houses through bulletin boards, as I had, or through friends, or political organizations, or underground streams of information. They coexisted, often uneasily, with houses belonging to mostly working-class neighbors. People who took care of their yards, who repaired their railings, who had combination screens and storm windows, who kept their doors locked at night.
Not us. The door stood open round the clock. Music blared into the street from the windows—Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Pablo Casals, the Stones, Julian Bream, the Beatles, Brahms, Janis Joplin.
Bikes were parked all over the porch and the scrubby front yard.
Unlocked, it goes without saying.
I lived that summer like a happy dream. I worked late at the blues club every night and often stayed up several hours later than that, talking to one or another of my housemates. Slowly, I felt, I came to know them all better than I’d ever known Ted, or anyone, in my other life.
The house generally rose late through those summer months—no one but Sara had normal working hours—and often two or three of us did something together in the daytime. Drove to Singing Beach, took a picnic and a Frisbee down to the river. On a rainy day, we went to the movies. Or played long, cutthroat games of Scrabble in the living room, with the windows open to the porch and the steady racket of the rain on the porch roof or dripping down on the leaves of the leggy lilac bushes.
Nearly every weekend through the summer we had a party.
remember a moment at one of them when the living room was so crowded with people—people someone knew or had brought along, people who’d just heard the noise and wandered in—that the whole room seemed to move up and down as one, a slow stoned humping to “Go Ask Alice.” I felt I had lost myself in it, lost that embarrassed sense of how I looked, how I seemed to others, that earlier I would have said was a permanent part of who I was.
There were six other members of the house. Duncan was a g utarist. He was tall, elegant. Often he seemed bored by all of us.
He had a girlfriend on the West Coast, an actress. Two of her publicity shots were tacked on the wall beside his bed. In them, her mouth with its shiny dark lips was open and her eyelids were lowered thickly, as though she were about to sneeze. I had trouble believing this was person anyone would know, but Duncan spoke of her easily, casually, as though she were living among us too. Sheree.
He was studying composition at Berklee. He made his living giving music lessons and playing nightly in a Spanish restaurant—flamenco and, occasionally, when he could get away with it, classical pieces. He had a small, thin mustache. He reminded me of a generic movie star of the forties, handsome and rakish. I actually spent a lot of time with him, because he and I generally arrived home at almost the same late hour, usually wound up from work and not ready for bed. But he was so hard to talk to that I was always glad when someone else was awake, too, and the conversation could be more relaxed. I remember one night I saw him approaching me from the opposite end of the block as I was coming home, a tall, dark shape carrying a guitar case. I knew, even from a great distance, who it was, and the pressing question for me became, At what point do I call out a greeting? In the end, I didn’t, for fear he’d be somehow offended, or contemptuous. We actually turned into the driveway simultaneously and had begun to walk up it toward the lighted house before I said, “Good night?” He shrugged in response. I didn’t much like Duncan, he made so little effort socially.
When I heard him play, though, my thinking about him shifted entirely.
“That’s really what it was with me too,” Dana confessed to me. We were sitting in the kitchen very late one night, talking.
She had waited up for me after work. Duncan had come home late, and sat with us for a beer, then gone upstairs to call Sheree,
Not us. The door stood open round the clock. Music blared into the street from the windows—Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Pablo Casals, the Stones, Julian Bream, the Beatles, Brahms, Janis Joplin.
Bikes were parked all over the porch and the scrubby front yard.
Unlocked, it goes without saying.
I lived that summer like a happy dream. I worked late at the blues club every night and often stayed up several hours later than that, talking to one or another of my housemates. Slowly, I felt, I came to know them all better than I’d ever known Ted, or anyone, in my other life.
The house generally rose late through those summer months—no one but Sara had normal working hours—and often two or three of us did something together in the daytime. Drove to Singing Beach, took a picnic and a Frisbee down to the river. On a rainy day, we went to the movies. Or played long, cutthroat games of Scrabble in the living room, with the windows open to the porch and the steady racket of the rain on the porch roof or dripping down on the leaves of the leggy lilac bushes.
Nearly every weekend through the summer we had a party.
remember a moment at one of them when the living room was so crowded with people—people someone knew or had brought along, people who’d just heard the noise and wandered in—that the whole room seemed to move up and down as one, a slow stoned humping to “Go Ask Alice.” I felt I had lost myself in it, lost that embarrassed sense of how I looked, how I seemed to others, that earlier I would have said was a permanent part of who I was.
There were six other members of the house. Duncan was a g utarist. He was tall, elegant. Often he seemed bored by all of us.
He had a girlfriend on the West Coast, an actress. Two of her publicity shots were tacked on the wall beside his bed. In them, her mouth with its shiny dark lips was open and her eyelids were lowered thickly, as though she were about to sneeze. I had trouble believing this was person anyone would know, but Duncan spoke of her easily, casually, as though she were living among us too. Sheree.
He was studying composition at Berklee. He made his living giving music lessons and playing nightly in a Spanish restaurant—flamenco and, occasionally, when he could get away with it, classical pieces. He had a small, thin mustache. He reminded me of a generic movie star of the forties, handsome and rakish. I actually spent a lot of time with him, because he and I generally arrived home at almost the same late hour, usually wound up from work and not ready for bed. But he was so hard to talk to that I was always glad when someone else was awake, too, and the conversation could be more relaxed. I remember one night I saw him approaching me from the opposite end of the block as I was coming home, a tall, dark shape carrying a guitar case. I knew, even from a great distance, who it was, and the pressing question for me became, At what point do I call out a greeting? In the end, I didn’t, for fear he’d be somehow offended, or contemptuous. We actually turned into the driveway simultaneously and had begun to walk up it toward the lighted house before I said, “Good night?” He shrugged in response. I didn’t much like Duncan, he made so little effort socially.
When I heard him play, though, my thinking about him shifted entirely.
“That’s really what it was with me too,” Dana confessed to me. We were sitting in the kitchen very late one night, talking.
She had waited up for me after work. Duncan had come home late, and sat with us for a beer, then gone upstairs to call Sheree,
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