My friend Shannon and her husband Bill were planning a week-long trip out of town. They lived in a nice, spacious house in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco with a big, beautiful dog and two cats. Shannon asked me if I wanted to stay at their place and pet sit while they were away. Yes! A whole home to myself plus a break from living with a roommate in the routinely fogged-in Inner Sunset district was too good an offer to pass up.
The day before Shannon and Bill were expected to return, my friend Swinney and I decided to drive to Santa Cruz for the day and have lunch at Saturn Cafe, famous for its extensive vegan menu and groovy decor.
We headed down Highway 1 along the California coastline. About halfway there, we stopped at one of the many public beaches on the roadside and walked around inspecting the nature of things. We examined broken sea shell bits, slimy kelp, smooth stones, and worn driftwood. It was spring and just the right time of year for a good amount of rain runoff from the nearby mountains. A swiftly flowing yet shallow stream was making its way across the beach back to the mother ocean.
One side of the riverlet had carved away at a mountainous sand dune and created a cliff about eight, maybe ten, feet high. Peering over the edge, we were saddened and grossed out to see the bloated remains of a sea lion that had beached itself up the waterway right below where we were standing. Swinney stepped back, but I thought it would be funny to make a tiny avalanche.
I stomped at the edge, "Hey, look at me! I'm making a tiny avalanche! Haha!" I was cracking myself up.
Swinney, "Ert, you better get away from there..."
Me, "Tiny avalanche!!!" Stomp! Stomp!
Swinney, "I'm serious Ert, you better stop. You're gonna fall. You're wrecking the ecology!"
Me, jumping up and down, "No way! I can do it! Look I'm a giant! I'm making a tiny aval...aaaaaaaaahhh!"
The semi-solid sand gave way beneath me. It was a curious sensation to feel the earth collapse under my feet. It was slow, not a great fright but disorienting. I tumbled down the incline, landing comically and perilously close to the dead sea lion. I couldn't get back up without climbing and piling sand and getting a hand from Swinney. He shook his head, telling me he'd told me so, and took photos of me stranded down there before helping me up. I wasn't hurt, just dirty and embarrassed. I did my best to get all of the beach bits off of me and my clothes, but as we all know, sand gets everywhere.
The rest of our day trip was uneventful. We eventually got our lunch and had a peaceful drive back to SF in the late afternoon sun, though I smelled pretty bad.
The next morning, the day of the homeowners' return, I took advantage of their substantially better-than-mine laundry appliances and washed all my clothes, including the ones from the previous day at the beach. When the dryer finished, I — naked to the world — brought the basketful upstairs and dumped it on the couch. From this heap, I put on a bra and underwear, then stepped into the black cotton Dickies I'd worn the day before. They were my favorite pants at the time, form-fitting and flattering. After buttoning and zipping, I put my hands in the pockets to push the fabric down and flatten them out. I was annoyed to discover that, despite going through a machine wash and tumble dry, there was still a significant amount of sand in my pockets.
To fix this, I got an idea. I'd step out onto the back porch, pull my pockets inside out, and flick them about to get rid of it.
As I was standing on the small wooden platform just outside the back door, I noticed one of the cats in the hallway getting an idea of its own about stepping outside. Clearly making its way toward me in an effort to escape, which I'd been warned I needed to guard against, I thought fast and pulled the door closed to keep the kitty from getting out. It was a close call.
Door knobs with locks can work in a few different ways. Sometimes they automatically unlock from a locked state when opened from the locked side, simply by turning the knob. Sometimes they stay locked and have to be explicitly unlocked. I discovered that was the case with Shannon and Bill’s back door while standing on their back porch in only a bra and pants.
As it dawned on me that I was locked out, I realized I had no shirt, no phone, no keys, no wallet, no socks or shoes. Nothing.
The backyard was flanked on two sides by high cement walls meant to prevent the neighbors' houses from sliding down the hill. The perimeter was lined with various trees, shrubs, and grasses. It didn't look like a good idea to get into any of that with so much of my fleshy real estate exposed. Anyway, behind the flora, the walls were so tall and featureless that I could not climb over them if I tried, and even if I did, I would just end up in someone else's backyard.
The yard was a modest amount of space otherwise surrounded by the house itself in an L-shape that came within about a foot of the neighboring house. There was no purpose-built outlet except for the route I'd just eliminated for myself. The steps from the small porch went down a few feet, putting all of the yard-facing windows out of reach, and there was nothing to stand on. Even if I could get to them, the windows were surely locked.
Shannon and Bill weren't expected home until after dark. I had to escape.
The only way out was to inch sideways along the dark, muddy, extremely narrow space between their house and the neighbor's, then climb up and over a six-foot-plus, splintery wood plank fence with tops shaped like spears. I was grateful to be wearing anything at all as I inexpertly leveraged my back against the wall while pushing with my feet and pulling with my arms to get myself up to the top. I dropped down on the other side, in front of the house. I was free.
My car was parked across the street, and I had a spare key in a little magnetic box hidden under the bumper. Due to not being invisible, I hoped at least nobody was around to see me. I scanned the neighborhood and noticed no one, so I decided to make a run for it. Unfortunately, I had not hidden any spare clothes in my car, so my next big idea was to go to a friend's house and borrow something to hide my shame.
I drove across town, maybe three miles, from Bernal Heights to my friend Colby's flat in Hayes Valley.
San Francisco is notoriously lousy for parking, and I ended up in a spot a few blocks away. Though both homes were in what locals consider residential areas, there was much more traffic and many more people around Hayes Street. Whereas I saw not one person during my escape from the backyard in Bernal, I was openly gawked at and catcalled as I walked barefoot and shirtless to Colby's place.
At his front door, mortified, I knocked loudly and insistently until he opened up. What a sight I must have been. He didn't seem even a little bit surprised as he laughed out loud and let me in. Colby is about 6'4" and could only offer voluminous shirts and huge man shoes, but I was grateful nonetheless.
Luckily, I was able to pass the time at Colby's apartment — in his giant clothes — until I got to go back, retrieve my own, me-sized clothes and relate the whole humiliating misadventure to the deeply amused homeowners.
It was all very entertaining and became a funny anecdote in our social circle for a while.
About a year later, Shannon and Bill decided to move to Amsterdam. They were selling the house and leaving many of their possessions behind. Various household items were donated to lucky me, so I helped them pack. We worked all day packing and stacking boxes into the moving truck. Afterward, we had snacks and drinks and lounged out front in the late daylight.
A man from next door came outside and chatted with us in that neighborly way that people do. He was curious about their departure, and I was curious about him, noticing how hunky and charming this stranger was. Bill invited him to join us, and I attempted to enchant him with my winning ways. After a while, he looked at me very intently, studying my face with a bemused grin, and said, "You look so familiar to me." I smiled, blushed, and carried on with my campaign.
Later in the conversation, the tale of my "adventure" came up. As Shannon, Bill and I reminisced about my wacky hijinks, the neighbor's face lit up, "I knew it! I knew I recognized you! You're the nearly naked girl I saw climbing over the fence!"