Last Wednesday was a busy day. I saw a whole slew of clients at my office, and it was all productive work with clients I really like. But I came home kinda tired, put all my stuff down, read the mail (throwing most of it away), kissed my husband hello, gathered a snack and dinner in front of the TV in the den, and went to bed. Forgetting, all the while, that I had left the front door to our condo unlocked, hours before.
About 3:20 a.m., our dog, “Elsa”, gets up from under the covers with us (her usual spot), and goes into the dark living room and starts barking her head off, like she does when someone comes to visit. Ah, I think. She’s barking because some twinks are going in or out of the rental unit next door, which sees a lot of foot traffic for some reason. She quiets down. Then, the HALL LIGHT COMES ON! That means only one thing: Someone is IN our house! After a moment of panic, I realize that most axe murderers don’t turn on lights, and just then, a thin, wry figure stepped into the light: a very cute, lean, dark-haired twink, wearing nothing but a pair of tigthty-whities and some footie socks, pacing around and playing with things like the light switch. I get up out of bed — stark naked, mind you — and ask this person, uh, what the hell are you doing in my house? He looked at me rather plaintively, but was obviously so drunk/stoned/high that he couldn’t quite speak and make himself understood. I offered him a glass of water, which he took eagerly, as he paced around from room to room, kinda playing with stuff in a way that annoyed my usual OCD-like sense of orderliness. Plus, it was 3:20 a.m. in MY house!
With various questions, I ascertained that he was “visiting” next door and something (unspecified) was going on, sexually or substance-ly, that he wanted no part of (at least by then). He said he wanted to just go home. He called a friend in Pasadena (boy, that’s a friend in need!) and apparently got an earful lecture from him, then I got on the phone and verified the twink’s address. I was in total “work mode”, even though I had not 10 minutes earlier jumped out of my own bed, at home, asleep, and naked, no less. Being a social worker is a 24/7 job sometimes, and while you can take the social worker out of the office, you can’t take the “office” out of the social worker. Sheesh, I thought. That boy is lucky he didn’t wander into the condo of a gun-toting straight accountant with a home breathalyzer and the cops on speed-dial.
I put on some sweats and grabbed my keys while my husband watched our erstwhile guest from possibly swiping stuff or jumping off the balcony. Then, making sure I had my cell phone, I drove the quickly-sobering-up twink home, which wasn’t far, after lending him a towel to put around him and my husband’s hoodie. Sure enough, his roommate answered the door with his dog, and he was home safe but I’m not sure how “sound”. He returned the borrowed towel and hoodie, and I drove home and was back in bed to my surrealistic life by about 4:00 a.m.
The next day, I put a note on the unit next door with the twink’s name and our phone number, but got no response. Then, a few days later, I was getting my hair cut at the mall and then was strolling around, and who do I see at the mall but W.T. and his posse of equally young, equally cute friends. He introduced me to his friends as “my savior, that I told you about”. I gave him my card, because frankly, I think this boy needs to come see me at the office for a little talk. And NOT in the middle of the night when we are both either naked or minimally dressed, but in a formal conference (at no charge; I can’t see people in my office whom I’ve seen, uh, personally) about the multiple dangers W.T. faced that night, and that was only for Fate itself he wasn’t killed by some NRA Bubba just waiting for a home invasion to try out the new gun-show procurement. I’m no saint and I’m no prude, but that boy has a MAJOR lecture coming to him on sexual, alcohol, and drug Harm Reduction and/or abstinence counseling, and I have no problem giving it to him, as long he gets it from somewhere — lecturing friend in Pasadena, or no.
So, yeah, the story does go from scary, to sad, to scary again. Because a little voice inside me says that that probably wasn’t the last time W.T. will use meth, or whatever he was messed up on enough to wander into a dark, strange home (that makes our place sound like the Addams Family’s, and there is some resemblance with the odd collectibles, I admit). The innocence I saw in his eyes as he pleaded to be taken home is something I hope he never loses. And I hope that the combination of substances, people, places, and things that made for the Case of the Wandering Twink, are something that he never comes to know again.
