(image, as usual, from Google Maps)
In case you haven't been reading this blog - & why would you? - I've been taking some time each week looking through the internets to see if places I used to live are still standing, & sharing a picture of them, along with a story or two about my time there. It's mostly a melancholy thing, & certainly it helps keep me from thinking about the current situation in my country, which is fucking awful.
In the fall of 1988 I shared an apartment with two people I thought of as friends. In general, they didn't hold me in such high regard. One thing that is true about me is that I am quite generous to people I consider friends. For these two friends, who could not have afforded living in a three-bedroom apartment, I chose to rent a two-bedroom & give the two of them the bedrooms, while I lived in the (ahem) living room, with sheets acting as walls. I didn't think twice about this arrangement, & neither did they, as far as I know. When I think back on that time, I have no idea what their rooms looked like. I don't think they ever invited me in.
That semester - the beginning of my third year of college - I fell in love. So I spent a great deal of time with the woman, who didn't really love me & never would, but who for some reason kept me around - more on that in later installments - & also I had school. One day I came home to the two roommates announcing to me that they were moving out. I myself couldn't afford to live in a two-bedroom apartment on my own, & I explained to them that we had a lease, & there were penalties to breaking it. They told me that was my problem - my name, you see, was on the lease. That I didn't tell them to fuck all the way off & never spoke to them again says something about my demented sense of loyalty & the general manner in which I managed to never feel used as people used me time & again.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the apartment manager liked me - I had lived in the complex for two years, I never paid rent late, I was amiable - so she let me break the lease. I was then faced with the daunting task of finding a place to live. It turns out I am terrible at finding a place to live. The apartment complex in which I was living I had been living in since I moved to Austin, & it was simple to move from place-to-place inside a complex. They didn't have any apartments I could afford so I had to look elsewhere.
It turns out I was lucky that the woman I was courting let me use her car & I found a place on the other side of town. These were the Dolphin Apartments, which I am not surprised to say are still called the Dolphin Apartments. I like to tell people who live in Austin that I got an efficiency there in the fall of 1988 for 165$ a month. I can't find information online but I suspect it costs more than a grand a month for the same place in 2020.
It was a tiny place, what they call a studio (the internet says 400 square feet), which was basically a room with a small kitchen in the front & a bathroom in the back. I don't know if I thought I was living in a worse place than before, or if I was bothered by living alone, or even if I thought the place was filthy or whatever - it was on a bus route to campus & I was preoccupied by both the woman & school & really only thought of the place as somewhere to keep my stuff. But over time, I became quite lonely there.
In the summer of 1989, I worked at a 7-11 at 15th & San Jacinto in Austin. I worked the 11-7 shift, & had a ritual of taking a bus to campus & walking the short distance to the store. In the morning, I'd do the opposite, although sometimes I'd take the bus from near the store to campus, since buses in Austin at the time ran early but didn't run late. The days during that summer in that apartment - I was without the woman with whom I had at that time started a relationship, although who knows why she wanted to be in a relationship with me since she didn't love me & never would - she was home for the summer - were very long. I would get home at nine, ten a.m., & I suppose have dinner. Listen to music, maybe watch something I had videotaped. I would sleep from noon to eight, the time when people lived their lives, & then get ready for work. Nowadays I keep odd hours thanks to late-night radio shows, but I wasn't so used to it back then - & it would get worse when school started but I needed to keep the job because of unexpected bills. That's a whole other story.
The manager was a "hip dude" who liked to come talk to me. I found him uncomfortable, a little too old to pretend to be able to relate to me, & certainly inappropriate with women like my "girlfriend." I believe he had a lava lamp in his apartment. I have memories of needing to talk to him about something & standing uncomfortably outside his door while he talked to shirtless in his doorway.
Toward the end, I spent most of my time at my "girlfriend"'s place & so my little studio at Dolphin Apartments really did become a place to keep my stuff. Although it turns out I did need a place to keep my stuff. As I will explain in future installments.
Dang, I wish I could remember my address, my apartment number. I have very few pictures from that time period. But I believe I lived there from 1988 till probably early 1990. It wasn't very long. But I'm not sure I can be entirely exact.
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