Gay Hendricks - The First Rule of Ten

Topanga Canyon, Calif.

Jan. 12, Year of the Iron Tiger

Lama Yeshe and Lama Lobsang

Dorje Yidam Monastery

Dharamshala, India

Venerable Brothers,

Last Friday night, I tasted one of life’s sweet little experiences.

Saturday, I got shot.

It makes me wonder if I have a low tolerance for things going well in my world.

Or maybe I just need to be more mindful of what’s going on, both outside and in.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I’ve decided to put some rules back into my life-just not the scriptural kind I was so good at rebelling against back when I lived in the monastery. These are life-rules, drawn from my own experience, regardless of whether it’s humbling, exhilarating, or painful. Rule Number One is this: If you’re open to learning, you get your life-lessons delivered as gently as the tickle of a feather. But if you’re defensive, if you stubbornly persist in being right instead of learning the lesson at hand, if you stop paying attention to the tickles, the nudges, the clues-boom! Sledgehammer. Or in this case, the mangled slug of a.45 automatic.

The truth is, the pain caused by the bullet-graze was insignificant compared to the deep ache of uncertainty provoked by my brush with death. I felt lost, swarmed by questions to which I had no easy answers. But once I could see a way forward, I actually started feeling grateful to Leon-the poor, misguided being who pulled the trigger.

I do regret how much I scared Bill. I’d never seen him look like that-drawn and pale, his eyes dark with fear. He told me when he heard the shot, found me on the floor, he thought I was done.

Turns out I was, just not in the way Bill meant.

You two know me best, so you know this is true: From the time I was a teenager, reading all those contraband detective novels by candlelight in our sleeping quarters, I never wanted to be anything but a modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. So when I made Detective five years ago, I thought I had my life all wrapped up, with a nice, pretty bow on top. But lately, the realities of working for the LAPD have been closing in on me. I can hardly breathe anymore.

Some cops are happy to spend the bulk of their time shuffling papers and testifying in court. They’d rather pass their days getting hammered by defense attorneys than roam around out in the big world, messing with actual criminals. Not me. I like the action. I spent enough years sitting cross-legged in confined spaces, eyes closed, sheltered from anything that might challenge reality. Or nonreality, for that matter.

No offense.

It’s just that every minute in court, or chained to my desk, is a minute I’m not out putting bad people away, which last I heard was the whole point. The number of hours I spend on real police work has been declining steadily over the past couple of years, until these days when I’m lucky if I pull 15 hours a week outside.

Poor Bill’s no stranger to my discontent. My partner’s been putting up with a swelling stream of complaints about the paperwork, the politics, the endless bureaucratic hassles and mandatory regulations that are taking all the joy out of the job. I mean, monks deal with endless rules, too, but at least where you are, the goal is freedom from suffering. Not piling on more and more of it.

Once again in my life, something had to give. Once again, something has.

It’s over. I’m no longer a cop.

Well, time to go. Tank is eyeing his empty food bowl with impressive concentration. I send my prayers and good wishes to you both, as always. Please give Kino my heartfelt congratulations on becoming Abbot. Tell him I am well. You can also tell my father. Should he ever ask.

Until next time,

Ten

I was just sitting down to a cold beer and hot corn soup, at the end of a long week, when my phone rang. I glanced at the number.

Great. Her . My stomach contracted, arming me for whatever barbs my ex-girlfriend Charlotte had in store this time. I tried to breathe a little flex into my gut. Good luck with that.

“Hello?” I said. “Charlotte?” I braced myself for the onslaught.

Then she surprised me.

“Ten? I’m getting married. I thought you’d want to know.”

Charlotte, married. To someone else. A hot streak of jealousy sliced through me, which made no sense at all, considering I was the one who broke things off.

“Tenzing? Aren’t you going to congratulate me? You owe me that, at least.”

And there it was; the familiar “you owe me” card. It loosened up an avalanche of bad memories-the many ways I constantly infuriated her, the times she, in turn, disappointed me. Our last fight bloomed inside my brain like a bad seed. Prompted by her insistence that I had bought the wrong kind of lentil (I hadn’t), the small spat quickly escalated, culminating in my yelling at Charlotte, in one of my finer expressions of loving-kindness, that I’d never liked the way she smelled. Since the day I met her.

She responded by swatting me with a dish towel, a sharp snap to the side of the head.

Honestly? I admired her for it. It woke me up to the hard truth that we were never going to be right in each other’s eyes. And that it didn’t have a thing to do with either of us. Not her. Not me. We were just a couple of warm bodies stepping into old, familiar roles, long established in the past, and sure to run us well into the future if we didn’t do something to change the wiring. Two con artists conning each other, with the occasional great sex thrown in just to keep us good and confused.

That fight was the last time we saw each other.

I could sense Charlotte’s edginess growing on the other end of the line as she geared up for one last dramatic blowout. The familiar tension bounced back and forth between us, looking for an ally.

My eyes drifted across the room to the big plate glass window framing the far wall. It was dark outside, but beyond that darkness lay the ocean, wide and expansive, mutable yet constant. I felt its spaciousness waiting out there. Just waiting for me to acknowledge it. I took a deep breath.

“Congratulations, Charlotte.” I said. “I wish you both well.”

I hung up gently. Then I just stood there, phone in hand, trying to digest this new chunk of information. I waited. After a moment, my insides shifted. The heaviness inside-that cold iron ball that had hardened around all the times we’d disappointed each other, pissed each other off-actually started to soften, to melt a little. Well, what do you know?

“Hey, Tank,” I called out to my favorite feline, curled up on his cushion. He opened one eye. “Guess what? She-who-hates-cats is getting married.”

Tank’s tail flicked once. He was pleased. So was I. Relief and something bordering on glee flooded through me. Now and forever, there would always be a buffer, somebody else she could blame for everything being wrong with her life, before she got around to blaming me.

I strutted around my house for the rest of the evening, feeling pretty good about my existence on this fine planet.

The next day I got shot.

Here’s how it went down. My partner Bill Bohannon and I were finishing up a quick lunch, steaming bowls of Pho at a Vietnamese place we like in Echo Park, before heading back to Robbery/Homicide. As I opened my fortune cookie-don’t ask me why, but Angelenos demand fortune cookies from any Asian establishment, Chinese or not-the radio crackled to life: “Code three, four-one-five. Possible DV in progress.” Headquarters was calling for any available patrol cars to investigate a Domestic Violence incident. The address was only a couple of blocks from the restaurant. I glanced down at my tiny strip of future: “Destino esta pidiendo,” it said. A Vietnamese fortune, written in Spanish. Only in Los Angeles. I turned it over.