She Finds Refuge at Her Rock Around the Clock : A place where two girlfriends could sit side- by- side.

My place isn’t mine at all.

It’s a large sandstone boulder on somebody else’s beachfront property in Malibu.

Nestled in an alcove between two homes (whose weathered stilts will probably plummet before the property value ever does), the rock--my rock--is a slightly tilted, geologically uninteresting amalgamation of sand and sea things.

My best friend and I discovered it one day in high school while ditching English and trespassing through Malibu Colonies.

It wasn’t ours by deed, but that place had our names written all over it--and probably still would had we not used watercolors.

The rock’s surface dips slightly, forming a perfect seat in the summer and a neat little pool in the winter.

It is simple and wonderful and immediately took on the roles of Shakespearean stage, psychiatrist’s couch, picnic table and quiet stoop--a place where two girlfriends could sit side by side, looking at the ocean and not saying anything.

Throughout high school the rock comfortably seated two, but now it usually seats one.

When I first started going there alone, I would get paranoid about trespassing--as though a gang of snooty locals would spot me and kick me back to the Valley. But because it’s on a private beach, there’s hardly ever a soul anywhere near the rock.

In fact, I had gone there for several years without incident, until one day, as I perched on my rock, a man wearing nothing but running shoes and a baseball hat walked up to say hello.

I was going to ask if his was permissible attire--it being a private beach and all.

But he was standing, and I was sitting, and from that position I thought it best to keep my mouth shut.

When I left for college, I used to miss my rock in much the same way I missed my house.

It’s where I go to think, to cry, to ponder the ocean’s magnificence.

I’ve been there when the sun sinks into the ocean and felt the cold calm that covers the beach when it returns.

I’ve literally danced on the rock when times were good and taken refuge there when things were very, very bad.

And somehow, by the time I’ve crossed the two miles of silent beach between my rock and my car, I always leave smiling.