The Warehouse

I met many new people when I moved into the warehouse. It was a large building, two floors, in the flatlands and ghetto of Berkeley. All the other structures around it were run down houses or small businesses or other warehouses, a rather gray grid of streets a few blocks off ‘Ashby’ and ‘San Pablo avenue’ where the city resumed its rich life. This warehouse was different from all the others. The bottom floor was one huge workspace where some kind of fiberglass business went on, often filling the building with more than a hint of that smell. There were two sectioned off rooms on that floor, one where Bruno and Clair lived and another where Michelle and his crazy and pretty, nymphomaniac girlfriend lived. But the upstairs was a whole ‘L’ shaped hallway of large rooms, most of them (like mine) twenty by twenty feet square. There were two long bathrooms at one end with toilet stalls, sinks and showers. The big rooms were rented out to live in, 300$ a month, the smaller for less, all of them filled with the kind of young people who would rent such a living space, artists and bohemians and misfits, in other words, ‘a wild bunch’.

I inherited my room from John. He’d lived there about four months but couldn’t afford the rent (or the madness there). I’m not sure where he went next, probably back to his old ice cream truck. But soon after he found a great place, the upstairs, separate, unit of Mike H.’s very nice house (where Dale and I stayed). It was once Maggie’s house too, which she still revisited, moving back in for weeks and breaking up again with Mike, an extremely unusual arrangement. But Mike was such a nice guy he always took her back, for the sake of their beautiful, little girl. He charged John 150 $ a month rent, a giveaway, which John sometimes paid. Yet Mike, being much like me, often let John slide for months on end when he was broke. But Mike liked John, his always sparkling conversation and his company. He was a colorful addition to the house.

The first thing I did when I moved into the barren room, (except for one long couch and desk where John slept and doodled) was to build a loft on one side out of two by fours. The ceiling was eleven feet high, so the loft, at six feet, still had almost five feet of headroom. I built a steep stairway to it, boarded the walls with Sheetrock, threw a mattress in it and put a thick curtain across the entrance, so I’d have a dark place to crawl into and sleep and retire. The whole twenty-foot-long wall of my room facing the street below was glazed, louvered windows, starting at four feet high above the red brick walls (all the other walls were also brick), with crank handles to wind open each section, but letting in so much light you could only sleep at night, which I rarely did. So the loft was necessary. Jim had the same thing in the room right across the hallway, giving me the idea. Under my loft I built another desk, tying into the long worktable John had left, ‘L’ shaped. I lined up my books against their backs and had plenty of space for my notebooks and writing and a swivel chair on wheels to roll back and forth, a writer’s dream.

I had so much empty space there, we brought the poker table back. It was easy to pack in Steve’s truck with all the chairs. The one thing about games at Bones’ cottage, May always had to disappear on poker night, an inconvenience, so when I offered to take back the table it was instantly agreed. Besides, our poker crew loved a change of venue and this was an exotic one. On game night with my door always wide open, we’d get a whole flock of stoned, gawking spectators (the other residents), standing at the door, or just inside it, drawn by the loud laughter and marvelling at the view of such a strange sight. The only other feature of my room was the long couch and a long coffee table next to the windows.

The entries in my journals now switch, chameleon like, to a sort of director’s eye, filming long scenes in words, trying to capture the new characters that enter my life and the action of an unending party in a strange, new place.

Here’s a little prelude of what’s to come. Bored at Jim’s one night I sallied out:

“Thurs. 3 p.m. June 22nd,: Spent last night with John. S. at the warehouse. We talked from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. on a multitude of subjects and fairly well. At first we took on broad philosophical questions about art, how it sometimes achieves sublime heights, creates its own world that expands the mind with meaning and experience undreamt of before. We talked of consciousness and ignorance, whether conducive to happiness. I thought consciousness was mostly pain, and life mostly painful. Then we talked of his video-media interests, (he had a small video camera and wanted to make short movies. He directed one of me and Lindsey one night (seven months later) at our place with Dave. Dave wasn’t there but John was the only friend who ever dared visit us there. I began reading him great poems from my anthology to his mutual delight. I read well and beamed with enthusiasm. Then we talked of the shallowness of appearances yet how they affected us, of ‘punkers mutilating themselves just to be different. Then I expressed my disgust with modern poetry and hoped for a return to classical serenity and order…rejecting machines and the modern world, mentioned that we have infinitely finer things anyways…I marvelled at how all of us can see in one landscape painting a greatness that is clearly not in a hundred other almost identical paintings. Then we went to ‘Doggie Diner’ for hot dogs. (This was about a block away, on San Pablo ave. the only place to eat anywhere near. It had a huge plastic Dachshund head lit up at night. The food was terrible but cheap. Prostitutes hung out there in flocks after 1a.m. leaning in a row against the long counter, as if to say, take your pick).

               Doggie Diner at night, prostitute heaven as the cars cruise slowly by.

At 6 a.m. back to his room to look at the desk I might buy for thirty dollars. Then we talked of women and how I could easily be ruined by a beauty. He said he’d ruined seven, never one even approaching to hurting him and laughing at my fears. Yet he still didn’t convince me of the irrational forces of the flesh always lurking. Only circumstance will determine my fate. I proposed to draw up a ‘bohemian charter’ for a club. John cleaned 8–9 a.m. and I off to the Med. to work on charter for four hours, got half done, then dazed and talking to Bruce 1\2 hour, then back to Jim’s and sleep”.

Now for the complete plunge into drugs and decadence:

“June 29th, 3 p.m.: More adventures. Friday afternoon I changed the oil in my car and proceeded to the warehouse to see John. We drove to Martin’s but he wasn’t home. We drank beer in a nearby bar, re-checked M’s, still not there so back to warehouse. There through Rob (a very good modernist painter who lived in the room next door) we got what we wanted, and proceeded, with Jim coming over, to get high. Ten minutes later Bones calls and comes over and ten minutes after him a girl, a stranger, shows up at our door, ‘C’, good looking and a wild partier (as we find out later). We talk an hour or so, doing lines. She agrees to come to Bones later on where we all agree to join. (This was a time of another one of Bones’ breakups with May. She’d leave for weeks or a month, during which time Bones was heavily into partying and girl-scoring mode).

“We three (Bones and John and I) head off to Zan’s, (for more speed) John making us stop at Value Village on the way to buy a clean T-shirt to wear. He changes in the parking lot, then to Zan’s. 1 1\2 hours of fast talking between John and Joe (Zan’s hubby) about electronics, while we talk to Zan about anything, her business Adm. Classes, textbooks, studying etc. Then to Bones’ at 10:30. The girl arrives and Bones and John play guitars while I talk to her about books excitedly. Her parents collected them. She was also enthused and fun to talk with. We did lines and talked about drug adventures but somehow mentioned Butte, Montana. I mentioned the fantastic library there which I’d visited years before by a chance three-hour bus break on interstate 90. She tells me her grandparents were the ones to enrich it with those old volumes, being very rich. Small world.

“I was amazed at this revelation. It was in the middle of nowhere, an average sized library in an old, stone building in the center of town, but full of pulp fiction, (matching the minds of the inhabitants) except one section of beautiful, leather bound books, pre-1890, hundreds of them, all of them classics, many in Latin and Greek. I wondered at the time, 1980, how the hell they got there, in such an ignorant place, where no one could read them. And here was my answer.

She left at one a.m. for other friends. Then we three go to the Starry Plough, pretty high. At two a.m. we go back to Bones’. Dan (the Rev.) and a new girl in town tag along. More lines and we play and jam 2 ½ hours, I joining in a little with a ‘Stratocaster’ on analogue delay. Then we all sit and talk and fall quickly into a heavy conversation about sex and pornography, which the girl thinks is all bad, all five of us at first equally speaking, but after an hour or so the topic ever widening to possible reforms and ways of dealing with fear, molestation, public and private, the girl gets more excited. I get louder in the argument with her, about women in general, roles, a man’s place. I quote Veblen and she quotes Margaret Mead. Dan and Bones try to mediate but the argument stays reasonable, no ill will. She is a bit hyper, not following the gist of my arguments and always referring back to her own bad experiences and justified hate, and a desire for social revenge. I try to prove it’s a natural ‘ugly’ part of human nature, impossible to eradicate. But she wants an educational extirpation of it. My head was not that clear because I was trying to deal with the question in the broadest philosophical sense and some of my remarks caused shock and loud rebuttal. I ended up posing a few questions to baffle them. 8 a.m. we split up. Bones drives her and Dan home. Bones returns and tells me she liked my candidness. John and I walk to the flea market. I go to Jim’s, very burnt, and sleep for two hours. Now up again.

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