Inspired by the recent prompt about being a good neighbor, I’ve been reflecting this week on some of my past living situations. Today’s entry concerns the room I rented during my second year in Berkeley.
My first year I lived in the International House dorm, but I couldn’t stay there over the summer, and so sublet a room from a grad school colleague in a house on Piedmont. She had an interesting living history, also; at one point the first semester she was living in her car, and a few years later she would rent a room from my wife and me. We seemed to be good friends (she may be the only pregnant woman whose baby I ever felt kick), but I’ve completely lost track of her.
Of course as autumn approached the sublet would be coming to an end and I needed to find another place to stay for the new school year. I started looking early, but pickings, as they say, were slim. One rental wasn’t even a room; it was a part of a room curtained off with a sheet. The woman renting her space had a glum-looking son who didn’t seem to like the idea of her opening the space up to boarders, and quite frankly I didn’t like it either.
I did finally alight in a room south of the Berkeley campus. A woman had a room she would sublet to a grad student (even though her lease forbid it). She made a lot of trouble for her landlord, and often suggested that he might retaliate by burning the building down. This did not make me feel secure.
She was also quite the talker, and would appear in my doorway and expound upon her beliefs that Salieri had poisoned Mozart. She would go on at lengths about this and then turn her face to me but blink quickly while she’d say, “What do you think?” I believe she was my first introduction to people who attempt eye contact but flutter their eyes so much that you can’t actually make direct contact.
As a good tenant, I would often wash my dishes, pots, and pans after cooking and eating. She would then stand in the doorway of the kitchen, watch me, and say, “I feel guilty when you clean up. I think I should be doing more cleaning.” Personally I didn’t care if she did or not; I wasn’t trying to induce guilt; I was just doing what I thought was expected and the right thing.
She had a friend who would come to visit her, and they’d talk energetically about something, often Mozart and Salieri. I didn’t listen in, but one night the friend engaged me in their conversation. When they left, my landlady said, “Do you think [my friend] is male or female?” I thought this was an odd question, but said, “Male.” “[They] wondered if you would think so. He was projecting his male persona tonight.” Okay; I had no idea what this meant at the time. I did know that the friend gave off some odd electrical aura; they would stand next to my answering machine (which I brought to the apartment for our use) and it would start clicking and whirring and trying to work and then click off. No one was calling, it wasn’t recording, but it seemed to be reacting to…something.
The other strong memory I have of this woman was her smoking. Like a chimney, as the cliche goes. In the morning she would go off to work. Her car was parked right outside my window, so she’d get in, light a cigarette, and then start the car (which seemed in need of a new muffler). Daily, regardless of the weather and temperature, she warmed up the car for the length/duration of that cigarette. Of course, the exhaust would permeate my room, and so I never really needed to set an alarm.
For my commute I had bought a used bike, and would pedal uphill to campus, and then coast back down in the evening, which was great fun, and I miss cycling actually. A major temptation along the way was a Brazilian sandwich shop, and I often stopped there for my dinner. It was better than inducing guilt by cooking and then doing dishes.
I moved out in January or February, getting an apartment in Albany to await my girlfriend/later wife moving out for a postdoc position in March. I have to say it was a great relief to my psyche and my lungs to vacate that place.
The only other time I ever saw her again came a few months later. My girlfriend had been concerned that I was living with some sexy siren in this shared apartment, and wanted to meet her. My ex-landlady had said she wanted to meet my girlfriend someday, and so we stopped by. My girlfriend experienced great relief to find an earth mother type and not what would later be termed a MILF.
MUSOFYR 