The word is haven. Or sanctuary. Paradise wouldn't be a stretch at all.
I couldn't get in on my own. Tom was as good at opening doors as he was at opening girls' legs. He said there's nothing to it. Simple as sesame. The only trick, according to Tom, was to bring a chick along, because chicks always keep a bobby pin in their hair that you can borrow to jimmy the lock. Well, that was easier said than done. Some of us didn't know any girls. Some of us didn't have three lean sisters who brought home their friends in droves.
Some of us lived alone.
But there at the boat house, after we did get in, thanks to Tom and his girl and her beautiful hair, it seemed that even I had a family, even I a home. And oh, this was the home as home should be. Such freedom, such ease. We smoked whatever, wherever, whenever we pleased. We ate mealy apples from the feral trees that grew right inside our home. And maybe we got sick off the damp and fruit gone to rot, off the cold that climbed into our makeshift beds like a lover in the middle of the night. And maybe we ached in the morning, if we stayed till the sun.
And maybe it wasn't much of anything, really. And maybe Tom was a fuck up, and a jackass, and maybe he always will be.
But certainly, there was a moment, in that creepy still, that boat house dim, when none of these hypotheticals mattered.
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