Journal:April 1998.
What you will see when you come to my house.

We live out in the avenues. This is as close as you can get to living in the suburbs while still living in the city. We�ve been here for 2 � years now. We moved here because Ken�s uncle owns the place and it seems like a good place to stay until we can buy our own place.

Our last place had its charm. There was a grade school in the lot behind us, and a housing project full of school age kids down the street. Our landlord, walking by that way, was once shot with a stream of water from a water gun. He shook his fists at the kids and threatened to call the cops� then he walked the 2 short blocks home. Things were interesting after that. His car had all the windows broken every time he parked it on the street. On Halloween, someone absconded with our jack-o-lantern and replaced it with a broken phone. Ken was pretty happy with the trade, picked the phone up, did a little 2step, and added it to the box full of �bits and pieces of useful things I haven�t figured out what to do with yet�. One morning, we were notified that �Philip is a bitch� with baby blue graffiti sprawled across one cream colored outside wall. There were a group of girls from the neighborhood that used to sit on our steps in the summertime and smoke pot, until Ken came up with the ingenious idea of opening all the windows in our second story flat, and blasting �Wake me up before you go-go� by Wham. We didn�t see much of anybody hanging out on our front step after that.

The place was beautiful and big enough for Michelle Ken and me, with plenty of room to share for parties and friends. In that old flat, the ceilings went on forever and there were angels carved into the moldings (almost hidden beneath years of interior latex). The floors were wooden with the kind of parquet you only see in old Victorians. The front windows were enormous and reached almost from the floor to the ceiling. The kitchen had been remodeled with maple cabinets and outlets everywhere. The floors were strong, solid, terra cotta tile. I loved those floors. Those floors saw everything. They saw warmth and laughter, meal after meal cooked with love and company. They were baptized with good rich red wine when a houseguest wandered in as we were putting groceries away, and somehow managed to step on (and brake) the bottle we had intended for dinner, saying, �When are we drinking the GOOD stuff?� We spent more time sitting in the kitchen than in any other room in the house. Michelle was always in the kitchen, and the kitchen, whether it was the warmth of the oven or the aromas of the incredible dishes she was always cooking, or Michelle herself, always laughing and talking, became the heart of the house.

For Ken, I think the greatest thing about the place was the third floor. At the far end of the living room, there was a cast iron and wood staircase that spiraled up through the ceiling to the third floor. We called it �The crow�s nest� or �Ken�s Bower�. It was really only one room, with a little bathroom off to one side. The room was carpeted in white and 3 of the walls had windows that looked out over the city in all directions. The windows held a sliding glass door that opened out onto a porch. It was wooden with a rail, and was small, but big enough for hibachi barbeques or the occasional afternoon of nude sunbathing. From the porch, you could see a thousand other people, living their own lives and sharing the city. On weekends, you could hear the bells from several churches throughout the day, and girls singing jump rope rhymes in the school grounds behind us.

Life while we were living in our last place was a golden time. That was when I learned that some of the best things in life are the people and places we come home to.

Ken and I ran off to Vegas to get married. We returned to find a spread of wine and cheese, with candles lighting the living room and the sound of Michelle�s whispers and giggles as she tried to sneak out of the house without us catching her. Michelle got accepted to a school in New Mexico, and we had to let her go. After that, the rooms echoed. The house was too empty for just the 2 of us and we wandered aimlessly through a cold San Francisco winter before deciding to find a house that could fit 2 comfortably.

Ken�s uncle offered us this place, and it�s been a good fit. When Ken�s uncle bought this place, he ripped it down past the drywall, and rebuilt it himself with the knowledge he gained from library books. Every detail is accounted for. There is a phone jack in every room, including the bathrooms, the hallway, and my closet. The trick is not to plug a phone into each one, as Ken�s uncle explained when we first moved in, or the whole system will short out. We have central heating, which, if you have been living in drafty old Victorian flats as I have for the last three apartments, is an unexpected gift from the gods. Ken�s uncle did some rearranging of the interior walls, new electrical wiring, and some new skylights without going through the hassle of applying for permits with the city. He is hoping to keep a low profile. As a result, we have few exterior perks.

When you come to our house, the first thing that you will notice is that you might not be able to find it. The address on the outside of the building has mysteriously vanished, leaving only the curious numbers �18� hanging crookedly, and heavily painted over. The �18� is one of the few places where paint has been applied to the outside of the house in recent years. At some point in the past, the house was painted white. There has been some amount of touch up work done since then, in a slightly different color of white. All of that was long ago though, and now the paint is dirty and peeling or cracking off in many places. The wood around the front windows is slowly rotting away, and the windows themselves are missing hinges and are held in by the sheer force of layers of paint. One of the windows is missing altogether, and has been replaced by a window-sized piece of board that is now starting to buckle, due to this year�s heavy rains. The effect from the outside, I like to think, is one of sad neglect, but also of a lopsided smile with a tooth missing. �Forget the address,� I might tell you if you come, �look for the house with the gap-toothed smile�. In this way, you�ll be sure to find us. At the top of the stairs that lead to the front door, we have colored light bulbs. Right now, it�s green, to match the color of Ken�s hair.