This was the first place I moved into with someone, as a "couple." Previously a girlfriend had lived with me, or I had moved in with her, but the woman I had met in 2001 at a bus stop & who had moved in with me in 2002 decided we needed a bigger place to live* & when my lease ran out at the end of 2002, we relocated to here. It was a duplex, we lived on the right side, the one with the porch (the other side got a carport; we parked my girlfriend's car in the front). We lived here from early 2003 I believe till around November 2005 - so a good deal of time.
The move was fraught with some radio-related drama. I had gotten a show on KOOP in October of 2002. Unbeknownst to me, the person who owned the duplex - who lived next door - was someone who had been forced out of the station & effectively banned from it. He was proud of his association with KOOP but it was an unhappiness for him. When we were looking at the place, & mentioned his time on the radio there, my girlfriend blurted out, "Gary has a show on that station!" I thought it might cost us the place, but it didn't. He never trusted nor liked me very much, however.**
When we moved in, it was just me & her & her dog George & my cats Buster & Beatrice. We had a futon we used as a sofa (& guests could sleep on it) & in the summer of 2004, we adopted a second beagle named Ringo. The four animals would congregate so often on the futon I started calling it "the love sofa." Here's photographic proof:
None of those animals are with us any longer, sadly. It was a long time ago, it seems. We lost Buster in 2008, George in 2012, & Ringo & Beatrice in 2018.
But it was a happy time, despite the shit I went through at KOOP - which I may have discussed here but which I'm not going into now. I loved the porch, I was a smoker then & I loved sitting on the porch & smoking. We had cool neighbors, it was close to campus, it was a lovely neighborhood.
& though I didn't know - seriously, I thought she would leave me at any minute - the relationship that would end in marriage became a real thing here at this house. I can still walk through it in my mind - it wasn't that big - I can still see myself opening the back door to let the dogs out - our backyard neighbor actually had squirrel traps & we thought he might be eating them - I remember the parties we threw which were shared on some app so dozens of people we didn't know would show up - & eventually someone would call the police. I remember where my computer was, where the television was, the big window in the kitchen that looked out into the front yard where the telephone - still a landline - was.
We bought a house in 2005 (spoiler alert) & broke our lease to do so & though our landlord initially agreed to it, it secretly enraged him, as we soon discovered. Before the last month we paid for ran out, he changed the locks - so we came to get our final things & to clean & found we couldn't get into the house. He had also thrown away everything that was on the porch. I had planned to invite him & his partner - who was a very nice person, we liked her ten times more than we liked him - to our new house but never did. & I never saw him again.
* As was usually the case, I wasn't really consulted, & in fact since this time I've never had much of a say about choosing the places I've lived.
** The feeling was mostly mutual. I felt sorry for what had happened to him at the station, though.
