Younger Days: Santa Cruz & Berkeley Housemates
Santa Cruz Housemates
After my freshman year in the dorms at U.C. Santa Cruz (see Younger Days, Leaving Home), I felt giddy about living off campus. I found a room downtown in a small apartment of flimsy construction. The den mother of the household was Karen, a square-set young woman with a dirty blond pageboy haircut and a no-nonsense demeanor. I can’t recall her ever laughing, but I do remember her setting plenty of rules. Her partner, Sharon, was big-boned with a cap of tightly wound black curls and a demeanor that contrasted sharply with Karen’s: affectionate, emotive, moody, and prone to bursting into song. Sharon had a rich resonant voice and frequently belted out “Different Drum” (made famous by Linda Ronstadt). Our third housemate, Meg, was a beautiful vivacious redhead with a million freckles. She was constantly joking and laughing, running off to play sports or chase after young men. She and her sister often cozied up on the couch sharing secrets, exclaiming, and giggling. Sharon and I became close friends, a situation that aroused intense paranoia and displeasure on Karen’s part. When visiting Karen, Sharon often stopped by my room to discuss what seemed at the time compelling emotional and existential issues. We sang together and I played guitar.
I bicycled up to campus each weekday morning, an exhausting but triumphant climb from town. At the end of the day I cruised down the hills, hardly pedaling for the first few miles, invigorated by the wind and the views. I shopped for groceries by bike, tying bags of produce and tofu on my handlebars if they didn’t all fit in my backpack. The town was full of charming cafés, inexpensive restaurants, street music and art, with numerous beaches nearby. I enjoyed my new friendships. While I would have happily carried on in this fashion, the lease was up after one short quarter and we disbanded.
My next abode was considerably further from campus and downtown, in a somewhat neglected and sparsely furnished old Victorian near Seacliff beach. My housemates were three best friends, all upper classmen who had lived together for several years. Sarah was tall, slim, and athletic. Her main function appeared to be supporting and encouraging her housemates, Brad and Alec. They were tan, muscular, and strikingly handsome men, one blond, the other brunette. I wondered about the nature of the trio’s relationship. All three were enthusiastic beer drinkers and frequently hosted loud alcohol-soaked parties at the house. The unkempt garden contained a series of wooden hutches built by the trio where they bred rabbits to sell as food. The endeavor was apparently quite lucrative. I felt bad for the rabbits.
As the weeks went by, I became increasingly wary of the trio and grew more and more uncomfortable. We took turns with household chores including shopping for, preparing, and cleaning up after dinner once a week. Despite the rotating duties, the house was extremely dirty; I seemed to be the only one actually cleaning. My dinners were met with insults and laughter: “What is this, rabbit food?!?! We can’t eat this. Cook some real food!” The trio chortled heartily and exchanged knowing glances. Although I was invited to their parties, I had nothing in common with the beer-swilling chums who gathered for drunken revelry late into the night, leaving empty beer cans, wine bottles, and half-eaten food in their wake.
Near the end of the quarter, before 10 weeks had elapsed, I gave notice. I would miss the beach, where I could take long walks and struggle to jog in the sand, but I couldn’t bear one more minute living with the trio. My anger mounted as I packed my belongings and I devised a plan to retaliate.
Once I had emptied and cleaned my room, I cracked a handful of eggs, placed them in several shallow dishes, and scooted them far under the living room couch. Since the trio never vacuumed or dusted, I was certain it would take some time for the eggs to be discovered. The first few weeks after my departure, the trio routinely hand addressed my mail that the post office failed to forward. Shortly thereafter this ceased. I’d never done anything so devious before, but it was deeply satisfying.
I went for an interview at a home shared by three grad students in a quiet residential neighborhood near the base of campus. I was grilled as if for a high-level job: questioned regarding my household habits, how I interacted with others, my previous living situation, and techniques for saving water (California was experiencing a severe drought). My interviewers betrayed little, wondered aloud whether I wasn’t on the young side as a suitable roommate (I was an undergraduate and two years younger than my peers), and told me they would be in touch. It had been an unexpectedly intimidating experience and I descended the front steps wondering if I would hear from them again. As I continued down the sidewalk, one of the housemates came out the front door, calling me to return. They had unanimously selected me. I was surprised and delighted. We shared hugs all around and settled on the details of my moving in and completing paperwork.
Early my first morning, my belongings still boxed and my bed unassembled, I was awoken by my mattress sliding back and forth across the wood floor and the glass in my French doors rattling. For a few seconds, I was totally perplexed. Finally it registered that the movement was from an earthquake, my first in California. I was thrilled and concerned, but the tremor passed quickly.
Most mornings, I was in the kitchen when my housemate Lori entered to deliberately prepare her breakfast: chunky peanut butter from a large jar of Laura Scudder’s carefully and evenly spread on a very particular type of whole grain bread, a bowl of oatmeal, and a large cup of Roastaroma Celestial Seasonings tea (a dark heavy brew with chicory). Somewhere in the recesses of my tea cabinet I still have an old box of that tea. It smells musty and I have little interest in drinking it, but it brings back memories. I was intrigued by the fact that Lori always ate the same exact breakfast and that she took it so seriously. We would sit together at the kitchen table and converse earnestly, mostly about relationships and human interactions and motivations. It was Lori’s personal and professional obsession; she was working on her dissertation in statistical psychology. I was impressed by how sophisticated and worldly she was and I loved our long, intimate, and complex conversations.
My other housemates were a couple that had a semi-private wing at the rear of the house and almost always appeared together. They were affable, but I never got to know them. Occasionally, I had to use their bathroom when the one in the main house was occupied. The first time, I was taken aback when I realized what was depicted by the series of snapshots posted on the wall near the toilet paper dispenser: impressively large stools in that very toilet bowl. I tried to hurry my rare visits to their bathroom, feeling uncomfortable, as if I had inadvertently dropped in on a private joke.
I spent one happy quarter and part of the summer at that house before transferring to U.C. Berkeley as a junior.
Berkeley Housemates
I was tremendously excited about moving to Berkeley, happily anticipating the anonymity that Santa Cruz lacked with its small student body, looking forward to greater student diversity, an array of big city perks, and an endless menu of academic choices. Over the summer, I spent hours at the cramped old brown shingle housing office, rifling through index cards advertising rooms for rent. My mother visited from the East Coast for a few days to lend a hand. We purchased a skirt and blouse for my housing interviews and stayed at the moldering old Claremont Hotel for a several nights. Our hotel room was a relic, with a massive bathroom of tiny white hexagonal tiles and ancient fixtures, sad décor, but a spectacular view of the bay. The hotel was inexpensive and mostly unoccupied.
Given the high price of housing, I hunted for situations where I could exchange labor for low rent. I had appointments at three mansions where babysitting and a few chores would be required. I didn’t hear back after two of my interviews, but the third was eager to have me. I moved in to a small room on the third floor under the eaves of a severe brick edifice on Claremont Boulevard, the home of a divorcée who taught English at a local community college and her two young children (a girl age 10 and a boy age 6). Amanda was petite and assertive. She informed me that I was not to have boyfriends over because her son’s bedroom was down the hallway from me and it wouldn’t be appropriate. Her rules apparently did not apply to her: I recall quite distinctly one late afternoon while studying in my room, I heard loud and unusual sounds emanating from somewhere in the house. Tracing the noise to Amanda’s bedroom, I realized with a start that she was having sex with her boyfriend and retreated sheepishly to my garret room.
The first two floors of the home were grand, with high ceilings and massive windows, all freshly painted, a fancy restaurant style stove, costly fixtures, stately furniture, and heavy floral drapery. Though impressive, it felt cold and uninviting. The family gathered only in the dining nook next to the kitchen and never used the formal dining room or living room.
My room had a low-pitched heavily slanted ceiling to accommodate the roof; it required stooping over in the corners. In autumn, when Berkeley’s true summer began, the third floor was stiflingly hot and the air seemed to barely move through the tiny dormer windows. I had my own bathroom with an antique claw foot tub that would have been welcome had there been some hot water. Amanda had failed to have the hot water pipes connected in the bathroom and it would take many weeks and several requests on my part until I could enjoy a warm bath. Until then, I would partially fill the tub and steel myself, bracing for the shock and numbness that assaulted me when I finally eased into the cold water. I had very long thick hair, a considerable challenge to shampoo and rinse under the circumstances. I bathed as quickly as I could and attempted various psychological tricks to counter the discomfort, to little avail. Afterwards, the air felt wonderfully warm as I regained sensation in my extremities.
Amanda regularly spouted invectives toward her ex-husband. She ranted loudly, her children silent and seemingly oblivious. Every other weekend the children dutifully packed up their belongings to visit their father. Amanda complained frequently about how difficult it was to make ends meet. On several occasions she told me she was just waiting to sell the house for a million dollars (this was 1978, mind you). She had purchased and renovated the home with single-minded determination after leaving her grand San Francisco mansion post-divorce.
In exchange for my reduced rent, I supervised the children setting and clearing the dinner table and stacking the dishwasher on weekday evenings, along with occasional weekend babysitting. The siblings were so well behaved, it felt like I was cheating. I ate with the family several times a week. Amanda almost always served the same dish: tuna noodle casserole assembled from canned tuna, pasta, canned Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, and frozen peas. I had never tasted the dish before and was both intrigued and repulsed by the texture and taste. There were always congealed casserole leftovers in the fridge. Once in a blue moon, Amanda prepared a steak for dinner, usually when her boyfriend and his two children joined us. Over dinner one evening Amanda described how she had peeled off the price sticker of a less costly cut of meat and put it on the steak, something she admitted to doing regularly. She justified the action, explaining that the price she had affixed to the steak was more appropriate. I was horrified and wondered if I should continue living in the house. As it happened, I moved out not long thereafter when my father relocated to Berkeley and “requested” my brother and I move in to help pay the rent in his new home.
