My Life, a Four Letter Word by Dolores Deluce

Author:Dolores Deluce [Deluce, Dolores]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoir, Retail
ISBN: 9780615826264
Amazon: 0615826261
Publisher: Double Delinquent Press
Published: 2013-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

24. SHOW HOME

It couldn’t have happened any faster or better if my Fairy Godmother had shown up and waved her magic wand. In less than two weeks, I found a four-bedroom railroad flat close to the top of the hill at Frederick on Clayton Street in the Haight Ashbury district. It was two blocks from Haight Street and four from Golden Gate Park. My flat was the middle apartment in a three-story Victorian, with the Robinsons, my landlords, below, and a few black jazz musicians who silently came and went above.

Mr. and Mrs. Robinson and their two daughters were a working-class African American family who had a great tolerance for the crazy kids who multiplied like cockroaches over their heads. Easygoing Mr. Robinson spent his days drinking Ripple wine and hanging on the stoop, while Mrs. Robinson, a respectable church lady, ran the show in style, coming and going in her fancy red Pontiac convertible with her name and astrological sign, Dorothy Sagittarius, painted in gold lettering on the side door. Her youngest daughter, Lisa, was the same age as Viva, and Dorothy Sag and her teenage daughter, Vanessa, served as convenient babysitters.

When I put out an invitation to my Venice neighbor, Jimmy Evans, to join me up north, he gave up his apartment on Pacific Avenue next to the original Gold’s Gym. Jimmy, a slight, short blonde with long hair, had grown weary of being called “Little Man” or “Lady” by his larger-than-life neighbors from Gold’s (the gorillas in the sand, as we called them) who came and went from the gym to the beach.

It was during this same year that the homosexuals of Venice were experiencing an escalation in police brutality. The LAPD was doing their part to sweep the beach clean of undesirables to make way for the city planner’s new gentrified Venice of today. My friend, Rob Weiss, had been beaten by the cops as he walked home alone, minding his own business after leaving the Pink Elephant, a gay bar on Main Street. The Pink Elephant and The Rooster Fish, the other gay bar in Venice had reported similar events. This harassment prompted a mass migration of gays to San Francisco.

Less than a week after Jimmy moved into our new digs, he met Marshall Reiner, an elfish, Pan-like, Jewish, East-coast transplant who was looking for a place to live. Marshall, short with dark curly hair, was a perfect blend of East Coast Jew and Hindu Mahatma. Marshall was Woody Allen on Quaaludes—neurotic and laid-back at the same time, and I embraced him, complications and all. Whenever Marshall got too stoned, he’d get extremely anxious and crawl into my bed.

“Girl, please tell me I’m okay, I’m not a failure, am I?” Marshall asked.

I’d put my arms around him and gently spoon him and say, “Honey you’re fine. Just take some deep breaths. You’ll be even better after you take a little nap.”

“Thanks girl, what would I do without you? You’re my barometer.”

Basically, Marshall was asking me to be a loving mother, so my mothering skills expanded beyond the immediate needs of my daughter.

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