Actual Privilege

I lived in Florida in 2007. Improbable for my age and socioeconomic status, I lived in an oceanfront condo, rented from a nice gentleman with a severe drug addiction. He used to be a surfer and a lifeguard, but he broke his back in an accident. He lost a lot of his mobility (and I suspect a large sense of his identity) from the injury, and half of his mind to the opiates his doctor prescribed. Being in his presence made my whole body heavy with sadness.

The property was definitely worth more than what he charged me. I don’t think he necessarily lost money renting it, but I think he forgot to profit from it.

He didn’t need drug money the way most addicts do. Whoever his physician was kept him incredibly well-stocked, and his insurance covered his prescription medications.

He lived in a tiny shit hole apartment, a few blocks from the beach. It wasn’t as nice as our place, and I wondered why he chose to live where he did when he had alternatives. It was several years before I realized it was the ocean itself he was avoiding.

The view in the condo was phenomenal. Floor to ceiling sliding glass doors facing the ocean, visible from anywhere in the house. I never closed those doors, because the breeze was salty and cool. Watching storms roll in from hundreds of miles out can consume an entire afternoon if you’re as dedicated to leisure as I am. There were metal roll down shades installed on all beach front properties in the area. We had to keep the beach blacked out a few months out of the year because the stretch of sand had to be shared with sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs.

The light warns them that it isn’t a safe place to come out of the water. Light means people, and people mean danger. Smart turtles. I never used the roll-down shades. I just kept all of the lights off and drank alone on the balcony. I told myself it was conducive to a somewhat creative circadian rhythm, but really I just like the anonymity allowed by the dark. I may have been alone, but I guess I didn’t want to be known to myself, either. Solitary anonymity.

One night after far too many beers in the enforced darkness of the balcony, I watched a murky shadow roll over the waves: up and down, up and down. The water slapped the sand, retreated, slapped again. When the shadow slapped the sand, it stayed. I held my breath and stared hard. A girl from Pennsylvania cannot fully trust the sea, and a girl who has secrets knows the ocean is full of fearful things.

The shadow moved slowly, too slowly to be anything else. My lungs allowed me to exhale and I watched the black outline of a turtle struggle across the indigo sand. Being the selfish, foolish, lumbering human that I am, I headed down to the beach for a closer look.

I kept my distance. I didn’t want the turtle to retreat, I wanted her to lay her eggs in front of my building so I could watch her babies after she returned to the ocean. As if my human-mothering capabilities trump her turtle-mothering capabilities and she needs my help to successfully reproduce.

Her progress across the sand was excruciatingly slow. So. Slow.

She was huge, a real monster. The average for her species is between 800 and 1,500 pounds. That’s a lot of heft to drag across dry sand when you’re designed for the water. I waited as patiently as possibly could. My brain doesn’t like to heft itself through time. I could tell she didn’t care about my desire for instant gratification. Her flippers punched the sand, and she moved forward another six inches.

I wondered if my landlord had ever seen a leatherback make her way across the sand in the middle of the night. I wondered about the last time he’d even seen the middle of the night since his sleep was now opiate-induced. I understand things are sometimes needed to induce sleep. I’m a drunk, after all.

I decided to let her keep her secrets and her babies all her own. I went back upstairs and drank a few more beers with my back to the ocean. I paid my rent on time that month.