Being Purple
The 11th installment of Boardinghouse Reach... plus a poem and a photograph I took on my walk today.
The boardinghouse posed certain disadvantages for a person without a car. Paco gamely rode his bicycle up and down the hill, rain or shine. Allison took the bus when it was running; and in off hours—after eight o’clock and on weekends and holidays— there always seemed to be a fleet of friends with cars at her disposal, willing to drive her anywhere. But the uncertainty and expense of taxis were taking a toll on Rafael, who began to look for a smaller, cheaper place closer to town.
Allison set to work immediately to find a new boarder. The idea of her taking on this otherwise onerous and time-consuming responsibility was extremely appealing to me. I didn’t even think about questioning the wisdom of her choice. I forgot, somehow in the scheme of things, that Allison was nineteen years old and wouldn’t necessarily have the most practical considerations in mind. Her priority was to have someone with “great energy,” someone with whom she could have a nonstop slumber party; someone who was, in fact, her latest best friend. Whether this person would be happy living an hour-long commute away from her job in San Francisco, and whether she would even be able to pay the rent was never high on Allison’s list of considerations.
So it was that Rafael moved out and Camille moved in. Camille and Allison had met at a party during the time when they were both breaking up with their boyfriends. They made an odd couple. While Allison was around five-foot-five, Camille was six feet tall. Allison was knee-deep in organic chemistry homework; Camille was a high-school dropout. Allison had already planned which medical schools she’d apply to; Camille was working as the receptionist in a chi-chi San Francisco salon. Camille worshipped Allison and Allison loved her for it. Their goodbyes in the morning were as I-love-you laden as those of a pair of newlyweds. Camille was crestfallen if she came home from work and found that Allison was out somewhere. With all the innocence of a couple of girls from Victorian times, they often slept in the same bed together.
Camille aspired to save up enough money to get training and become certified as a massage therapist. In the meantime, Allison and I were the fortunate recipients of her largesse involving the desire to practice her craft until the time when she was able to enroll in school. As a card-carrying massage junky, I could only feel grateful for this new set-up, which provided me with an in-house masseuse whenever I was shameless enough to take advantage of Camille’s open offer.
Like Allison, Camille was deeply and demonstratively grateful for the meals I served. She’d been living on her own, and somewhat hand to mouth, for several years (her mother sent her away at the age of fourteen or so to live with her father, who’d moved away from Canada and started a new family, with a new wife, in California). She supplemented her income at the salon by covering herself in mauve-colored body paint, matching satin clothes, a pale purple boa and pageboy wig every Sunday. In this bizarre costume she would stand in all her six feet of glory in Union Square and blow bubbles. Tourists and other passersby would give her money.
“Being Purple,” for Camille, constituted a variety of performance art. She put a good deal of thought and care into her make-up and clothes. There were other people in Union Square with similar gigs, covered head to foot in red, gold, silver, and, at one point, blue. They referred to themselves collectively as “Colored People” (and they were all too young for the phrase to have any resonance for them from the era of Jim Crow). There was stiff and sometimes bitter competition among them for the limited pool of tourist dollars. Camille would regale us at dinnertime on Sunday with tales of Blue Boy’s vicious criticism of Camille’s “look,” or Silver Guy’s partnership with the Red Lady, who was rumored to be pregnant with his child.
Camille would typically take home $200 in one-dollar bills after what was no doubt a long, hard, harrowing day of being purple.
I was horrified the first time I learned of Camille’s Sunday enterprise (she handed the money over to me, as she’d only paid a portion of her first and last month’s rent when she moved in). I thought, my God, this poor girl is selling herself on the street to make the rent here. Both Allison and Camille were quick to reassure me that Camille had a long history of being purple and performing in Union Square. Still, I felt badly, especially since her long hours at the salon and her long commute meant that she often missed meals.
This was far from an ideal situation for Camille, who really would have been better off living somewhere cheaper and on the other side of the Bay. I knew that she was living with us primarily because she wanted to be near Allison.
Camille made all her decisions based on gut feeling and a compendious fund of knowledge she’d acquired about astrology. Looking at the world this way provided her with a set of strictures that made the world in all its vagaries a little less terrifying. Although twenty-one, chronologically, she was still fourteen years old in a lot of ways, afraid of rejection, afraid that she really didn’t belong anywhere. When someone treated her badly, she found a cosmic way to explain the behavior, to keep it from seeming personal. Her sweetness and stubborn optimism felt like the thinnest of bastions against the harsh realities of grownup life that kept threatening to crash in on her.
Soon after she moved in, Camille learned that her stepmother was walking out on her dad. Camille had grown close to her stepmother and adored her half sister and brothers. Here came the house of cards of family life collapsing for a second time. I think it was the same weekend when Camille’s father asked her to get rid of the cat she’d left behind or else have it de-clawed, as it was scratching up his furniture.
Although he apparently made a fair amount of money, Camille’s father contributed little or nothing to his eldest daughter’s maintenance. Perhaps he hoped to starve her back into school, onto a straighter and narrower path. I don’t know. He was my age. In a moment of weakness in response to Camille’s tear-filled entreaty, I told her she could bring her imperiled pet to our house on a trial basis—even though we already had a cat. Camille promised that the cat would live in her room—that she’d ease it into a friendship with our cat (who Kyle referred to as his little sister). I had misgivings even then, as I couldn’t imagine that it would be altogether pleasant for Camille to sleep in the same room with a litter box. What got to me were the stories she’d tell ostensibly from the cat’s point of view, in which the cat referred to Camille as “Mom.” It was a choice between saying yes and feeling like an absolute louse.
***
Allison’s hard work in school was paying off. One of her professors arranged for her to be interviewed for a part-time research assistantship in a chemistry lab at UCSF. Allison didn’t strictly need the money, as she lived on a trust fund left by her grandfather. But such a position, she explained to me, would do much to clinch her acceptance at the medical school of her choice.
Colby’s mother, Anna, was visiting on the day Allison was preparing to leave for her interview. That initial phone conversation with Anna at Thanksgiving had blossomed into a full-blown friendship, and we spent time together whenever she came to California. In getting to know Anna, I found the well-spring for the pure, clean, potable waters that ran through Colby. They both bubbled over with the same generosity of spirit, the same basic joy in being alive. The two of us were sitting having tea at the dining room table when Allison rushed breathlessly up the stairs.
“How do I look?” she asked us, her eyes radiating confidence.
Well, of course she looked ravishing in her frothy lace tunic and oversized cotton voile skirt and full eye make-up—something like a bride minus the veil.
“Allison,” I said with as much restraint as I could muster, being careful not to look at Anna—I was terrified we’d both start laughing if our eyes met. “Laboratories are, uh, full of delicate glassware and dangerous chemicals. I would go for something with less fabric, if I were you. Something less likely to sweep things off a countertop onto the floor.”
She looked down at herself, stricken. “You’re right. I’ll change.”
As she ran downstairs I called after her, “I’d lose the eye make-up, Allison. It’s a research lab, not a modeling agency!”
Anna and I were deep into conversation again when Allison reappeared at the top of the stairs. “How’s this?” she asked.
The make-up had been toned down. Allison wore hip-hugger beige trousers and a plain, short-sleeved white blouse that left her midriff exposed.
“Personally, I think you’d be better off wearing something that covers your belly-button.”
Anna chimed in with support for this point of view. “You look lovely, dear. But I think Jasmine’s right.”
I looked Allison straight in her wide blue eyes and wondered how someone who was so smart could also be so naïve. And then I remembered myself at nineteen. Compared to the way I was then, Allison was Albert Einstein and Nelson Mandela rolled into one. “I know the idea is usually to be as beautiful as possible,” I said gently. “But it’s not always the best idea. You want this guy to take you seriously.” As she ran back down the stairs, I called after her, “I’d give the platform shoes a miss, too, Allison!”
After another quarter hour elapsed, I went downstairs to see how Allison had resolved the conflict between personal vanity and professional acumen. I found her by following the trail of clothes between her room and the boarders’ bathroom. Allison looked up at me anxiously. “How’s this?” she asked.
My second husband worked for many years doing research in a chemistry lab. I spent a lot of time there when we were dating (it was often the only way to see him). I knew exactly how he and his colleagues would have looked at Allison, who was going to have trouble throughout her life being taken seriously because she was so beautiful. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the oversized, puffy sleeves of her poet’s blouse would read as broken glass, or that it might even be worth her while to make a concerted effort to make herself look plain—to wear no makeup at all, to tie her hair back.
I could see that she wasn’t ready or even confident enough yet to appear in the world without the powerful advantage of her beauty. But who was I to talk? I routinely primped before making an appearance in the outside world. I couldn’t even imagine doing what Colby did every day—pull on shirt and trousers and head out the door, not even brushing his teeth or wiping the sleep from his eyes.
At least Allison’s blouse was tucked into her trousers this time. She looked down at her platforms. “I don’t really have any more serious-looking shoes.”
I thought about lending her a pair of mine—we wore the same size. Then I remembered my cashmere gloves that Allison had borrowed and lost, and her house key that had to be replaced three times. It didn’t seem altogether likely that she’d lose a pair of handmade Italian shoes—but such thrift-shop finds were too rare (and the retail equivalent too out of reach) for me to feel comfortable taking the risk. Colby would have lent her his shoes—but, then, Colby would have given her one of his kidneys.
“You look beautiful but not too beautiful,” I told her. “I’ll bet you get the job.”
Later, after Paco had left our household for a stay in England, and Daniela, a young journalist from Brazil, had moved into his room, Daniela recounted a conversation between her and Allison, who’d told her that her boss at the laboratory was gay.
“How do you know he’s gay?” Daniela wanted to know.
Allison looked at her with a complete lack of modesty or reserve. “Because he hasn’t made a pass at me!”
***
One of my poems that was published in a beautiful book, THESE TREES, by art photographer Ruthie Rosauer
No Voice Inside If we were oak trees, rooted to one place— our movements too slow to perceive— hikers along the trail would pause and read our secret history in the contortions caused by obsolete impediments, cleared, burned up or decomposed. The relationships that made us grow away from the sun, tortuously twisting to find it again. Lightning strikes that left us scarred and maimed. Young loves’ initials carved into our very skin— as faint as the tracery of worms now. No voice inside would wish for unmarked beauty in place of such a silhouette against the sky. Copyright ©️ 2024 by Barbara Quick I snapped this photo on my walk today...
