The real Norma, a few years later.
I made two new friends in that short period who would change my life, and began a part time job as doorman for the bands that played at the Plough, twice a week, the off nights, Wednesdays and Thursdays so I rarely made more than ten dollars a shift. But I enjoyed the work and the bands liked me because, unlike other doormen who would just turn people away if they didn’t have the cover charge, (usually a few dollars) I would bargain, as most of our clientele were poor but had drugs. So at the end of shift, besides the money I collected I would give the band a whole potpourri of joints and pills and sometimes little bags of powders, which they greatly appreciated.
Owen Murphy, a tall, talkative, sometimes crazy Irishman with a strong accent had moved into the apartment across the hall and we became good friends, that is, whenever we found ourselves in the same room together. We were two mutually understanding, empathetic souls in a sea of strangers. I wrote a poem about his wild character soon after meeting him and read it to him. A few months later he hooked up with Suzanne and she moved in with him there, where they had a very stormy and loud love-hate relationship for several years.
One strange fluke of fate, one of many strange coincidences that happened to me, I’d met him once before and only once, about five months earlier on a rainy February night at the Plough. It was near closing time and I wanted to get to Suzanne’s for our one night together, some eight blocks away. The two of us were the last patrons there. I didn’t know him but we were finishing off our beers standing next to each other at the bar. I asked if he had a car and could give me a short ride as it was really pouring down. He agreed and dropped me off at her doorstep, waiting to see if I would get in. He didn’t know her at the time or that she’d be the woman of his life a year later. She opened the door for me and he pulled away, looking at us. A case of meetings barely missed.
But at this time he had just moved in alone across the hall, leaving his wife Cora, a beauty, a five foot tall Filipino woman with long straight black hair reaching to her hips. She was a schoolteacher and they had a six-year-old son, Breeze, an unusually smart and lively boy whom I’d play with sometimes when Owen had him.
I remember one day I was explaining to Breeze the pleasures of fishing, a la Izaak Walton. To demonstrate my points, we went out back, cut off two sticks from the tree next door, whittled them into poles, tied on strings and from the second story bay window overhanging the busy street, we pretended we were fishing and that the passing people on the sidewalk were big fish. Imagination and children make for the most delightful pastimes. Breeze was delighted. After that day his father was glad to let us play together. Even his mother once thanked me for the ‘education’ as she called it.
An even more life changing encounter took place on one of those hot August nights right in front of the Starry Plough, right where Breeze and I had been fishing. It was a Friday evening but still early. The Plough had no parking for customers, only street parking. There were a few spots on Shattuck avenue right by the entrance but most had to settle for the side streets. That section of Shattuck was a dangerous spot at night, with many poor, black youths roaming along it. It was only a few blocks north of where I would say the real ghetto began, in Oakland. I lived on Prince street and the street next to it, Woolsey, for over two years and can honestly say I only ventured in that direction, day or night, a few times. There was nothing that way besides one great barbecue restaurant featuring ribs, two blocks away. The rest was all ghetto and crime.
So on this fine evening as I’m strolling downstairs to the bar, just about twilight, I notice a beat up, red, 1967 Barracuda parked nearest the entrance, right under a streetlight. The car had the large bubble shaped rear window. Inside the window and easy to see is a little four or five year old girl curled up on some blankets, sleeping. Now as to degrees of impropriety and danger this seemed to me to be a shocking example. I stepped into the bar, there were only about ten patrons inside as it was still early, and said in a loud voice: ‘Whose kid is that in the car outside?’
A tall, slender blond with long curly hair stepped forward. In her very southern accent she told me her name was Norma Baker. She told me she was from Marin, loved the band that was to play that night, loved dancing, couldn’t find a babysitter and was going to check on her daughter every few minutes.
I introduced myself, told her I lived right upstairs and that I had a much better solution. In a few minutes we were tucking the child in a bed. Norma was introduced to Bones and May, who were more than happy to babysit. Norma got to dance to her heart’s content, worry free, through the last set. After that she came upstairs to gather her daughter and thank us, and there she met Kim, sitting on the couch, having dropped by a few minutes earlier. She sat down with us and within two hours of warm conversation she was smitten by Kim’s charms and in love. Kim himself was not a little bit taken by her looks and genteel, southern manners and accent, her very long shapely legs, (she was six feet tall) and glad to exchange numbers and meet again, soon. Kim had a number of pet phrases he would use frequently and after she left I remember him saying: ‘the plot thickens and sickens’.
I’m pretty sure that Kim didn’t fall in love with women, from the large number I saw him go through. But he gave certain attractive ones a favored status and let them monogamously take care of him for a while. He was always honest and open in expressing his feelings, what they might expect of him, the degrees of his attachment, and charming and kind while it lasted. So it wasn’t a bad bargain or a sad one for them until the day he left. This didn’t happen with Norma for the next year and a half. Perhaps it was Kim’s world record in partnerships. He sometimes referred to himself as a ‘gigolo’.
At this juncture he still had a part time carpentry job remodeling a bar on Shattuck avenue and she worked at a copy center at Larkspur landing in Marin, living in Fairfax. So they were only weekend warriors at first, she coming over the San Rafael bridge to whisk him away to her house for the weekend, returning him to us in Berkeley for the week. None of us had cars.
