If It Feels Good Do It

The title is complete bullshit. Well, maybe not complete bullshit. But the content is the true story of my life. I was inspired by thebaglady’s continuing translations of her Dad’s story, Fifteen Years In America and motivated by this comment that I left regarding it.

1982 was like the life of a different person.

My dad, my mom and I lived together on downtown Murphy street in Sunnyvale. In 1982 it was primarily a Hispanic neighborhood. It was not a place that many white people went.

The oddest thing about the place we lived was the place itself: it was a store. Or well, it had been. Business was not booming though, so the landlord rented it to us. I’m not sure if we were supposed to actually be living and sleeping there.

The main room which was the front of the store was huge. At least it seemed that way to me. My dad used it as a studio and spent a lot of time there painting. I sometimes rode my bike around inside. At the back of the store were men’s and women’s bathrooms. There was a small office that was used for my bedroom. Finally, there was a kitchen with a stove and a sink. That was it.

There were no baths or showers. I routinely took a bath in the sink. I’m not sure how my parents bathed. I think they had a camping shower that they used.

We were poor. Both of my parents worked part-time at a private Jewish elementary school, though. Since they worked there, it meant that I could go there for free, so that’s what I did. At that point, Jewish education was all that I knew since I had gone to private Jewish preschool.

Kindergarten at a Jewish school was serious. I learned how to read, do simple math, and could speak some Hebrew. My teachers there liked me. I did better at school than my parents expected.

But we were poor. Definitely other people noticed it. It would have been one thing to be poor and go to school in a poor neighborhood. It was another thing to be poor and go to a private Jewish school in a different part of town. One time one of my classmates and his mother picked me up to go to school. My mom later heard his older brother say to his Dad “Oh my God Dad, you should have seen where they lived!”

Sometimes I would go over to my classmates houses to hang out. This one guy’s house had a laundry chute. I was mesmerized by it. Where I lived we had to hand wash, everything. All I wanted to do was drop stuff down the chute all day. Another guy’s house had a remote control t.v. I loved watching CHiPs there.

My friends ranged from rich to totally rich. This one friend’s family lived up in the hills and had an electronic gate in front of their garage. The gate had two concrete statues of roaring lions on either side. It was like I was entering a different timezone.

And there was a girl in my class. Her name was Daphne. My mom always told me that her and I were the best students in the class. That may or may not have been true. What was definitely true was that I wanted to make out with her. I sometimes went over to her house, too. I don’t remember if I ever actually made out with her or not, though. I sure hope I did.

Suddenly my Dad had the idea to move to this small town in the East Bay called Benicia. There was a lot more art and artists there, he said. So one day in Spring, before the school year had ended, that’s what we did. We moved to Benicia. Whether I liked it or not, I left the peninsula, private schools and rich yuppie friends behind.

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• Fifteen Years In America: Five Of Which I Spent Getting High On Weed, And The Other Ten Of Which I Spent Being Apathetic And Unmotivated, In Other Words, Being An American. Oh Yeah, Plus Another Fifteen In Which I Finally Got My Act Together And Capitalized On Newfound Productivity Gains From Snorting Large Amounts Of Coke — Chapter 6: Just A Nail
• Fifteen Years In America: Five Of Which I Spent Getting High On Weed, And The Other Ten Of Which I Spent Being Apathetic And Unmotivated, In Other Words, Being An American. Oh Yeah, Plus Another Fifteen In Which I Finally Got My Act Together And Capitalized On Newfound Productivity Gains From Snorting Large Amounts Of Coke – Chapter 5
• Fifteen Years In America: Five Of Which I Spent Getting High On Weed, And The Other Ten Of Which I Spent Being Apathetic And Unmotivated, In Other Words, Being An American. Oh Yeah, Plus Another Fifteen In Which I Finally Got My Act Together And Capitalized On Newfound Productivity Gains From Snorting Large Amounts Of Coke – Chapter 4
• Fifteen Years In America: Five Of Which I Spent Getting High On Weed, And The Other Ten Of Which I Spent Being Apathetic And Unmotivated, In Other Words, Being An American. Oh Yeah, Plus Another Fifteen In Which I Finally Got My Act Together And Capitalized On Newfound Productivity Gains From Snorting Large Amounts Of Coke – Chapter 3