Lost and Found

*Winner* of the 2022 James Tolan creative non-fiction student writing award at BMCC

The sweat beaded on my forehead, collecting on my nose and cheeks; the temperature was an unseasonable 95 degrees for April in Los Angeles, and I was in black jeans, my long-forgotten boots, a blue chambray button-up, and my trusted red cardigan. With me I trolleyed along all my worldly possessions, packed just so because of the ungodly outfit I layered on (did I forget to mention the undershirt and jean jacket?). With rideshares on the fritz and traditional LA traffic putting on an early morning show, I was running late to my train up to San Francisco. One large suitcase, a backpack, a duffel, one folding bicycle, and a matching bag; I was overflowing with unnecessary items for my month-long trip, for when I packed, I hoped to leave no room for the emotional ties I usually carried along with me.

Traveling by train is an oddly austere method of commuting. Perhaps from too many viewings of Harry Potter, I sometimes expect grand locomotives of bright colors and intricately riveted steel designs. But today's trains do not offer the grandeur of yesteryear. There is no smoke billowing down the track and engulfing you with that burnt coal scent. The cars are not adorned with velvety rich materials nor luxurious hand-carved wood accents, trains are now a middle-class means of travel. The average man rides these trains. I am that average man.

I chose the 10-hour train journey to San Francisco so that I may witness the beauty of something new, the beauty of one of America’s most scenic train rides. But that first leg - before you reach the water - is all of Middle America. You do not leave the trash-strewn bushes, or the tightly packed trailer parks, or the graffiti-covered rocks, until about an hour into the trip. Then you are greeted by the refreshing waters of the ocean - the waves inviting you in for a dip - with the glass of the windows and the speed of the train denying you a reprieve. My body yearned for the icy blue coolness to wash away the sticky sweat running down my back, and my heavy heart begged for the gentle buoyancy to relieve the burden of its weight.

The reason for departing my comfortable lodgings in LA and packing my life into too many bags was the same as my hasty exit out of NYC - I needed change. There was a moment in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my phone to buzz with a text or call from simply anyone with a plan, that I realized I was no longer walking a path of my own. For years – even the past decade – I had relied on the comings and goings of others to fill my schedule and give purpose to my days. My color-coded calendar began to tip heavily in my partner's favor and his orange-hued to-dos burned into my eyes and turned the world a sepia tone of monotony. More than feeling I had lost my way, I felt detached from my life. I was merely a shadow, squishing myself into odd shapes so that I may attach to other people and follow them through journeys that did not belong to me.

After that first hour of gritty LA suburbs, I tucked away my divorce papers with a heavy sigh and watched the coast come rushing out of the trees to my left. The train nearly collided with the ocean, yet instead, they veered off together on a parallel course; the waves disappeared under the train, we got that close to the narrow beach. The adrenaline of approaching the water so quickly washed over me and dissipated a layer of self-loathing and contempt for life that coated my mind as thickly as the sweat of LA. We continued to ebb and flow from the coast, making our way into rockier terrain. The mountains of Santa Barbara came in from the right, standing goliaths watching over the crashing waves of the bay. Being sandwiched between them is more of a hug than an intimidation of the two behemoths that they are: land thrust into the heavens by the movements of the earth, and water reaching farther than the land even dares touch. Within a stretch of time the southern notes of California fell away and we began to climb the hills of the North. Palm trees faded out of the picture and were replaced by whimsical oaks and fields of electric-green wildflowers, which blanketed the rolling hills that had been swapped out from the rigid, rocky crags of before. The water was steadfast; time and distance being visually perceived.

A friend said to me once that his favorite part of being on a train was the perception of land traveled. So often you are stuck in a metal tube and a few hours later you are somewhere different than before. What lands did you have to traverse to get there? None. You soared through the sky, aloft in the clouds, your mind unable to perceive the great lengths it took. But on a train, you feel it chug along as it battles an uphill climb. You see the land - mile by mile, inch by inch - as you zip past only a dozen feet above it. The hours tell you that your journey is not done so easily, there is an effort put into transporting your body someplace. And all the better for it. I gazed in awe and felt the change in my body as I took in the breathtaking views, realizing a transition was happening. As the spring flowers bloomed along the trails of the train, I also bloomed into a new season of place, and being, and living.

But there are a few downsides to a form of travel that pits you against a group of strangers. For one, you are at their mercy. Who-knows-who may jump aboard, and you are treated to a show of unspeakable horrors: a drunken man barely making it down the narrow aisles, mental instabilities tipping over and spilling across the dining cart, dogs peeing on the stairs. Of course, these are meant for balance, because nowhere can there be too favorable of conditions. Humanity demands there must be someone there wrecking it for those of us who want peace and quiet. Perhaps especially for those who are searching for that peace and quiet within themselves. But as the day wore on, I began to see the freedom in each person’s individual quirks, and how together they created a community on the train. For once I was seeing my individuality - seeing it fit into that community of traveling oddities - and I was thankful to finally be on my own.

Eventually, with night having blanketed my section of the world, stealing away the view offered of San Francisco across the bay, I arrived in Oakland. A good friend of mine picked me up from the station and we slipped into the valley of Vallejo to await the rise of the sun. The next morning, bright and early, we made the grand entrance into the city center by way of the Golden Gate bridge. As picturesque as one could hope, it emerged from behind a curving hill, low fog skimming over the top of the art-deco towers, and water whispering from the depths below. As many can attest, it is a doorway to new beginnings. The feeling that I had arrived swept over me, the worries of days prior were gone with the swiftly moving fog, and the sun shone through, making me a clean slate, ready to experience something new about myself; to challenge myself. The salty, cool air filled my lungs, and suddenly, my ungodly amount of baggage felt a bit easier to carry.

~ ~ ~

Culture shock and whiplash: two great words to describe the feeling I've had jumping from the towering world of NYC, to the vast sprawling hills of Los Angeles, down to the quaint coastal villages of Mexico, and back up to the eclectic streets of San Francisco. I’m not complaining - the journey has been marvelous and eye-opening, to say the least - but my skin is definitely screaming in protest. The cold, humid winds, whipping off the coast of San Francisco are a big adjustment from the gentle, warm ocean breezes that circled around me in Mexico and LA. I wake up in the mornings with my skin red and tight from the abrasion of traveling on my bicycle the day before. My skincare routine is changing as quickly as my plans and I wonder if the chaos will catch up to my mind sometime soon. How am I to know that these expeditions I embark on won't unwind some vital path of synapses I rely on and rewire me to an even more messy version of the person I am now? I suppose that's a risk I have to be willing to take.

A month in San Francisco put me in places that I wasn’t expecting; both physically and mentally. I have heard only rumbling rumors of SF’s beauty and otherworldly-ness, as compared to the gossip of gargantuan greed that fills everyone's minds. So I was greatly surprised by how it captured some of the best parts of each of my favorite cities; the cluster of NYC, neighborhoods and people standing on each other’s shoulders to make room for the endless possibilities of adventure; the western beauty of LA and California, reaching its gnarled fingers and craggily knuckles up and out into the refreshing blue of the ocean; the laid back atmosphere of Seattle, spreading into the quaint blocks of coffee shops and family dining spots. All of these magical qualities are nestled between dozens of parks that stun with their coastal California beauty. Even until the last day, my breath was stolen away when I would turn a corner and see a grove of redwoods towering above me to the left, and a line of palms tracing down the middle of the street to my right. The only thing that cast my joy down into slumber beneath my quilted blankets, was the endless whistling winds that, daily, carried in the cold fog.

My trusted travel companion (other than my decades-old backpack covered in Frankenstein stitches and rainbow-colored patches) is my Brompton bicycle. I was eager to have it with me in SF, battling the up and down of the treacherous streets, careening into new neighborhoods at break-neck speeds, folding it up and sticking it under the table at a nearby cafe to write for a few hours. But what I wasn’t expecting was the wind. Not only did I have to spend the majority of my time out of the saddle of my bike, pumping my thighs to their limits to get uphill, but added to that weight were the gales I had to lean against to not be blown over sideways. After the second week, I couldn’t help but see how perfectly it painted the picture of my struggle to learn about myself and structure something new after following the same patterns for 31 years. I know life is an uphill climb, but no one mentioned the ruthless wind that threatened to blow you back down and leave your skin raw. Nevertheless, I managed. I sought out the sunlight in the pockets of neighborhoods in which it hid. I carried layers with me and piled them on when forced to sit outside to sip on hot tea and loosen my stiff fingers to scribble in my journal. When I was lucky - and woke up early enough - I could grab a coveted seat in the cafe down the street and spend a few hours in the slightly warmer interior as I hunched over my keyboard and woke up my mind with the sugars of countless cookies and quick breads. But what I was soon to discover was that the warmth I was looking for came not from the short stints of sun exposure, nor the accumulated heat under my blankets after a night's rest, yet rather the warmth from another's body next to mine. For the first time in quite a while, I was lonely and in need of someone else.

I have always felt alone. This is nothing new to me, after being passed around as a child from one family member to another, weekend after weekend. Yet, rarely do I feel lonely. San Francisco changed that. Watching couples walk hand-in-hand, seeing gay men meeting for dates, and myself being mistaken for someone’s blind date, I found that I had finally come around to missing the company of another lover. This very well may have been compounded by my ex’s recent admission of love for his new boyfriend. (I’m not sure how people can throw the word “love” around so easily. Perhaps some have more love in their hearts to give. And maybe sometimes they appropriate it too freely, mistaking a different emotion altogether as that addictive chemical that urges us toward companionship. This can create a whole lot of mess for the people involved. This could be why I hold on to my love for others so tightly, not eager to give it up). After nearly 8 months of separation from my ex-husband, I had gotten to a point where I no longer craved his company. I was growing, how about that! And then came the cool nights alone in San Francisco. Suddenly, I was back to wanting someone’s hand in mine, and there I was in one of the densest gay-populations in the world. The possibilities surrounded me, but I felt like a lost puppy dog, looking for a pack of grizzled alphas to take me in, yet they only snarled and raised their hackles when I approached. My cowardice was stronger than my cravings and I retreated into the solitude of bookshops and coffee houses.

As I came to the last few days of my San Fran journey, I also felt I came to the end of my gay journey. Intellectually, I know this isn’t true. I am a gay man and that journey will be continuous through the rest of my life. Yet something was happening there, some chapter that was ending, some opportunity going away. What I want to take from it, and learn, is that taking a journey simply means you try. It is that you followed a different path for a while and strayed from anything else you previously considered normal. We can never know what we will find upon these sojourns, yet we will hope and have expectations, but as long as we can breathe in at the end and feel that new bit of air circling in our lungs, then a journey has been had. And I wonder what I will remember about this journey. If in a near or far time I will be able to recall the roller-coaster route of hills to Cafe Blue Danube, where I would sit, writing short stories. Or if I will remember at what point, late in my trip, I found the Royal Ground Coffee house just across the street from my apartment. I hope I’ll be able to feel the moments of awe, when I stood on the cliff’s edge overlooking the ocean and watched the sunset as the cold air whipped around me, numbing my skin. Or the grandeur of the Palace of Fine Arts that towered in that random open space within the residential neighborhood of the Marina District. For sure, I know that which will stick in my mind forever, is the struggle of the hills and lashings of the wind on my daily biking. And any time an Eminem song comes on, I will think of Feno, one of my temporary roommates, and recall his face as he stood in the kitchen and repeated himself about cleaning the kitchen - as I carefully eyed his mess of coffee grounds that spilled across the counter every morning - just as he repeated that same Eminem song 30 to 40 times in the month I was there. But maybe what I will hold onto the most is that feeling of being a solo-traveler, alone on the roads, and finding loneliness in a city full of people. It was a reminder of the feelings I had in NYC, forever surrounded by people, but without anyone that I truly wanted to be with.

That reminder has only added fuel to my goal of becoming a different person. I have grasped the hardened clay that was my soul and attached newer, softer bits that I have molded into something bigger and better than what was before. Perhaps the shapes I make will not be precisely the ones I want, or expect, but they will still be new. I will be renewed. And I will continue to add on those new pieces of me, until I am only a vague representation of my past, and a promise of a grand future.