breaking and entering
ever since I was a little girl, I have loved trespassing
The first time I broke into a house, I was eight.
The neighbors moved out. I’d remembered them, not their names, but notions of kindness, hot dogs, and playing with their son, running round circles in their carpeted basement. They had a tiny zen garden that I remembered scraping through, making circles in the sand with a wooden rake.
The house now stood empty. I looked around sheepishly to no one before my Payless toed the overgrown grass.
I tugged; the front door was locked. As I made my way along the house’s side to the backyard, I decided to run up their back deck, where my hand reached for the sliding glass door. I expected nothing. When it slid along the rails, I entered without thought.
There is something beautiful and mysterious about being somewhere, especially in a domicile, that you are not supposed to be in. The weight of the empty space in front of you lingers, and imagined environments take over the senses. There’s an embedded sense of possibility married with what should be filled; with people, with laughter, with each other.
But I’ve always loved seeing what I can get away with. My earliest memory is stealing a fish Beanie Baby when I was in preschool, silently putting it in my pocket, seeing if I would be punished for my sneakiness (I never was). The knowledge that I could move about the world in such a way and never face consequence was a litmus test I was constantly pushing and prodding.
And now I knew I could break into a house and do the same.
As I walked around the house, the notion to preserve this moment felt overbearing. I devoured every step on their carpet, through the kitchen, up the stairs. I saved the basement for last, remembering the feeling of playing with this faceless boy while looking at the white walls.
The only thing that convinced me to leave were the glass panels next to their front door. I glanced outside only to see a mosaic blur of someone walking along the road. I immediately ducked back out, retreating to the safety of my yard.
The second time I broke into a house, I was seventeen.
It was my delinquent summer. My head was shaved. Heart was broken. I decided weed was going to fix it. And I had no money. A demon congealed in the form of a bald girl who recently discovered feminism.
My friends Sharon and Eliza were older than me and decided I was cool enough to hang. They could drive and had cars. For a while Eliza had a 2003 Subaru Outback while me and Sharon took turns playing the perfect passenger; being the one who packed the bowl and played the music.
Sharon’s mom was dating some guy named Dave who Sharon hated for reasons I never fully understood. But she thought he was shitty, so I did too. And the day after July 4th, after lighting the last of the grocery store fireworks, we concocted this plan to get into the basement of her house, where Dave kept a secret stash of his weed behind a locked door. It was decided that we were going to break in and steal it, and since I was the smallest, that I would be the one to go in the tiny basement window.
Around sunset, when the house was empty, we rolled up and jammed a flat piece of wood with a mallet in between the window and frame until a gap formed. Then we pried it open so it flared outward. The open gap of the window jutting downward meant I had to crawl up, and then immediately tumble head first at an angle inside.
My hands felt books, and then couch, and then the floor. I crash landed over them a few feet into darkness, tumbling over myself. Feeling my way for the door while Sharon ran in through the front, I unlocked the knob before flipping the light on when they came in the room.
All three of us scavenged until Sharon picked up a red lunchbox sitting on the bottom of the bookcase. There it was: six strains of weed in mason jars labeled Blue Dream or White Widow. Eliza found some other weed that smelled like lobster (and ended up ditching after). We squealed and screamed, and took just enough from each jar so it wouldn’t be missed, threw everything in a baggie, hollering as we tore away in the Subaru.
We only stole maybe a quarter of weed, but I felt so valiant; I’d proved myself valuable in the eyes of my older friends. We did it again about a month later, this round much faster; as if I was being timed. We got in and out of the basement on a new record, beating only ourselves, the entire ordeal taking less than 5 minutes. This time, we were greedy enough for Dave to notice and say something backhanded to Sharon.
The third time I broke into a house, I was also seventeen.
There’s this gigantic house that lay vacant for years at the top of the hill of the street I lived on. It was behind a thicket of trees, so you couldn’t tell the real size unless you went all the way up their driveway. Neighbors existed there once, and I vaguely recollected being in awe of how big it was from trick or treating in middle school.
One time I convinced Sharon to drive up and park near it, far past its for sale sign, so I could show her just how huge this place was. When we walked around the property, we discovered the back door had been left wide open. Maybe she was hesitant? Maybe we were both excited.
When we stepped in, the kitchen made way for pine walls, pine floors, pine balcony; the living room was massive, with vaulted ceilings and a stone fireplace. The main house had three floors and a bedroom at the very top, and attached through a long hallway surrounded by windows, we found that there appeared to be a separate, smaller, original house at the end of the first floor; with its own, separate, second story.
Traipsing through the hallways, back up and down the carpeted stairs, imagining what rooms would be “ours,” and which one we’d give to Eliza, we kept the image of this moment basked in sunlight in our hearts, bursting with our ignorant, misdemeanor love.
We went back several times to show Eliza, just to hang out, as another designated spot to run around after smoking. After the third or so time, I came up with the genius idea that maybe the realtors might not keep that back door unlocked; so I went all the way to the end of the house and unlocked a single window, thinking that nobody noticed. It worked.
Once I came back and saw that the doorknob wasn’t moving, I immediately went to that window, prying the screen above my head with my hands, and climbing inside. Here was a castle of my own imagination. Here, I could envision a future that would never exist, that gave me intrinsic joy to partake in.
The last time I went to the house I took my other, separate, bestie; it had begun to rain, and the sun just set. As water echoed across the dim twilight, covered by clouds, growing increasingly fast and wet, I looked over at her, my clothes damp with the storm we’d just escaped, and I remember facing her in the dark, waving my arms around as her expression said why are we here:
“Isn’t this just the best thing ever?!”
What is an empty house but a possibility?
What is the law except a ruling made in the eyes of the state?
In the absence of furnishings and domesticity I sought love, and in violation of social contracts, I sought myself.
Perhaps it is wrong to steal and trespass. But what a delight, to take and claim without paying. How beautiful to be where you’re not supposed to be.
And still, every now and then, I get a hankering, an inkling, when I pass by a particularly gorgeous house;
Wouldn’t it be nice to know what’s inside?
If you have ever been a fan of my writing and want to support my work, consider a paid subscription!
I am still in Texas until January, and I know times are hard, but it would mean the world to me right now (aka I almost cried last week when I got one).
Thank you Caitlin, Marcus, and Doris for your patronage.
We’ll talk soon!
XOXO
liv capati