moving to maine 1984

I was one year out of Hampshire College, living in Northampton with Winslow Hoffman and working as a parking lot attendant for Fitzwilly's Restaurant. I was spending most of my time hanging out at Hampshire with all my friends, especially Madeleine. While it was alot of fun, I was feeling more and more that I didn't belong. Many of my Hampshire friends, including Madeleine,  were much more ambitious than I was. Here I was, a graduate, hanging around, going to all the parties and refusing to get on with my life. I loved the Valley and was very involved with Madeleine so leaving didn't seem like an option. I applied to grad school at UMass Amherst and was rejected. Next thing I knew with not even a hint of a real plan I was on the phone with my parents asking permission to move to my Grandmother's beautiful old house which my parents now owned since she passed away. They were renting it out for $350 a month and I figured I could get a bunch of people to move there with me and we could split the rent and get back to nature. Winslow, who was a clammer on Cape Cod in the summers expressed an interest. A family meeting was held, and somehow I pulled it off. The current tenants lease expired in November and then the house was mine!

The first order of business was finding something more lucrative than attending a parking lot to save money to fund the move. I had done quite a bit of housepainting in the past and was able to find a job with a busy painting crew. Winslow headed back for the Cape and I moved in with Amy Denio, Beth Winson and a guy named Jesse Winch in NoHo. Madeleine went home for the summer, where her Dad was dying from cancer. While I have a lot of good memories from this period, for some reason I was also somewhat unstable at this point in time. My parents suspected my drug use had escalated but that really wasn't it. I was really really crazy about Madeleine and was very worried about our future. She was very very upset about her Dad, who also wasn't particularly thrilled with me. I also hated the painting work I was doing, especially since I always got stuck doing polyurethaning all day (who needs to do drugs when you've got plastic congealing in your brain all the time...). The fact that it was 1984 and Ronald Reagan was running for reelection had a little something to do with it, too. I had read a very powerful book in the Fitzwilly's parking lot called The Transformative Vision which was very apocalyptic and had done quite a job on me.

Summer ended and everyone moved out of the apartment. My friend Eric Konheim had bought an apartment building as a tax-shelter for his dad and I was going to paint the ground floor apartment and refinish the floors for him, as well as maintain my day job. I was under the impression that it would be vacant and I might be able to stay there some while I worked on it as I was technically homeless. Madeleine and her best friend Ilya had moved into Mod 12 at Hampshire with Jenny Lerner and I was only marginally welcome there. Around this time I bought my 1968 VW Bug in preparation for moving to Maine. Eric rented out the apartment as is, so not only did I not get to stay there but I had to work around these bitchy girls and it was very challenging as I had to maintain my day job as well. Thank god for JF! JF was living in NoHo and had committed to moving to Bridgton with me (Winslow was still somewhat non-commital) and let me stay with him. Madeleine almost drank herself to death on Halloween. Her Dad died the next day. Reagan was reelected a few days later. Somehow, I managed to finish Eric's apartment.

A moving truck was rented. A bunch of stuff was loaded up in Stamford. We went to NoHo and got what little stuff I had, JF's stuff and also shared the expense of the truck with Beth Bellman who was moving to North Conway, NH with her lover. Winslow finally relented and committed to coming. My first couple of days I was all by myself. Or was I? Someone always seemed to be walking around upstairs. I was pretty scared. I was starting a whole new life.