You know how at the beginning of some old classic TV shows like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver a voice-over announces the names of the stars? I’m about to introduce some people to you, but trust me, there is nothing similar to a 1950s household here.
Why am I doing this? Well, I recently got back in touch with an old friend, and it brought back to memory the weird characters with whom we shared our lives at the time. We were housemates in Berkeley where Andrea was my life raft, and the cast of characters that came and went was truly mind-boggling. So here we go (and I am using pseudonyms):
(Insert typical male announcer voice) “Iiiiiiit’s Desperate Housemates, starring …”
- Cheryl, schoolteacher and dysfunctional single mom by day; alcoholic masochist with abusive boyfriend addiction by night. Favored: Almaden white wine in half gallon bottles. Pretty much very night. I have no idea how she managed to get to school and teach the next day as bright-eyed as she seemed.
- Bill, Cheryl’s emotionally abusive, sadistic, and possibly not-yet-out-of-the-closet boyfriend who could be charming and intelligent with everyone, except his girlfriend. On the other hand, he had exceptionally close relationships with his male friends.
- Rita the skateboarding masseuse. Funny and almost tomboyish by day, at 6 pm she’d skate off to work… at the massage parlor, where exotic makeup and a leotard would transform her into someone else, and where her paycheck was eaten up by the coke her employers generously offered for sale.
- My boyfriend, the lucky Marxist. Lucky because he didn’t have to put up with capitalist exploitation (i.e., a job) thanks to moneyed, tennis-playing parents in L.A. (Aren’t high principles grand?)
Still with me? You can’t make this stuff up. Well, you can, but I’ll swear on a stack of San Francisco Chronicles this all really happened.
Let’s move on to the supporting cast.
There were Rita’s friends from the massage parlor who’d briefly stop by for coke and a smile. Several hundred dollars worth of coke, where, as I’ve stated, the greater part of the massage parlor salaries went to.
There was Cheryl’s friend on lithium.
Lithium Guy was fine, entertaining and smart. Until he stopped taking the lithium. Then he started talking about devils. He also borrowed my car and left it across the bay in San Francisco until I threatened him with small claims court. And to this day I can’t believe I had the nerve to do that, because in retrospect, the guy was scary.
The Car actually deserves an intro too. It was a powder blue 1967 Opel Kadet, a piece of once-very-cool junk with a slipping clutch that I bought from some very questionable people for $100. But it was MY piece of once-cool junk. I wanted it back. Years later friends at UCLA would dub it “The Land Shark.” I wish I still had it. <3
We had interesting neighbors too:
- The Scientologists next door.
- The French communists in the house behind ours. They had us over for a wonderful traditional style Moroccan meal on the floor, with tangines and everything, and we ate couscous with our hands. They introduced us to …
- The unbalanced Moroccan woman who had cooked the wonderful couscous, but who showed up at our house a few weeks later. With a gun.
Yes, JUST like Wisteria Lane. On blow.
And there, in the middle of this vortex of madness was I, the bourgie girl from Long Island, who like Howard the Duck, found herself “trapped in a world she did not create” (thanks to Marxist BF for introducing me to HTD.)
My friend Andrea. My once-upon-a-time life raft.
Andrea came with her own set of characters and tried hard to rise above them, most prominently a controlling hippy-artist ex-husband with the potential and ego to be a cult leader. Except I never saw greatness. I saw an a**hole.)
Setback after setback, Andrea would start over with determination and gutsiness – new job, new place, new hope. It’s been a long time, and I have no idea what she is doing these days. But I hope she knows the impact she had on me. She and I would have talks about spirituality; she introduced me to philosophies that influence me still. Her patience, humor and great laugh is what I remember the best. Ok, that and the joint she always had at the ready. The huge pot of frijoles beans I watched her mash for an hour at one of her restaurant jobs. And the time we got questionable perms together. Sadly, years later there was a bad partner in her life and a dance with heroin. By then we were already hundreds of miles apart, and I was relieved not be around for that.
Still, she was the kind of friend who came with me one very cold night, in a freezing jalopy with no windows, driven by a creepy friend of the creepy Lithium Guy, in order to retrieve my abandoned powder blue Opel Kadett in San Francisco.