked the beer-bottle-lined paths? But I always put the thoughts to sleep and kept on driving, too hurried to stop the car and discover. Too focused on the reality ahead of me rather than the adventure at the sides.

To sleep among the trees, I had to devise a plan. I needed to enter the canyon by darkness, and it couldn’t be by car. I got a battery for my motorcycle and changed the oil and plugs. Even though it was from 1970, it started right up. I had been away from this bike for a while that at one point had been my only form of L.A. transportation. It was a nice reunion to my past that opened up with the third kick start.I loaded the saddle bags with beans, cheese, French bread and apples. I also took a sleeping bag, flashlight and a toothbrush in a back pack. I was on the road.

There is a certain freedom to the wind. When you are on two wheels and your feet are inches from the ground, there’s a rush of significance. The line between life and death grows thinner and thinner with each oncoming vehicle, each curve, each m.p.h. gained. It is summer in December.

The mouth of the canyon opened up, to let me drink in the abject beauty of her solitude. To get lost in her study. To reincarnate my soul. I had to be quiet as I went around the chains that blocked my road's journey. But I wasn't afraid of the police or strangers, I was more afraid of what three days without human contact would do to me. My life is fueled by companionship. Without it, I am merely a man alone with my confusing thoughts.

Topanga was dark and cool on my skin. I took off my helmet and drove until I hit a warm patch. I killed the light and took in the night, the stars--wrapped in the complete darkness of unheard soliloquy. I turned down the dirt road and wondered if I would be missed if I never came out. Wondered how I ever got to this foreign yet familiar place, weeks before my 30th birthday. Did I really need this dirty sleep to awaken me?

I was about to find out.