with a swimming pool and uptight neighbors. I wanted something different. A room in a house with laid-back people. Cooperative living. I had done that back in my student days. It might be just what I needed to make me feel at home in this fucked-up town. They say New York is impersonal. Give me those hordes on the subways any day over the human automatons in steel modules that cruise the super freeways in Houston. Forget the sweltering heat; this town is all cold concrete and glass. Maybe that explains the incredible murder rate. Lots of mental illness down here. Saturday morning I biked over to Montrose and found a health food restaurant. I leafed through a few of the free underground rags that were stacked in front of the cash mature milf nude mature ladies register. Plenty of classified. One of them seemed to be just what I wanted. "Liberated person needed to share 3-story house w/2 w,1 m. You help in house, garden, get privacy, fresh vegs. $90/month." The address was on Beauchamp Street. I asked the cashier if she knew where it was. North of downtown she said. A restoration area. Her boyfriend lived there. Lots of trees and big old houses. Mixed neighborhood: Chicanos, Blacks, old couples, student types. I had an alfalfa sprout salad to get myself in the mood and biked up to Beauchamp. I thought about removing the studded band of leather around my left bicep, decided against it. If I moved in, they'd figure out my proclivities soon enough. Better to start out being open. The house was set on a corner, mature clips nude mature ladies and dominated everything around it. Texas victorian style, with yellow clapboard walls and a green roof. Lots of decorative carved wood. The successive stories were set back in tiers; a jumble of gables directed my eyes up to the octagonal room at the top, where the domed roof came to a point. It seemed perched on the house like an eagle's nest, high above the tops of the oaks and pecan trees. The yard was like a jumble, dense and green. Shady trees, century plants, stands of wild bamboo, even a few spindly yuccas. So far it looked like a bargain. Two women were sitting on the front porch. As I walked up, they stopped talking and looked me over. I did the same to them. They both looked a little overweight, and wore their mature women in pantyhose nude mature ladies hair
