Mariposa St.

After our Clark St. living arrangement became deranged, Jeff and I ended up moving to nearby Mariposa St., along with Jennie and Jennie's friend Paul. The house on Mariposa St. was built in 1903, making it the oldest house in Mountain View, or so we were told (although the picture above was taken last weekend). This meant that it has survived both the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes. Jeff's friend, whose name I've forgotten, was the property manager, in return for which he either got free rent or a deal on rent in one of the apartments out back (which originally housed the "help", back when the house was the only one in the area). This friend also filled us in on the fact that a previous tenant (or perhaps the original one, as details are now hazy) blew her brains out inside one of the upstairs walk-in closets (the one in the room that Jennie and I ended up living in). The woman reportedly left a note downstairs warning her kids not to go upstairs, but they did, of course. Several people who stayed the night in the house said that it had creepy vibes, and that they had weird dreams. I never noticed anything like that myself, but then again I never do.

Jeff took over the master bedroom, and Paul lived downstairs. During our time there, a succession of other housemates came and went, many of them Tower employees (Josh and Tigger, at least). Paul ended up losing his job (he was the biggest procrastinator I've ever met) and stopped paying rent. Jennie dumped all of his stuff out front. The last time I saw Paul, he was on well on his way to becoming a woman, and now answers to "Pam".

I remember a girl getting assaulted in our front yard. We called 911, but by the time we got out into the yard, the perpetrator had vanished. The girl didn't really speak English, but fortunately one of the responding police officers spoke Spanish.

Here's what our room looked like. The pictures behind me were painted for an art class at SJSU.

A bookshelf and posters:

Inside the suicide closet:

I remember one of the neighbors calling the cops on Jeff because he was using one of the trees in the yard for crossbow target practice. She might have called because of all of the people coming and going as well. Once, Jeff invited a bunch of deadheads over, and when Jennie and I got home late one night, we stepped on several of them, perhaps harder than was warranted. The whole downstairs smelled of patchouli.

We had a couple of cats, Lolapaloozakersplat (Lola for short), and Shoggoth. We also adopted a poor crippled cat (one leg stood out at right angles to its body), but we had to return it when it started terrorizing Lola.

At some point, after Jennie and Jeff butted heads one time too many, Jeff moved out and my friend Wayne moved in, as did Stefany. Jeff's friend Danette also lived there for awhile. Jennie ended up getting into it with Wayne and Stefany as well, which by that time I'd realized was her pattern. They ended up moving out too. Since Jennie was planning on going to UC Berkeley, that left me as the only person remaining, which meant that I ended up having to clean out all of the crap left behind in the root cellar, which was a kind of out-of-sight-out-of-mind storage space. I seem to remember moving back in with my mom for a month or two until I'd sorted out a new place to live.

This was a great house, except for the fact that it was horribly hard to heat. I was almost as if there was no insulation. It might also been because the rooms were so large. The street was (and still is) a real mixture of nice homes and seedy apartment complexes. It was close to downtown, and not too far from Tower either. I think the rent for the entire house was around $1275.00, although my share of it was sometimes as low as $150.00 (Jennie and I split a $300.00 room).