Better Than Dead

 

 

That’s the name of this pen and ink drawing, done by my friend, Francesca, back when she and my roommates-at-the-time shared a studio in Venice, California. It’s a fairly accurate portrait, in an abstract way. Back then, I had one of those long, very curly perms. I loved my hair like that, but it was such a commitment of salon time to keep it up because my hair is naturally fine and string straight (all except for one mutant wave at the back of my head). Also, those perms really damaged my hair. So I didn’t keep it for long and I have hardly any pictures of me like that. Certainly none that I’ve scanned.

I did receive quite a bit of positive male attention with that hair, though. Lynn and I spent many weekend nights going to the Whisky à GoGo on the Sunset Strip, Madame Wong’s in Chinatown, and many other places of the rocking and the rolling variety. Great fun and we saw a number of good bands. Later, I went the full punk treatment, with hair only an inch long except for one long trailing bit of hair down my back and a little crest on the crown of my head. The boys were not quite as fond of that haircut. In fact, some of them stopped talking to me, assuming I’d lost interest in boys. It’s amazing what some people will assume on scant evidence. C’est la guerre, c’est l’amour. I don’t even have a pen and ink drawing of me with that haircut. I was quite camera averse in those days. Carl moved in with us about this time, which confused the upstairs neighbors a great deal. They wondered if he was gay, but they also wondered about the sleeping arrangements because…only two bedrooms. We didn’t clarify things to straighten out their rumpled assumptions. Not their business. We found the whole thing rather funny.

Also accurate about this portrait is the worried look on my face. I suspect I looked like that quite a lot in those days. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But I don’t think I’ll talk about the worst of times. Maybe in another post. Maybe not. When I look at this drawing, I tend to only remember the good times, the laughs, to feel warm inside.

This post is really about where we lived.

Lynn and Carl and I lived in a two bedroom, two bath ground floor duplex on 18th Avenue in Venice, between Pacific Avenue and Speedway. This is the heart of the Venice Boardwalk territory, a favorite tourist trap. “World Famous” Muscle Beach was right at the end of 18th, just across Speedway, on Ocean Front Walk. We used to amble down to the Sidewalk Café for “breakfast” on the weekends, generally at around about two in the afternoon. It was right next door to Small World Books, one of the finest independent bookstores around. It’s still there, though I have no idea whether it’s still as good. I haven’t been there in years, chiefly because the old neighborhood has become a chore to park in. (See above about the tourists.)

It was always a funky, fun, free-spirited neighborhood, with alliteration or without. It’s subsequently become something of a zoo. We moved out just as the zooification reached the boiling point. I still miss it sometimes, even though I know that time and place don’t exist anymore. We had a nice little backyard with an enormous bougainvillea bower. Quite a lovely spot to have morning coffee or lunch and feel secluded from the tightly packed neighbors on either side (separated by only narrow walkways) and busy Pacific Avenue two doors east of us.

Across the little back yard a garage had been converted to a studio. When we first moved in, the fellow who lived upstairs used it as his painting studio. He was truly gifted. Lynn had been in art classes with him at Venice High. He and his wife had a baby, so they moved to a house. Some New Yorkers, out west to make it big in Show Business, moved in. The less said about them the better. They made it clear they thought California like living in a Third World country (their exact phrase), and all Californians uneducated boobs (not actually spoken in the presence of we native Californians but heavily implied by attitude). There, I’ve said too much already.

Fortunately, I’ve known other New Yorkers and know these folks were not typical.

The landlord then rented the studio to a guy who…well, we could never figure out exactly what he did in there. He appeared to use it as an office, trying to get some dubious business off the ground, but what I chiefly remember of him was that he liked to walk around in a terry cloth Speedo which did absolutely nothing to hide his junk. He was quite proud of his junk. He didn’t have a bad body, very lean, but we got rather tired of having to look at it. Very proud of his junk, did I mention? We could never have coffee in the back yard under the bower if he was in the studio because he liked to stand in the doorway, flex his, uh, muscles, and chat us up.

But I have said too much about him as well. He cleared out of the studio after about a year under something of a cloud, I believe. Lynn and Carl queried the landlady about renting the space themselves along with a friend, Carl for his graphic design business, Lynn and Francesca for their painting. She agreed and they settled down in happy productivity.

I flailed around quite a lot with my writing at that time. That has to do with the worst of times which I will not be discussing in this post.

Meanwhile, the New Yorkers left in a huff, feeling unappreciated by Hollywood and desperate to return to civilization. Two party guys moved in upstairs, along with the extremely-vocal-during-sex girlfriend of one of them. We called him Thumper and her the Banshee.

But the less said about them and that the better.

On the other side of the narrow walkway on the eastern side, just outside my bedroom window, was another duplex: a side-by-side rather than an up-and-down. The little old lady who owned the property lived in the front unit and rented out the back. She really deserves a post of her own because she was a real character—not in a good way—and we all had plenty of run-ins with her. Early on Saturday mornings, I would hear the shuffle and slap of her slippers hurrying up the walkway to the back unit like a terrier after a rat, then her pounding on the door and calling out the name of the girl who lived there, ‘Li-SAAAAU!”

Few words adequately describe the nature of the sound of that second syllable, except maybe to say it rather resembled the noise a chicken makes when passing a really large egg. I still hear it echoing in the halls of my consciousness, and every time I hear the name Lisa I have to stop myself from imitating the sound. (Yes, even with you .) The woman would warble the poor girl’s name several times and if Lisa didn’t answer promptly, she’d use her key to let herself in. Lisa said one morning she even walked in on her in the shower.

I should note there are laws in California to prevent landlords from these kinds of abuses, but this woman didn’t acknowledge them, and Lisa was too nice to pursue legal recourse.

What was the old lady so frantic to find out on these morning raids? Lisa said it was always minor stuff like reminders that it was trash day, or not to use so much water with long showers, et al. Chiefly, she believed the woman just wanted some attention. Lisa took to leaving the chain on her door. The frustrated frenzy that resulted from the woman could be heard all over the neighborhood. And still might, I suspect, on nights when the moon is full and the fog curls into little old lady shaped wisps.

We lived on 18th Avenue for five years. Lynn and Carl decided to get married and moved to West Hollywood, I got another roommate, but that turned into a disaster. So I moved away to a little cottage in the back yard of someone else’s home. Lynn and Carl and I still reminisce about the nutty characters we knew in Venice, of the good times. And sometimes the bad, although memory tends to chip away at the hard ice of reality and remember the way the sun shines on the crystals. We remember the hilarious, and sometimes the frightening, the things in between. It was a time of growing up and gaining wisdom, of allowing ourselves the great luxury of folly, and learning nothing from out mistakes, except perhaps in retrospect. It was a season of Light, a season of Darkness. But most of all, it was a season of Friendship.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities