the jack of hearts

the night that I met owen felt distinctly like autumn though it was the first blush of spring, as the leaves had inexplicably begun to fall in late february of 2004. I was packed like a pubescent sardine into a jetta full of girls stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on a friday on telegraph avenue in berkeley, listening to a liz phair mixtape, when an audible gasp of a mentionable decibel erupted from the front seat. taylor, resident loudmouthed redhead of the crew who supplied everyone else with a hoard of endless adderall pills as well as pretentious anecdotes, had spotted a prime specimen.

"oh... my god," she said, "ohmygod."

the god she was referring to was about 6'2", lanky and lean, with tousled dark brown locks protruding in a curly mop from underneath the brim of a trucker cap, wearing an amoeba records bag slung haphazardly across his shoulder. he walked with his moon colored eyes to the ground in a shuffling gait, and the brooding affect he embodied made my heart skip several beats. he had the essence of a young bob dylan incarnate, save for the stupid hipster hat.

taylor continued, "would you look at that."

rose answered without skipping a beat, shifting the gears of the car while it idled, "homo."

"no way," I said, "he can't be..."

"totally gay." rose said.

taylor protested, "but why! he looks like he could be into chicks."

"it would be such a waste." I observed wistfully, noticing the curvature of his perfect behind in tight blue jeans.

"he's too pretty, and he knows it." rose said, and as if on cue, the boy turned his head to meet our lascivious stares. it was true.

"fuck." taylor muttered, as we all awkwardly turned our heads to look ahead to abruptly curtail our collective gawking. I couldn't resist to immediately look back, which he graciously met with a lopsided smile, and I turned beet red right as the light turned green.

"flamer." affirmed rose. and with that, we were off on our adventure seeking. we arrived at le chateau co-op shortly after, which was much more of a shanty motel than a dormitory, and was rumored to house the most elaborate meth lab in the greater bay area in its basement. every corridor was dark and lined with nubbly, cheap nylon carpet that is commonly found in dentists offices or mobile homes and littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. each sheetrock wall was covered from floor to ceiling in profane graffiti, obscure poetry, or splatters of paint. there was a vague yet omnipresent tincture of pee, and one of the squatters had brought home a runt pig named bella that ran amok, squealing and snorting amidst the constant melee.

the layout of this artfuck bomb shelter was comprised of 5 floors and resembled what might have been an ideal labyrinth for a mental institution if it hadn't been taken over by hippie stoner college students. the rooftop displayed a twinkling view of san francisco and the east bay, and at any given hour was giving airy respite to a tortured musician, be it a bongo soloist or an indie folk prodigy. the pool in the backyard was oft filled with random, floating pieces of furniture and gorgeous naked people who effortlessly embodied carefree, irreverent youth. everything about the co-ops was weird, gross, surreal, and made me feel drunk on puerility and freedom. it was a representation of what I thought might have happened if the babysitter gave up and left after the parents never returned home. these kids were wild and well versed in the alchemy of chaos and hedonism, but also maintained 4.0s. where had they been all my life? I wondered to myself, as I took another gravity bong hit.


le chateau


velkjo, me, mysterious hand on abe, abe



hanging out at the co-ops was my most "hands on" social experiment. each night there had the potential to end in a gory, savage lord of the flies showdown with some random RA's head on a stick carried by a pack of sociology majors donning togas. I learned how to shotgun beer, dumpster dive for produce, and accurately quote emmanuel kant. I did whipits in a bunk bed with a drug dealer named fliz who wore ski goggles and parachute pants and I meticulously managed a list of people who participated in my "makeout revolution" with a key in the margin to decode what kind of kisser they were and who I did "more" with. I got all of the animal house experience without any of the college, and it was some kind of incredible. on one bizarrely autumnal february night in the beginning of my epic berkeley ballad, I met owen, and his best friend rob.

cloyne was twice the size of chateau, home to over 200 cal students and the odd squatter, which was essentially what I became for a period of about 6 months. it wasn't quite as ghetto as chateau, and had a much more congenially aesthetic layout in addition to an outdoor hot tub that was really quite pleasant once you were drunk or high enough not to care what you might be swimming in. (real talk.) it was a sophisticated sort of squalor that made me feel grown up and edgy, existing in a glamorous indigence that I'd only dreamt of in my childhood bedroom as a sickly teenager.

rose had caught wind of a princess bride party across town at cloyne that promised free two buck chuck and choco tacos while supplies lasted, and her, taylor, myself, and several other usual suspects all piled on top of each other in the tiny car to jettison ourselves between co-ops. immediately upon walking in the front door, I peered into the darkened room where the movie was projected on the wall and the scene where wesley is rolling down the hill in the countryside yelling "aaaasss yoooou wiiiiiiiiiishhhhh" played out, and I saw a familiar face flickering in the light of the movie reel. it was the telegraph heartthrob from hours before... still wearing that abominable hat. I gasped and dug my pink glittery talons into rose's skinny thigh and hissed, "trucker cap. TRUCKER CAP! he can't be gay! do gay guys like the princess bride?" I thought better of it. "don't answer that."

rose observed the miracle that had occurred... we had manifested a face to face meeting with the mysterious street walking indie god of berkeley. we watched the rest of the movie and I bolstered my confidence with a choco taco, a drink, and a line of adderall, and as the credits rolled, the crowd dispersed and re-convened in the common area by the courtyard. someone had recently experienced an epic paper mache disaster, because in the middle of the floor there was a ruptured bag of plaster of paris that shot crusty white streams of powder ten feet in each direction, giving the ambience a coke-party-gone-awry feel. across from rose and I, on a different couch that was a veritable petri dish for scabies and other unsavory, itchy things, sat the boy in the trucker cap, and his friend who resembled a young robert smith with an unfortunate bleach job north of his ears. they were nursing PBRs and engaged in a conversation I desperately wanted to interrupt, but was at a loss for how to go about it. there was a moment where they both stopped talking and looked up at me at the very same time, so I did the only thing I could think of, in my split second of coquettish boldness and terror that I'd end up ridiculed. I looked at the object of my affection in the questionable hat, and stuck up my pointer finger to beckon him over to me. rose and I both stopped breathing, as we waited for a response. this playful mating dance was becoming more stressful than disarming an atom bomb.

the two boys continued to stare at me, now both wearing a bemused smirk, and then they looked at each other. trucker cap looked back first, and pointed to himself mouthing the word, "me?", and I finally exhaled as I nodded affirmatively. he shrugged to his friend, who was getting up to wander elsewhere, and rose took her leave back into the fray of the party.

now as he had come over to my side, I could see that he was blushing, and I felt sanguinely confident.

"hi, I'm owen." he said, sitting down next to me.

"christina. nice to meet you."

"that was impressive, what you just did right there. you're pretty ballsy, aren't you?" he asked, leaning back a little as if sizing me up.

"eh." I shrugged. "shy people are creepy. I had to meet you after serendipity set us up twice in one night."

"oh, that was you! in the car full of girls..."

"that were eyeballing you as if you were a fine christmas ham, yes. sorry about that." I laughed nervously.

"no, it made my night. until now."

"I'd have thought the princess bride to be a high point."

"but, you can see Rodents of Unusual Size on any given night here at cloyne."

"inconceivable!" I shrieked, and as we leaned back into the cushions, heard something in the frame crack underneath us making the couch sag in the middle, sliding our hips together. I fought the urge to faint.

"hey," he adjusted himself a little so as not to be sitting directly on me, "you remind me of a much more attractive helen hunt."

I stared at him and then furrowed my brow. he was lucky that his eyes were huge and grey blue enough to sail dreamboats.

"like, way more attractive." he continued.

"wrong answer." I pat his knee. he got up, grabbed my hand and helped me out of the busted la-z-boy, and we walked out into the moonlit garden. I was delirious from the endorphin rush, and I could hardly believe what was happening was real. suddenly, across the courtyard there was a great crash of broken glass and an anguished scream, and one of the palm trees shook and dropped cracked branches onto the pavement. owen dropped my hand and muttered, "oh, jesus, rob."

I looked up into the peculiarly animated tree and a hand shot out of the palm fronds clutching a half full bottle of charles shaw, followed by that brassy blonde afro that I recognized from my battle flirting just earlier.

"I'm okay!" he yelled, though no one had asked. "... but, I may have broken my ankle."

a herd of girls in dresses made from black glad bags tittered as they walked by, the last of which was pirouetting and singing "strawberry fields forever".

"that's my best friend." said owen, gesturing to the palm tree.

"well," I sighed, "this doesn't seem like the sort of place where anyone can survive without someone to help them undermine the spectacle."



to be continued...

play it again, sam

when I was 18, I had my first love triangle in berkeley, california at a co-op called the cloyne court hotel. this is a piece of the puzzle from someone else's point of view.



"... and so it was that five years after our first encounter, i was best friends with someone who could be described as being the bay area's most infamous smooth drunk talking indie god. and so it was that I came to sit on a couch on a typical drunken cloyne night with my best friend. had I been anyone else, I wouldn't have been sitting on the couch when you gave the "come-hither finger". had I not lived in cloyne, owen would most likely have been drunk at anywhere-but-cloyne on that night. but, of course we were there. and i have to admit that it is a little more than odd knowing that we both saw you at the same time. with that, if pressed to relate our first introduction to christina, our stories would no doubt sound similar. there we were. talking about music, booze, and women. I don't actually know if that's what we were discussing, but then, knowing us, that's exactly what we were talking about.

when suddenly, this blonde creature from across the room; sitting on her own couch with her own friend in her own through the looking glass version of mine and owen's little world, pleasantly shattered our goings-on by coolly rolling her finger to beckon the attention of two boys that were so lost in their perfectly normal tipsy banter that someone yelling "fire" couldn't have had more of an effect. there was no crazy man yelling "fire", though. that would've been too easy, too expected, and all together too dull to catch them off guard. but a woman. that's an entirely different situation, isn't it? both owen and I were looking up at someone whose motionings were, up until then, wholly unheard of. she was like a fiery draught filled to the brim of its glass with equal parts self-confidence and self-mockery. holding our drinks, we looked on, trying to understand the method behind what must obviously be madness; for we had only seen such cartoonish gestures in the movies or on television. holding our drinks, we both wonder who it is she's looking and motioning at. "is it me, rob?" "is it me, owen?" "is it both of us? or is it some drunk retard behind us with an aerosmith t-shirt on?" it's a brief wondering. so brief that only owen and I will ever know it happened. because owen and I are friends, you understand. and with such a friendship comes a mutual understanding of some kind of perfect equality that exists beyond the outside perceptions of those around us. the moment for confusion quickly evaporates like cigarette smoke on a windy day as the precedence of our past experiences re-colors our questions. of course we both know who she is drawing her gaze upon. of course we boths know it's owen, because tall blonde creatures with legs that never learned how to stop, and who live mostly on opposite sides of the room, are never the kind to single rob seretti out of a crowded environment. it is a dance that me and owen know all too well as I quickly take my leave and disappear to a place I don't remember.

it is a random enough moment. it is an odd way to have been introduced to you and it is an odd thing that our friendship (mine and yours) has lasted as long as it has. like my friendship with owen, this is one of those things that I do not wish to ever question or fully understand. I am sure that there is, between us, an entire bucket of seething worms that is better left alone. heaven forbid that those seething worms get loose of their bucket because no more good or ill than there already is could come of their release. under more common circumstances, I would relish the idea of bringing the unseen, unthought of, and unanalyzed to glorious light, but, this is not a common circumstance. uncommon individuals, such as ourselves, rarely create common situations. and the only real thing staying my foot from tipping over the bucket of worms is that I know that if I did, I wouldn't get very far in doing so because you'd be kicking the opposite side of it at exactly the same time. unlike most of the people I've met, I can't tell you about the unseen and unthought of and unanalyzed. there is not much I can tell you about the curious nature of our friendship that you don't already know and think about.

I assume that I will see you much earlier than I expected to, yet much later that I had hoped to.

love,

robert"