A memoir-essay of the author's early years.

I think we all have memories of that hole-in-the wall we lived and survived in, during our first foray into the ADULT world. You know the drill-- the hot plate, bathroom down the hall, maybe kitchen privs, or as a friend of mine described it, " the suicide suite" Well in the late 70's I moved back to Bean Town and got a furnished room on Newbury Street. That's right- fashionable and oh-so chic Newbury Street. But behind the august Brahmin Brownstone facade, was a gone-to-seed series of rooms that constituted a rooming house. And what a cast of characters resided there. Right across from me was a red-faced retired Irish civil servant. In the morning I would often bump into him in the hall, and he greeted me in a hearty, hail-fellow-well-met manner: "How are ya, me boy!" And at night when I was too tired to use the head down the hall and improvised in my sink, I heard him coughing his guts out through the thin walls. I thought the old codger would blow a gasket, but there he was in the morning with his requisite stained undershit, and faded plaid boxers. He greeted me with "Top of the morning, Lad!" Below me was a spinterish woman who optimized the saying, " Dry as a spinster on Saturday night." Every time I would pass her room I would see a pair of specs peering through the crack between the door. The door would close quickly when my eyes met her clandestine gaze. On the first floor was a service- bartender for the Sheraton Hotel in the Prudential Center. His room was an all-night Vegas. He was the host of mararthon poker games. Often I would pass by his room in the wee- hours, and see a gaggle of grim-faced Hispanic kitchen workers holding court around a table of chips, booze and maybe a stacked deck. I remember my own little room, a stained carpet, generally down-at-the-heels affair,  that had a fair number of mice. I set up some mousetraps, that were baited with peanut butter. I often would wake to the snap of these terminal devices as they caught their nocturnal prey. I kept a count pasted on my pockmarked wall, concerning the number of rodents caught during a given week. It got so I looked forward to that loud "snap", so I could go up another notch. Well...I remember calling my folks who lived in the well-to-do suburbs of Long Island, from my poor excuse for living quarters. As I was speaking to my usual taciturn father, a mouse rudely traversed the room. I said, " Dad- A mouse just ran by!" He said in his rough, gravely voice, " Get the hell outta there!" Before I could say anything my very Jewish mother, with her distinctive Long Island nasal intonation said, " Larry...it's the lifestyle 'they' lead." I wondered what she meant? Did she read in the New York Times that I was part of a tribe of young people that made a pilgrimage to a mecca of rodent-infested rooms, devoid of the most elemental creature comforts? And so today when I see a group of guys piling out over an over-priced one bedroom, with rings on every available appendage and hair a colorful rainbow of nonconformity, I have to stop myself from saying to my wife, " It's the lifestyle, Dianne."  

* slated to appear in http://zygoteinmycoffee.com