Musing on Musing

I just have to say something about this reminiscing stuff. I'm a bit of a softie emotionally, and this can be kind of tough! At least this time period I'm writing about is so far back, I don't have any feelings that I'm still attached to -  but in the past few months, more recent history has arisen that does. And I've been pondering about it all, musing on my musings. Although I can look back and know that the choices I made in those years were made without the knowledge and wisdom I now have, what was I thinking? What genetic predisposition does someone have to have to make safe and smart choices versus adventurous and maybe foolish ones? I guess some of us, like me,  just have to live on some edge...Do I really want to know what's on the other side or always feel the thrill of the chance of fate? I like the edge better than the same old same old. Take risks and accept the consequences, how much fun can life be?

Next post will be back to Musing on a Former Life, now that I have my computer back and have a former roommate's (David Melville)  permission to write about him. It will be called "The Oldest & the Youngest Take Out the Trash" a story of learning to live with other people.

Blogger Award Special Post

My only follower, Perri at Lesser Apricots has graciously awarded me with a blogger award which I am thinking means I need to share with you readers (whoever you might be) 7 things about myself in my blog. (Correct me if I'm wrong Perri.)

1) I always match my socks and underwear to my outfit if I can, if I can't match then I go neutral light or dark.

2) When I'm excited and happy my childhood Connecticut Long Island sounding accent dominates my speech over the Boston accent aquired in my adult life.

3) I named my current cat Psyche because it means soul in Greek and she is the  closest to a soulmate relationship I've had in my life so far.

4) I have had many jobs but have never felt as comfortable and respected for myself and my contribution as I do in my current job at Seaport Academy.

5) I love being female and all the fun stuff that goes along with it, hair styling, make-up, jewelry, smelly stuff, clothes, clothes and more clothes...and shoes too!

6) I always have at least four to five books on my bedside table. The two tarot books have been a fixture and a daily practice for over a year now, in addition I have one fiction, one non-fiction, and sometimes an additional spiritual book.



7) I started this blog as a way to start writing about my experiences in the South End when I was a young woman because I have stories to tell just aching to come out, and I always have to have something to work on to stretch myself to learn how to do something new and grow my brain.

Thanks for reading this any of you who read Perri's blog. And thanks to my friends on Facebook who might be reading it too. I guess I am an official member of the blogger community now!

Musica de la Noche

View from Villa Victoria & Tremont end of Upton St.

My first night in the house was one of those hot summer nights when you really wish you didn't live in the city. The temperature inside was the same eighty-two degrees it was outside at equal humidity. Of course I'd moved in on the hottest day of the year. I got the room all set up with my meager but precious belongings, and went downstairs to shower. When I got back upstairs and into bed, I threw off the covers and arranged my curtain to make the most of the whatever air might move across my bed and so to have some modicum of modesty from being viewed by the neighbors.

Then the music began...the Latin beat I'd heard in the shower, laughter, party noise, all in Spanish which I recognized from my language classes in high school. I had grown up insulated and unaware of the lifestyles and cultures of other nationalities. I was very much a small town white girl who was lying there soaking in the foreign sounds of these people who were having such a good time singing and playing music on the sidewalks of the city on this hot summer night. It was my first exposure to salsa music and the immigrant language of the inner city. That was my first cultural night music, musica de la noche, music of the night. The other night music, music of the house, had nothing to do with the neighbors but everything to do with the residents and the location of the bedrooms in relation to the common spaces.
 
 My first room at Upton St. was at the top of the stairs, one flight up from the main entry to the house. The 8 by 8 foot room shared one wall with the living room. Typical of Victorian row houses, the door was larger than modern construction and was topped by a glass transom to allow air flow through the building. The rest of the entry wall was shared with the smaller than closet sized toilet to the immediate left of  the bedroom door. The toilet was tucked so tightly into the space under the eaves that to use it one had to turn around and face out, and then sit - before closing the door. Even then, tall people's knees, hit the door. Guys couldn't quite get in close enough to pee without cranial and eave connection. Better to stand in the doorway. The main bathroom was one flight down, directly under my room. To the right of the entry door, across from the water closet, was the living room for the group of six permanent roommates and their various overnight guests. Directly across from the door when entering the bed room was a twin platform bed "built-in" under the window. It was really just a mattress on a piece of plywood mounted on some kind of jury-rigged system of wooden boxes. The window was huge, taking up most of the wall space over the bed. It was the size of a twin mattress as it took the width of the Indian print spread I hung on it to cover it and the same covering was the bedspread on the bed, (domestic goddess at a young age). This was always the first room to be moved into and out of in the house. Not the best place to be for the underlying reason of the room's location in the house. This bedroom was filled with the sounds of the night.

 That first night, after waking up twice to the sound of peeing and flushing of the toilet out side my bedroom door, I realized I was in for more night music than just that of the Puerto-Ricans from the Villa Victoria housing behind Upton St.. Because of the bathroom locations, the four guys who had bedrooms on the top floor, used the most convenient one, only one flight down instead of two, the one outside my room. Because the room was so small, no-one ever closed the door, so the sound was exacerbated like a small echo chamber. It sounded so close as if I were standing right there along side him. That night was just the beginning of the revelations of the Upton St crew's repertoire of night music.

Upton St residents at number 36 in 1977 were typical young people of the times. We were post "hippies" and pre "me", some called us the lost generation. But what we knew about ourselves was that we were free spirits and we liked to party. Parties were part of our lives and happened regularly - planned and impromptu. Many started when someone brought people home from somewhere else or even just invited a date home for the night. The stairways, bathrooms, kitchen and living room were rarely vacant of any person. Someone was always wondering around, or sleeping around. And I could hear it all from the best room in the house for not sleeping. Night music was party music, and party people rarely sleep.

The night music was the reason that as soon as I could, I moved across the hall to the bedroom on the front of the house near the kitchen. Then at least I could listen to my own radio and not have to hear the competing beats of rock music and salsa. And more importantly, not feel like I was standing with the guys at a urinal most of the evening. The experience was lasting as I never again picked a room next to the bathroom in a house shared with other people, and I always walk the neighborhood, both day and night to check it out. Always best to know what sounds one will hear in the night.

Audition Day

Act 1 Scene 1

I went to the house at 36 Upton St. in the South End one sunny afternoon to meet a couple of the roommates to be interviewed to live there.  The experience felt like going to audition for a part - little did I know then how poignant that was to be. Since I was one of those kids always last to be picked for games in gym, I was accustomed to rejection and was mentally preparing myself, expecting a no, that there would be something wrong with me. My heart pounded and my hands were clammy wet with nervousness.  My brain was full of streaming negative thoughts of not being good enough, smart enough, pretty enough...on and on ad nauseam. I remember my knees knocking as I climbed the stairs of the front stoop and realizing that there was no handrail. Oh, yes, it was there - but not for anyone taller than five feet, too far away from my fingers. I waited a long time at the front door before someone came down from upstairs to let me in. No buzzer in this house, it had not been modernized in many years.  A guy about 30 with a full beard opened the door, introduced himself, and invited me to follow him up the stairs. The curving banister from the front entryway was loose and sticky over the many coats of worn paint. Trying hard not to hold onto the sticky banister,  I followed him up the stairs to the third floor and across the landing into the front room with curved bow windows facing the street - the group's kitchen.

There was one other guy and a woman sitting at the table in front of the bare windows. The environment was unlike anything I'd experienced before, like a scene from Maupin's "Tales of the City" but in Boston instead of San Francisco. I was soaking it in like a sponge as it felt strangely foreign and exciting, I wanted to drink it all in at once, slurp it up. This was it, finally somewhere where I could fit it. Suddenly I realized these people were talking to me and I switched from space cadet to attentive in a millisecond. In that moment, I would say anything for their approval of me, I so desperately wanted to be there. The guy with the beard was an actor from New York City, the woman was a ballerina in training at the Boston Ballet in the Cyclorama building across Tremont St., and the other guy was a waiter downtown. They told me about the other people who lived there that were working or out of town at the moment: a guy from Ipswich who was in a mime troupe, another ballerina who was taking the place of the woman who was interviewing, and a gay man who was an artist. The actor was the oldest at 30 and the rest ranged in age lower into their twenties, I would be the youngest at nineteen. They wanted to know what I did to make money, what my daily habits were, had I lived with other people before, could I provide references etc.etc. Amazingly, they seemed to like me. They asked if I wanted to live there? After a tour, despite the disarray of the place, I said yes. I couldn't wait to be a part of this bohemian world. To be with people who had real opinions, who didn't just repeat what other people said,  who wanted to live like this for the freedom of it, the realness and grittiness of life, who didn't just live life to make money but to do what they wanted to do, to be creative, to express, and to become: I said yes. I was a part of this, I got the part.

Getting to 36 Upton St.

I'd been in the Boston area for about six months (via Willimantic, CT en route to California, but that's a story for another time.) Having lived in Brighton in a roach infested rooming house, and then with an insane drunken young married couple and their kid and dog, I needed a new place to live. I was a naive nineteen year old girl who had been living away from home for two years already, a late baby boomer disappointed to not have been a teenager in the "Peace and Love 60's", a stubborn survivor incapable of admitting to anyone that I could not take care of myself. I was looking for a communal type living situation that I could afford. I had saved $100 babysitting my roommates kid, and was going back to college at Northeastern in a few months. After a number of false starts and awkward interviews to be other people's roommates, (I was extremely self conscious and projected false bravado to protect my insecurities) I landed an interview in the South End with a group of people that sounded promising. The room was only $75 a month, I could walk to Northeastern - 36 Upton St. The place, and the people I would meet and become involved with, would profoundly influence me and set the stage for the rest of my life.