With family, everything else is irrelevant
By Paul Mantee/Special to The Malibu Times
His given name is Chester. He calls himself Nite, after the night. He has been presumed homeless. Actually, he lives in the Colony.
At first, he wanted no part of this interview.
“Anyone who has a basic instinct for individuality is anti-social by nature,” he explained.
Then he changed his mind.
“On the other hand, I’m an extremist. I’ve had this instinct about laying low all my life and it’s about to die an ugly death. Just don’t pinpoint me at a particular address. Other than that, I’d never tell an artist to go ahead and paint a picture; just don’t use any reds or blues.”
He had me.
Nite was born in 1951 and raised in the Valley. On June 20, a Saturday in either ’78 or ’79, he turned toward the sea, took a hike and never looked back.
“Do you miss anybody?”
“No.”
He ate out of trashcans and slept on Topanga Beach for a while, and was repeatedly busted for sleeping on the sand.
“Finally, I said #&%* this $&%#! I made a beeline to the next beach and it happened to be right next to the Colony. By the mid-eighties, they started calling me 121,” Nite recalled.
The last house in Malibu Colony is #120, which establishes Nite as being a unique member of a friendly upscale community.
“People in the Colony are pretty casual, down to earth.”
Nite has no hesitation listing the Littlejohns, Dummits, Almonds, MacLeods, Nathansons and Barovskys among families who’ve gone out of their way to treat him with kindness and the utmost respect. Of particular distinction is Robert Kirstan.
“His home was the first house I walked into in 10 years. That’s a little like Alice in Wonderland.”
Nite managed to save $600 collecting aluminum cans, and then one day in ’93, through the Labor Exchange, he fell into a remodeling job with people who were obviously not saddled by a deadline. The gig lasted seven months. He admits to being at times overwhelmed, handling the physical labor during the day and doing the books at night. “But I have a natural instinct for organization … plus I didn’t have time to walk around, which broke me of the habit of eating out of trashcans.”
“You do a lot of work for a lot of people,” I suggested.
“I do some work for some people. Electrical, carpentry. I used to take Harry Barovsky to work when he was sick; he was a macho guy, couldn’t stand to be seen in a wheelchair. Sometimes I help people with scripts.”
“In what capacity?”
“When they get blocked. I don’t like scripts, but if writers come to a point where they don’t know what to do and they throw it at me, I always figure something out. I’m like an efficiency expert. My brain likes to go into a situation and figure its way out.”
“Yet at an early age, you chose to disappear,” I reminded him.
“It wasn’t choice,” Nite corrected. “My instinct just told me one day I had to find new people.”
I interjected, “You have a freedom I’ll never have.”
“It’s not about freedom, it’s about priorities.”
“What do you do for fun?”
“That’s a low blow, Paul. But a bulls-eye question. I don’t have fun.”
“People unhesitatingly befriend you. What do you think they see in you?”
“I have no idea, I don’t think about that $&@%.”
“Is there a search inside you? To be wiser, for instance?”
“Not to be wiser. That’s ego. Not wisdom, but understanding.”
“Any heroes?”
“John Wooden. You know who John Wooden is?”
“The basketball coach.”
“John Wooden says, ‘I’m a simple man who’s true to my beliefs.’ I live the same way. Where those values come from, I don’t know. Dumb luck, I guess. But I do know that we’re not here to accumulate belief systems. We’re here to experience.”
Nite pointed to his head and heart.
“What’s important is what’s inside here and here. And you really can’t use words to communicate that. That’s why I’m not sure about my words right now. But talking to you, it looks as if I’m finally leaving my Neanderthal ways.”
“You’ve had a bicycle for 10 years, a savings account for eight and a cell phone for two. Yet you’ve asked me not to reveal your phone number. So, if somebody requires your services, they just need to look for a guy on a bike who looks like Jesus Christ in shorts and a T-shirt and yell, “Hey, Nite!”
“Basically, yeah.”
“I respect your privacy, so what I’m going to do is show you a copy of this piece before I submit it to the Times, and anything you’re not comfortable with goes out.”
“Don’t do that, Paul. I don’t want to see it. Just don’t call me homeless, because I’m not. I live with my family in the Colony. Everything else is irrelevant.”