party behind us!

We went to a party this Sunday in a one-room artist's house, the walls lined with his own oil paintings, which were like rustic baroque wallpaper that refuses to be dislodged. There was a white-haired surfer with big green eyes and smooth olive skin playing a guitar, and the birthday boy, the gray-haired artist himself, a former Vietnam combat vet, was drinking the red wine his neighbors had bought him and singing a surprisingly good version of "Knights in White Satin" by the old Moody Blues band. This song is from his generation, and I could see the boy in him, the high school boy who would have turned up his car radio with the coolest new eight-track player really loudly in the driveway, before shipping out to Nam and, if what they say is true, having his best buddy die in his arms. Why is it always the best buddy dying in the arms? Perhaps war makes best buddies, and if you get lucky enough to hold them after they're wounded and you aren't, that further cements the guilty, loving bond. I don't know, I've never been in that kind of war, so I wouldn't claim to judge.
Anyway, he still suffers from the war, and the hard parts of being a struggling artist for 30 years in a changed Laguna Beach, but Sunday, he was the king of the neighborhood. I'd thought until then he was sort of tolerated, on the fringe, but as more people crowded into the tiny house with more guacamole, more salsa, more wine, I came to see he was the nucleus of several people who like and even love him. If he can be loved, not only for his talent, which gives people permission to love him, but for his sad days when his body won't work and he hurts so much he can't paint or play guitar, for when he's smiled the hazy, happy smile of alcohol and slurringly gone to bed at 6pm, then perhaps we all can be loved--at least modestly. This makes me say, let's allow people in the spaces where we live. And more than one, or three, but maybe 6 or 7. We need each other. And to find one another, we need a place to gather.