I went to visit Tamsen in Greeley. She is my best friend from the fifth grade. We’ve kept in touch all these years. She is a lesbian and lived for something like 25 years in San Francisco and earlier this year moved in with her sister because she is disabled with MS.
She was rather bored in her room, playing second life all the time, surrounded by 7 puppy mill rescued Bichon Frises. So I came up.
So did Jenny. Jenny is another friend from childhood. We were all pals. She brought lunch and some artwork Tamsen made her when we were in Jr. High School.
Tamsen’s sister’s house is pretty typical, and a lot like her mother’s neat, nursing home décor. I used to admire how neat their house was: a dollhouse, a front room that was spotless. This house is a lot like that, yet it smells bad from the dog urine in the carpet. Milo, the only male of the dog pack, bit my knee. I was on high alert from then on.
Tamsen has had a lot of different houses that I have visited over the years. The first in San Leandro when she was living with her lover from school, Jenny. (another Jenny.) The house was very fine and had about 15 ferrets living with them. But they broke up; Jenny married another woman, and Tamsen took a turn for the worse
I was working as a reporter in Bakersfield when I visited her after that. She lived in a crawl space below a house in San Francisco. There was nowhere for me to sleep, and she didn’t want me to sleep next to her, so the only other space was next to the 50 or so mice crammed into a little cage; the wheel’s whirring would have kept me awake all night, along with the wood chips flying out. So I slept on the sidewalk.
Her next house was better. On Haight Street. She kept a dead rat I her freezer. I hung out there for a couple of weeks before I moved back to Colorado.
Jenny looks great. Like a tennis coach or something, but she’s a voice coach.
She inspected her food thoroughly before she ate it. We ate outside because of the smell. It was enjoyable, as we all talked about our neuroses, yet confessed that that is what makes us so damn fun, so creative and life so alive. People like us for our wild spice.
It was made evident that Tamsen had a crush on Jenny in childhood. Hence the art she made her, and a locket. I never knew. Tamsen said I was her best friend so it couldn’t have been me! Just as well! It would turn out that my first love in high school, Gareth, would turn out gay too! C’est la vie! Amor Fati!
The interesting thing is that people this far back, they knew you when, they knew your mother and father. We talked about my mother and her mother. Mean people who destroyed your self-esteem, crushed it to the bone. But some how you survive and make art out of it. Or at least try to. Her sister said their mother, who was a nurse, always thought my mother had syphilis of the brain, because of her strange nose. I told them it was because her nose was broken as a teenager from being kicked in the face by a horse, so the story I was told. Plastic surgery wasn't too good back in the 1950s. Now I wonder. What is truth?
Tamsen’s dog is named Jenny. She said how Jenny who married another woman is having a baby with her. She talked about it three times.
It was good to see her in her house. Friends always help you remember and they also help you heal.
She was rather bored in her room, playing second life all the time, surrounded by 7 puppy mill rescued Bichon Frises. So I came up.
So did Jenny. Jenny is another friend from childhood. We were all pals. She brought lunch and some artwork Tamsen made her when we were in Jr. High School.
Tamsen’s sister’s house is pretty typical, and a lot like her mother’s neat, nursing home décor. I used to admire how neat their house was: a dollhouse, a front room that was spotless. This house is a lot like that, yet it smells bad from the dog urine in the carpet. Milo, the only male of the dog pack, bit my knee. I was on high alert from then on.
Tamsen has had a lot of different houses that I have visited over the years. The first in San Leandro when she was living with her lover from school, Jenny. (another Jenny.) The house was very fine and had about 15 ferrets living with them. But they broke up; Jenny married another woman, and Tamsen took a turn for the worse
I was working as a reporter in Bakersfield when I visited her after that. She lived in a crawl space below a house in San Francisco. There was nowhere for me to sleep, and she didn’t want me to sleep next to her, so the only other space was next to the 50 or so mice crammed into a little cage; the wheel’s whirring would have kept me awake all night, along with the wood chips flying out. So I slept on the sidewalk.
Her next house was better. On Haight Street. She kept a dead rat I her freezer. I hung out there for a couple of weeks before I moved back to Colorado.
Jenny looks great. Like a tennis coach or something, but she’s a voice coach.
She inspected her food thoroughly before she ate it. We ate outside because of the smell. It was enjoyable, as we all talked about our neuroses, yet confessed that that is what makes us so damn fun, so creative and life so alive. People like us for our wild spice.
It was made evident that Tamsen had a crush on Jenny in childhood. Hence the art she made her, and a locket. I never knew. Tamsen said I was her best friend so it couldn’t have been me! Just as well! It would turn out that my first love in high school, Gareth, would turn out gay too! C’est la vie! Amor Fati!
The interesting thing is that people this far back, they knew you when, they knew your mother and father. We talked about my mother and her mother. Mean people who destroyed your self-esteem, crushed it to the bone. But some how you survive and make art out of it. Or at least try to. Her sister said their mother, who was a nurse, always thought my mother had syphilis of the brain, because of her strange nose. I told them it was because her nose was broken as a teenager from being kicked in the face by a horse, so the story I was told. Plastic surgery wasn't too good back in the 1950s. Now I wonder. What is truth?
Tamsen’s dog is named Jenny. She said how Jenny who married another woman is having a baby with her. She talked about it three times.
It was good to see her in her house. Friends always help you remember and they also help you heal.
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