One Thousand Words, Part 4

Oh my god, was I young. This was about February 1977. I'm drying my hair after washing it in the kitchen sink. The pink towels, if I remember correctly, came from Holly's grandma. We'd have them for another ten years at least before they finally wore out. Those things were virtually indestructible.

Holly and I were living together for the first time. We rented a house next to the Vilas Park Zoo, walking distance to campus in Madison, and found two roommates. The house was a cute clapboard thing and it had no insulation. In the winter you could feel the cold air coming off the windows and walls. At full blast, the furnace could only keep the house heated to 62 degrees. Our heating bill was over 100 dollars a month, which was an astounding amount at the time. The landlord had lived in the house as a kid and his mother lived in it before us. We were his first tenants ever. When I told him about the heating bill and the fact that the house was never close to warm, he came over with a bottle of vodka. "This ought to help you," he said.

It was finally getting warm and so we were happy. When we moved in together, Holly's parents weren't exactly ecstatic. In November, Holly's mom came with a pair of twin bed sheets as a present for Holly. She was about to hand them to Holly and then the realization of our living together made her stop. "I guess you won't be able to use these," she said and then broke into tears. I didn't know what to say to Holly's mom at the time.

My dad's view was unique. He pulled me aside one day and said, "I don't understand how you're making out."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well, you gotta pay your rent and her rent. How can you afford that?"

"Oh no, I'm not paying her rent. She's paying that."

"You mean she's living with you and she's paying her rent, too?"

"Yeah, that's right." My dad broke out in a huge grin. He patted me on the back. I suddenly understood what he was thinking. My son is getting free nookie. It was as if I'd won the lottery as far as he was concerned. "That's my boy," he said.

We had one female and one male roommate. The female was from back East. We'd rotate cooking for dinner every day. She couldn't cook worth a damn, but she was very wholesome.

For half the year we had a male roommate who was a Ph.D. student in food science. He owned only two albums, both Audobon Society records full of bird calls. He'd play those things all the time. The announcer on the album would identify the call - the yellow toed warbler, let's say - and then you'd hear the tweet of that bird. He'd come back from the food science department with all this goat stuff. We drank mostly goat milk. We had goat ice cream. Sometimes he'd come back with strange test products, margarine, cheese, you name it. He was a character.

The food science guy was always making sprouts. He'd put a jar in the oven to grow them because the oven was a little warmer than the rest of the house. During my turn for cooking, I'd frequently turn on the oven without checking for the sprouts. He'd get p.o.'d. Whenever he went to campus, he'd say, "Gotta go to goo." Holly and I still use the word "goo" for "school."

The previous two years, I'd been living on cream of wheat for breakfast, yoghurt and fruit for lunch and broccoli and kasha with bowtie noodles for dinner. I never ate out because it was too expensive. My weekly food bill was 10 bucks. This eating arrangement in our house was a step up for me.

I'm in the living room in this picture. Holly is taking the photo. I bought the plant in the background for Holly for a Hanukah present that December. I called it the "fuschia with a futchah." I said it was a symbol of our relationship. One week later, bugs invaded the thing and all the fuschia's leaves died. Holly nursed it back to life, but it was still pretty ratty. We'd give the plant up in another year. Our relationship fared much better than the plant. So much for symbolism.