When your last resort is your greatest option. Good men are everywhere, but they tend to blend into the background.
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I left New York three years ago, docked in the Marina five months ago, but a chance encounter with a salty cross-country transplant helped me realize that Los Angeles was more than a last resort.
Though I’ve never seen a gold doubloon or marched a scallywag down the plank, I had an itch for an ocean adventure that New York just couldn’t scratch. The Pacific coast was calling me, so I followed my Jack Sparrow-inspired fantasies and set sail for San Francisco. Unfortunately social media managers are in abundant supply in the Golden City, leaving few options in my chosen career. A last resort, I dropped anchor in LA—which ended up feeling more like a shipwreck than an adventure.
In denial that this could be more than a stepping stone on the journey to my urban fantasy, I didn’t bother unpacking, let alone get to know anyone. I was relegated to the cozy underbelly of beachside ocean rock to pout in seclusion.
It was easy to blame Los Angeles for my unrelenting recluse tendencies: The natives aren’t friendly; there’s too much traffic; would-be friends lived too far away; trapped in a car is no life for an adventurer. I sunk even deeper into solitude in the company of one spotted dog, a good book, my mostly-absent boyfriend and the secret blog where I saved all the stories I should have been living out.
I became restless. Time passes and tectonic plates shift, life opens up to new opportunities. A breakup that was more of a break-free allowed me to trade my ocean rock for a lush pirate cove with squawking sea birds and a swashbuckling crew awaiting my arrival… a make believe romance couldn’t hold a candle to a thriving marina full of life and inevitable adventure. Only, three years of isolation had made me comfortable being alone… my solitary security became my albatross.
This was clearly not my fate, and I didn’t need a crow’s nest view to see it. Just a bit of serendipity.
I got locked out. At about 10:30pm on a Tuesday, I ventured from my secret lair in a threatening pair of flannel pajamas and a Star Wars hoodie—a box of recyclables, my only contraband. I felt a rush of panic when I heard the door click behind me, realizing that my usual key pocket was empty. This box of glass and paper waste was no survival kit. I would not be saved.
If only I had my hook. I should have planned better.
Five months in this complex and I’ve managed to keep my nose in a book and out of my neighbors business—a feat never accomplished in my 3-story walkup in New York. Some of the remnants of my sub-rock-dwelling days have taken time to wear off, but really, I hadn’t/haven’t accepted that I could be here for a little while. This swanky spa retreat was meant to be a brief recharge to reenergize for my wildly bright future. There was no reason to invest in people the way I did back home. To do so, a part of me would have to accept that this was not home.
But there I was, alone in the night with no key to turn and no couch to curl up on.
Only after I destroyed a credit card trying to jimmy the lock, broke a sweat throwing a mini-tantrum, and completed three laps around my building frantically hunting down security, did I finally surrender and seek out the Man at the Stairs near the bistro. I would see him there every night on my way home from the gym.
But I had never spoken to him.
Every night between 9 and 10pm, he treks from his 3rd story apartment alone, to relax on the stairs near the bistro. He rests his walker just to his left and lights up his medium gauge cigar. This is his routine—a nightly fixture residing just beside the koi pond.
Every night for the past five months, I walked right by this man, never stopping. Never looking twice. He was just another bit of my beautiful Marina scenery. It never dawned on me that one day I might need him, but fate works in strange ways sometimes, and last week I finally learned his name.
Marty is as new to this neighborhood as I am. Also like me, he’s an LA transplant, via New York. He’s been married three times, has two very successful children, he misses Chinese takeout, and loves a good bagel. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until I needed to.
Unlike me, he knows everyone in this community. He sat with me on the stairs for over an hour, and I watched him speak to every neighbor that passed as he unknowingly replaced my anxiety with stories about the wife he lost—the one he declared would have been the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. He told me about his daughter, whom he was incredibly proud of and Midnight, the Black Lab puppy he carried home to his children in the rain when he had first move to Los Angeles.
He reminded me of my grandfather. I found myself missing him more than I had in years. Pop would have done the same as Marty if he happened across a shipwrecked sailor, panic-struck with no compass and no crew.
Marty played the hero in my estranged single-life nightmare.
Before I left, he invited me to dinner. With the prospect of more stories to share, this was an invitation I excitedly accepted. I went to the bistro to find him where I knew I would. He had forgotten about our dinner, even though I had called him just a few hours before to confirm. His age was showing. I smiled and rescheduled, pulling up a stair to spend the next hour lost in our favorite memories of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Empire State Building. He told me more about his children, and I told him about my grandfather. He told me about seeing JFK drive by his Madison Avenue apartment (for which he paid a rent controlled $250/month), and I told him about meeting LeBron James, whom he had strangely met as well.
My last resort became my best option, a new friend, and brought me a little piece of home.
