Saturday, February 06, 2016

Clark Street


This is the house I briefly lived in at the end of the eighties/beginning of the nineties. The impetus for moving out of my parents' house was the end of my first real relationship. I'm most likely to make big life changes when I'm feeling upset about things, and being dumped is pretty high on the list of things that upset me. It ends up being a time of reflection and forward progress. I wish I did this kind of thing when I was happy, but the motivation just isn't there. If things are working, why change them? Or so I tell myself.

I moved in with my friend Jeff and a woman named Dela. Dela lived in the garage, which she had converted into a bedroom. She had a dog named Dave who liked eating my socks and escaping. The neighbors who continually brought him back weren't so fond of this second habit. I wasn't so fond of the first one. Dela also had a cute Canadian friend named Val who, while visiting, helped me feel better about being newly single, although that didn't last very long since she was, after all, a resident of a different country and jumping right into any kind of relationship wasn't what I needed to be doing at that moment in time. There was a third bedroom inside too, but I can't remember who lived in it. Dela built a skateboard ramp in the backyard, or had one built. I can't remember where exactly she got it. She didn't skate, but liked skater boys, or so I remember.

Before I moved out, I had started a new relationship with Jennie, who worked at Tower Records. I soon got a job next door at Tower Books, which was a good thing because my other job, delivering the Wall Street Journal at night, barely paid enough to cover my rent, let alone buy groceries or pay bills. Speaking of paying bills, there was another house down the street populated by Tower employees that everyone referred to as "The Cave" because nobody ever payed the electricity bill.

It was during this time that Jennie almost died in a car accident after she got hit on the freeway by a Coca Cola truck (the first paramedics on the scene actually thought she was dead). Her car was a rattletrap with its hood held down by a bungee cord, and I seem to remember it was the steering wheel suddenly no longer working that caused her to spin into the path of the truck. She spent some time in the hospital, and emerged from the other end of the experience with a case of post-traumatic stress which gradually led to her reevaluating her whole life. She went on to become a lawyer, going to UC Berkeley and then Harvard. Again, bad experiences often result in good changes. I'm still friends with her (at least via Facebook). The last time I saw her was when she came to my wedding.

This living arrangement fell apart when Dela and Jeff had a falling out. I can't remember exactly what caused it, but it ended up being Dela against the rest of us (including Jennie, who didn't technically live there, but loved a good fight). We ended up all moving out, leaving Dela there by herself.

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