Two years after I left, a few haphazardly thrown punches were strong enough to create a wave of repercussions that sent me and mine out into the increasingly chilly air of fall and back to Charles Village, this time to the north west corner, where a pair of girls gave us shelter while we figured out the next step. It would prove to be an insular time as it was too cold to walk to our usual nightlife in Mt. Vernon and everything we needed could be found within walking distance of our block of Charles and 33rd. The corner WaWa provided soda and cigarettes, an independent grocery across the street lost inventory to an increasingly brazen "help ourselves" attitude, and second hand bookstores catering to the Hopkins crowd fed our heads. I know, and well remember, many excursions outside of the neighborhood yet the most vivid memories of that time take place in the few blocks that surrounded a one bedroom apartment housing five not quite kids, working elaborate schemes to amuse ourselves, planning world domination, and playing "Spades" by Lulu Kiss Me Dead.
One was never there and when she was, had to have recognized that she would forever be a peripheral - a fact sadly proven when we realized that the handwriting on all the correspondence from her boyfriend was strikingly similar to her own; two was going to be a teacher, the sort that kids remember for the rest of their lives; three was going to design clothes that, at that time inspired by two, would save the figures not found in fashion magazines from the cut rate look found on most racks; four, also taking temporary shelter, wanted to be the figure found in fashion magazines but would never admit it, and me, who sat and watched and wondered where I would fit in, grasping at the idea of being a photo stylist in an attempt to be needed and to keep the gang together.
We didn't have money to eat but we always had cigarettes and the latest issue of Vogue - the US, British, and Italian editions, and thanks to two's stint on the college radio, the newest import records were taped from the radio, her playlist becoming our group letter to Santa Claus. Looking back, some of us think that this is how "Spades" came in to our lives but I'm still not sure; in my memory it was there from the beginning, a theme for three and me, the words "all I feel is all too much" always in my head as a declaration of my romantic nature while its negative implications were left unexamined, the irony of its constant query of "who are you" not yet realized.
Pushed by the point of Sartre's "No Exit" and fueled by the absurdity of Kopit and Albee, we plotted telethons for the sartorially challenged, with "Jewels For Jews" and "Fashions For Fags" being our favorites as they were created for our own benefit. The floor of the furniture-less living room was where everything was started and nothing but packs of cigarettes was finished, perpetually littered with records and books and scraps of paper full of ideas no longer as great as they had been before the pencil hit the paper. We were so busy plotting the first step up the ladder of success that we never managed to get off the ground. We were so enthralled by the idea of our renaissance that we ignored the basic science of survival and reality would pull the plug on our enclave. On New Year's Eve we closed the door for the last time, the living room floor that was once littered with our ambition, now gleaming like all of our ideas and as equally unfulfilled. The girls all went their separate ways, leaving me and mine walking down Charles Street in the snow, assuring each other that the new year would be better, clueless as to how, not bothering to define the comparison.
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