The Nomadic Life

Finding Myself

Chapter 33

It is the spring of 1995, and the air is warm and heavy with the scent of freshly flowering hibiscus. The bold fiery blooms of the bird of paradise appear ready to take flight, only to be kept grounded in pastel painted adobe pottery throughout the city. The cloudless sky is painted a permanent shade of postcard blue as San Diego shimmers in the sunlight. Careless shadows dance on stucco covered walls as the palm trees sway in the gentle tropical breeze, promising to keep the secrets they witness. The city is radiant with light and laughter, the people warm and disarmingly open. Paradise? Maybe not in the technical sense. But to me, it is the closest thing I have found. Here is a city that feels like an embrace from a long-lost friend. Though it may be wishful thinking, as I bask in the golden light and fragrant air, I feel, for the first time, an ever so quiet possibility of belonging.

Who in their right mind would ever want to leave a place like this?

To write down every experience I’ve had in San Diego would be both exhausting and pointless. There are some situations you can never share, others you are ashamed to speak of, and then there are even more tales so wild they are just unbelievable.  

So, to provide a story worthy of telling, as all writers must, I give you the polar extremes: the moments that lit my very essence on fire… and the ones that left me burned, leaving scars upon my soul as a reminder, not only of the pain, but also the bliss.

You as a reader could care less about what I had for breakfast on September 25th, 1996. But I bet I can interest you in what happened on the weekend of October 18th, 1997. In truth, you may never truly comprehend what I wish to share with you.

The epic chapter of my life I fondly remember as San Diego, is like many sagas which have been shared for centuries by countless storytellers and novelists. It is a love story that is as old as time. This one, however, takes a few unexpected turns as emotions run wild and free and are at last able to enjoy the taboo, and oft unspoken playground that is the leather scene.

This one weekend will change me forever.

It is when I first understand what it means to be with someone, not just next to them, not just intimately, but to be with someone, fully. Heart. Mind. Body. Soul.

San Diego, Friday October 17th, 1997.

Plans have been made to go out to the bar with Doug that night.

It is not going to be anything special, just a night out and after the evening ends Doug will drop me off at my apartment on First street and he, as always, will head home back to La Mesa. A standard par for the course evening where beers, pool and comradery rule the night.

This was our routine. Nice, safe, comfortable. As friends with benefits, it worked for us.

Until it didn’t.

Months prior to this evening, I was visiting Doug at his mother’s house and for some reason, he takes out his wallet. Why, I cannot remember, but I do recall seeing a business card. It belonged to some woman named Jan. With no wear or frayed edges, it was a newer addition to his wallet, so I asked who she was, and he evades the question. The card reads Jan Garret Marketing. It just seems so random for him to have such a contact.

I can be rather pushy at times, especially when I sense lies and deceit behind someone’s smile. After a week of relentless hounding and during a particular tense and verbal altercation, Doug finally admits who the “Jan” woman is. In his usually smug manner and to make me jealous he reveals the secret he has kept hidden.

“She’s not a woman at all.”

Jan as it turns out is a man. Dutch, apparently. Pronounced Yon.

They had met at The Eagle one Friday when I was working. “It was a night, a good one,” he says with a smug grin, and then he shuts down, tight-lipped and unreadable. All I got was that Jan was into leather, and Doug was not at all thrilled about his fondness for “nose candy.”

“It was just a one-night stand,” he insists.

I choose not to ask again. Not because I do not care, I just refuse to be upset about it, at least around him. To allow Doug the satisfaction of believing I am upset in any way is something I will not do. No more is said about this stranger with a girl’s name.

Fast-forward to that Friday night. Doug and I hit the bar. The evening is ordinary, the ambiance forgettable, until Jan walks in. I recognize him instantly, though we only met through the once uncomfortable and strained conversation Doug, and I shared months prior. The air shifts. The background noise fades, like the room is holding its breath. He carries a presence impossible to ignore, like he’s been carved from something heavier than the rest of us.

He is beyond handsome, surpassing beautiful, and the only word in my immense arsenal I have to use to describe him is striking.

He wears a meticulously trimmed short, steel-gray beard. He is the same height and build as me, but where I waver, he stands firm. His presence says, I am here, and do not owe you an explanation as to why. He is intelligent, self-assured and shows confidence which borders arrogance without crossing the line.

I am immediately smitten.

Why Doug chose to introduce us, I have no clue. Perhaps it was his way of saying, I had him, and you never will. It certainly was not politeness that caused Doug to allow me to meet the one person who will both change and devastate my world completely.

The introduction is brief. But I do not let it end there. I bring this captivating man a beer. He accepts with a gracious nod, handing me a business card I recognize immediately, the same one still residing in Doug’s wallet. “I’m leaving,” he announces, “if you want to stop by before midnight, call me.”

And then he was gone.

I slide the card into my pocket and join Doug at the bar. We play Tri-Towers until eleven, pretending like nothing had changed. But everything had.

When Doug drops me off, I barely wait for his taillights to vanish before I am inside, fingers trembling as I dial Jan’s number.

Why did I call? I will never be able to tell you. No matter how upset I was that Doug met Jan first, I normally would not do something like this. Doug and I had our issues, but I respected him enough to not chase down his sloppy seconds. But something about this Jan person gnaws at the edges of my soul. I cannot shake the feeling that I am standing at the edge of something vast, frightening, and unknown. All my senses tell me, should I choose not to leap, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

That call changes my life in ways I never dreamed possible.

After this night I will never be the same. The me I thought I once knew disappears and the version of myself I so carefully built over my 36 years, begins to slowly dissolve. What will emerge is raw, new, fragile, and oh so very real.

My chrysalis softly and gently opens, my wings, free to unfurl. I will learn to fly and see the world, fresh and anew. I learn many things, but most importantly, I discover who I am and what the word soulmate truly means.

For many years, in the privacy and security of his home, Jan teaches me more about myself. Not the version others applaud Not the one I pretend to be. But my true self, the one I spent so many years hiding, even from me. Under his tutelage I discover a world I never allowed myself to dream existed, yet secretly always hoped to find. It is a world he and I explore together and as I grow, so does my love for him.

This fateful evening, I meet my mirrored self. My opposite. My mentor and teacher.

Behind the walls of his home, in the softness of stolen time, I cautiously step into his world, trembling and unsure as I find my wings and learn to fly. Through the years Jan becomes the half of me I did not know was missing. Our connection goes far beyond the physical, emotional and mental realms, ours is a spiritual fusion that I will never recapture.

But my newfound freedom to explore the leather world without inhibition, along with the intense love and emotions we share, abruptly comes to an end.

After seven years in San Diego, I must leave. Not because I want to, I don’t. I have spent years putting down roots in this city. Each day wrapped in golden light. Cultivating loving friendships that feel like family. Spending days, months and years carving out routines that steady me. I have allowed myself to comfortably fall into the sun-soaked rhythm of a life that signifies what it is to be a San Diegan, and this life finally feels like it fits.

But fate doesn’t ask permission. Unlike opportunity, she never knocks. She slips in uninvited and rearranges everything with a kind of cruel, effortless grace. And once again, she has come for me.