For no reason at all.

i am here to tell you about my first apartment.

It was on Dohr Street, in South Berkeley. Number 2950, apartment L. Top floor of three, with outdoor-stairway access. My best friend at the time, J, and i, both needed to find a place. She was looking for new digs, and i was moving out of my mom's house for the first time at the ripe old age of eighteen. We quickly found a place that was cheap enough ($750), and moved right in. One of the bedrooms was bigger than the other, and for some reason i let J have it. My little room only had one window, north-facing, and it was high up and slid open to one side, like a bus window. There was a weird vibe in that room, too, that i always attributed to a ghost; it felt as though someone had died in it not too long before, and probably an old woman. My bedroom door would never latch shut properly, so i always had to haul a giant pillar candle in front of it when i wanted privacy (which was often). Because i have an obsessive need for decoration, the walls were quickly adorned with postcards, drawings, and calendar pages from years past: butterflies, Dalí, Man Ray, Erte. We bought a bunch of "new apartment-stuff" at Target –silverware, garbage can, ice cube trays, shower curtain, etc.– and we were off.

The bathtub in the cramped bathroom was horrendously pocked and rusted, but i made up for it by sneaking some of J's clove-scented body wash from time to time. i have cried, cut someone else's hair, and done lines of coke in that minuscule bathroom (sorry, mom!). The tub would clog once a month or so, and we would have to plunger it back to health. Good times.

The kitchen was a pea green-and-salmon affair, dated beyond belief– which would have been okay, actually, if there hadn't been a permanent layer of grease and dust on everything. J worked at a coffee shop and always brought home tea and coffee for me– what a pal. She often cooked, while i subsisted 90% of the time on tea and toast. Once she even made a vast, amazing feast of gyoza, and many a time we would simply barbecue fish out on the teensy back porch, smothering the fillets in lemon and then gobbling them down far too quickly... (From back there, you could see a water tower to the West; it was so alien to me, since i had always associated those with small-town hamlets in Iowa or Nebraska.) Beer was usually present, although eventually J and i would drink vodka-crans every night for months on end. Our temporary (read: year-long) roommate M would make a huge pot of his signature refried beans once every two months or so, which was not an event to be missed. Once, the tap on our kitchen sink just came plum off when someone turned it on, spraying water absolutely everywhere. Our scumbag landlord (whose first name was 'Stirling'), tried to tell us that it was because we had "too many parties" – it's as if he thought people were taking turns standing at the sink, turning the faucet on, and off; on, and off.

J had a mesmerizing octagonal aquarium in the living room, which she kept stocked with interesting fish and plants, some of which didn't always co-exist peaceably: fish would nip at other fish, or tear apart the rare marsh plant she'd just brought home in a bag that very afternoon. It was a constant battle to keep things friendly in there, but well-worth the upkeep for the amount of pleasure it gave our numerous stoner friends. Our roof would leak a lot during the rainy season, so pots and pans would have to be placed in the hallway, or on the arm of the couch. We had a square-shaped fan that we placed in the window, backwards, so that when one sat near it and smoked a cigarette, you could blow the offending plume right outside. You could see the Berkeley hills from that big front window, actually, which was probably the best feature of the apartment. i never once regretted living there, even when our downstairs neighbor's son shot himself in the hand and i came home from work to an eerily empty neighborhood and a pool of blood on their landing. One summer day in particular, i can remember sitting on the top step with the front door open, smoking a cigarette and listening to some Jimi Hendrix song ('Castles Made of Sand'?) from inside. Wouldn't trade that small moment for anything.

Eventually i met Nat, and he would come over at 7:30 in the morning, right after he'd get off work (night-auditor at a hotel), and just as i was getting up for mine. We would smoke together as i drank a cup of coffee, sitting quietly-as-can-be on that front step while the blue world around us began to waken. He would drift off to sleep in my bed while i finished getting ready for work, and i would kiss him goodbye, and goodnight. My morning walk to the art store (where i was first a cashier, then an accountant) took me past the 'shell house':


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while i daydreamed about my magical boy and listened to PJ Harvey (Dry), Bauhaus (Mask), Björk (Homogenic), and the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club. i was 20, and life was good. Sometimes that feels a lot farther away than just ten years.

In the evening, i would come home to the large, glittered "L" on our front door (a gift from a friend) and find a note from Nat, or, more rarely, find him still there, waiting for me in my room. i fell in love with him in that apartment, during those early evening hours, when no one else was home and he would play the violin for me or read me Murakami stories. Later, through the big front window, i would watch him pedal away in his his baggy green sweater, with his combat boots and tousled dark brown hair, and feel completely made of light. He used to call that place, and still does, "Sweet Dohr Street".