Eight episodes and two chapters to go before the end of chapter 10 and the preview. Cloyne Court episodes posted on Authors Den represent less than 25% of the novel.
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"This house council meeting will come to order,” said Sandy, in his most official voice. As house manager, he was standing in front of a table at one end of the sunroom addressing the thirty or forty people who were sitting on the couches, lying on pillows on the floor or leaning against window ledges.
Behind him, seated at the table, was Betty Sue, the assistant house manager and Carlos Cruz, the secretary, both looking as if the fate of mankind were on the agenda for tonight's meeting.
"First item of business will be approval of the minutes for last week's meeting. Carlos."
Carlos was a sophomore with a savant memory. He could recall movie dialogue scenes and deliver them verbatim. My favorite was when he would reenact the entire movie, including body movements and songs of The Rocky Horror Picture Show showing every Saturday midnight at the UC Theater on University Avenue.
After a late night of studying, I would find him by the front-hall couch entertaining students who had eaten Cloyne’s special brownies. And yes, Carlos was much funnier after we ate the brownies.
Because of his special abilities, Carlos could read any class textbook once and recite every fact and salient point. He was a straight A student. It was obvious why he had been accepted to Berkeley.
After his second year at Cal, Carlos went on a bad acid trip. During his hallucinations, he wrote on the wall of the newspaper room, Experience through drug-induced clarity, and that became his truth. He discovered getting stoned and staying stoned was better than going through withdrawal and dealing with school. Unfortunately, the drugs and alcohol ate his brain cells, so by his senior year, he couldn't remember his name. Tonight he was in rare form.
"My typewriter broke," he said, "so I didn't have a chance to type any written minutes. It's all here in my head. I move we approve the minutes.”
"How can we approve minutes we can't read?" said Wayne Helms, our self-appointed parliamentarian, who was a stickler for Robert's Rules of Order and something as nit-picky as actual written minutes.
Carlos stood. He said in a rapid fire, clipped, nonstop sentence, "The minutes of last week's house meeting are as follows, 'meeting called to order at 7:01 p.m, old business, approval of minutes from the last meeting, all in favor, forty-seven votes aye, no votes no, next item, new business to spend forty dollars on year subscription to Revolutionary Worker, motion to study item further, second, vote, thirty-five ayes, thirty-three no, motion to table passed.'" He paused to take a breath before continuing.
"Motion to approve the minutes," Sandy said quickly.
"Second," said Betty Sue.
"All in favor say aye," Sandy said. "All opposed. Motion approved. Next item of business is the house manager's report. For health and safety concerns and after complaints from several house members, I have decided to enforce a no nudity in the kitchen and food eating or serving areas policy."
Everyone glared at Ben and Sue. They sat there smiling and said nothing.
Sandy said, "I would also strongly suggest clothes be worn during meal times."
"OK, back to the old business of purchasing a forty-dollar yearly subscription to Revolutionary Worker for the newspaper room. We tabled the motion last time."
A longhaired, scraggly dressed resident who I didn’t know, but assumed was a member of the Spartacus Youth League, jumped to his feet yelling. "That rag? We don’t need a newspaper to tell us what injustice is going on in the world. Just talk to me. I'll deliver the facts for free." He was visibly angry at his archenemies, the Revolutionary Student Brigade for intruding on his ideological turf.
"Besides, we can get the same propaganda from the New York Times, which we already subscribe to," said Kyd Byzzarre, who was lying on the floor staring at the ceiling.
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This episode is based on a true story.
Although seventy-five percent of this memoir is factual, liberties were taken with the other twenty-five percent for plot purposes. That is where scenes were recreated from memory when they were not clearly defined in the journals written by the author from 1976 to 1980.
Individual characters are composites of several people and do not represent any one person, and the names have been changed to protect innocent people that may be guilty of indiscretions in their youth.
All characters, names and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this memoir should be considered products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.
Cloyne Court Episodes will stop at the end of chapter 10. Episode 31 is in chapter 9 (I made a mistake on previous announcements--the last five episodes were really in chapter 8). There are forty-nine chapters in this creative memoir. The preview posted on Authors Den only goes to the end of chapter 10.
