23. Monkey in the middle

Self-advocacy amidst the self-involved - plus Yosemite!

Jun 15, 2025

Hello friends,

At those times in life when we don’t know what we want, it’s easy to get pushed around by the wants of others. By encountering what we don’t want, we can slowly hone in on what we do want. That was my experience in 1994, a year for which I do not have a single picture of myself, so I gathered some from the internet.

Be sure to scroll down for some new pictures of last week’s trip to Yosemite!

23. Bouncing around the country

Anza Street building, Nauset Beach on Cape Cod

Part 1: Anza Asylum

The year began with a new San Francisco roommate situation on Anza Street at 6th Avenue, just north of Golden Gate Park. I rented the middle room with a view of an air shaft. Tyler, the leaseholder, was a portly 30-something man who drove a sporty car. Kiki, the other roommate, was a few years older than me and was applying to grad school for gerontology (the study of aging). Soon after I moved in, Tyler installed exterior locks on all our doors, “for your own security,” he said. I wondered which of them I needed to protect myself from, but I followed along and even locked my door when I showered.

I worked at a café for a few months, then began temping again to see if I could find my way to an office job. Through Pam, I met a cute guy raised in the wine industry who lived in Napa and would come to stay with me on weekends. We went backpacking in Point Reyes National Seashore. I wasn’t in love with him, but we had good chemistry, and I was fascinated by everything he told me about California and winemaking.

Kiki was a strange one. She tried to be my friend by talking about boys—she had an “ex-boyfriend” who used to come around, but once we went out drinking and she tried to kiss me. I didn’t kiss her back. A female “friend” frequently came over for overnight visits. When Tyler wasn’t home, she would model lacy bras that barely covered her ample breasts. One night, she came to my door to tell me good night and said, “I love you.” In my naiveté, I didn’t know what to make of it. Those three words had only been spoken to me by my parents and boyfriends, so I said, “Good night,” closed the door, and locked it.

Tyler’s source of income was just as mysterious as his sexuality (he never spoke about dating). In a quest to make more money off the apartment, he built a loft in the interior stairwell next to the kitchen and rented it out to a grad student. She told us that late one night, she heard Tyler vomiting in the kitchen sink. His erratic behavior indicated more than drinking, and we were puzzled.

It felt like living in an asylum. Amidst Kiki’s unwanted advances, Tyler’s questionable behavior, and an educated woman living in a stairwell, I wanted out, but lacked the money for deposit on a new place without getting that deposit back. In retrospect, I wonder if Tyler’s insistence on the locks was to protect us from Kiki. Was she so desperate for attention that she came to his door too? Was she meddling in his stuff? Was her choice of gerontology as a career an unconscious way to ensure she would have the lifelong adoration and access to things of older people, whatever their gender?

In May, just after I ran Bay to Breakers, San Francisco’s premier 7.2-mile road race with 80,000 people, Scotty said I could live with him in his girlfriend Fran’s house on Cape Cod for the summer. I packed my suitcases, shipped my bike, and used my deposit money for a one-way plane ticket to Boston.

Part 2: Homeless on the Cape

On the Cape, with only my bike for transportation, I looked for better-paying jobs in Brewster than the sandwich shop. I tried the kitchen at Chillingsworth, a French fine dining restaurant, and couldn’t take the 12-hour shifts. I tried waitressing at The Reef, a restaurant in the Ocean Edge Resort. Two nights of cocktail waitressing were all I could handle, and after less than a month of dinner waitressing, I was done with running around, messing up orders, and feeling like every request was an affront to my being. I may have been cute walking around in the uniform of cutoff jeans, white t-shirt, and patchwork vest, but I was a terrible waitress.

After a month, Fran, a leather-faced chain-smoking whiskey-drinking antiques dealer, decided she didn’t like having me around, even though I was working double shifts, running a lot, and barely home. She kicked me out. Papa didn’t advocate for me. It is impossible to find affordable last-minute summer housing on Cape Cod because every available space is a vacation rental, so for the next two months, I bounced around from friend’s house to friend’s house, living out of a backpack on my bike.

Mike Garvan, a musician and sandwich shop customer, had a two-bedroom condo in Sea Pines. On the weekends, he rented the extra room to a musician from Boston who played in his band. I stayed there during the week, and by the end of the season, I had the room to myself and worked 5-6 days a week at the sandwich shop.

The upside of homelessness was that I saved a lot of money. By fall, I was ready for something new, and hatched a plan to get a fresh start in Boulder, Colorado, which I had visited with Josh during our Wyoming stay. The outdoor lifestyle sounded just right, it was more affordable than San Francisco, and a friend of a friend was living there. An older, handsome waiter from Chillingsworth on whom I had a crush would be driving to Vail, Colorado in late November and offered me a ride.

Part 3: The Gentleman and the Gays

For three days I sat with Steve and my desire as we barreled 2,000 miles across the icy country in his Jeep. He played the gentleman, and I played the wild young woman in my head. The fantasy ended as soon as I landed in the reality of a hot tub party with a group of gay men in a Gunbarrel condo just outside of Boulder. Lee, my friend’s friend, lived in Boulder with his partner Ken, and they had a goofy group of friends. Lee’s sister Anne was also there, which instigated a year’s worth of funny introductions. “Hi, this is Lee. This is his sister Anne. And my name is Lee Ann.”

I used my savings to rent a furnished studio apartment in an inconvenient location for someone with only a bike, which would soon be stolen off the railing attached to the porch.

Self-advocacy when no one is listening

My attempts to advocate for myself that year often went unheard. In San Francisco, I didn’t feel safe in an apartment that had locks on every door. Back in New Hampshire, my mother was wrapped up with her new beer-guzzling husband’s legal fight to get his children back. On the Cape, there were nights when I got off work and didn’t have a place to sleep. I was so afraid of Fran and her cloud of smoke that I wouldn’t go to her house unless I needed to switch out my clothes. Since Scotty left my mother, his job as a parent was officially long over, but I still relied on him, and he threw me under the bus. When I arrived in Boulder, I asked Don Gove, the man I believed to be my biological father, for help buying a car. He sent me a few hundred bucks, hardly enough when I could barely pay rent.

The thing is, I didn’t know what I was supposed to want. The people who were supposed to guide me were wrapped up in their own stuff and incapable of guiding an educated young woman into a profession that would afford her the ability to get a car, which I could not on $7 per hour. The most useful guidance I got from them was, “You’ll figure it out.” So I found new helpers in people like Mike Garvan, Steve, and Lee. I reported the bike theft to the police, which resulted in its return months later because I gave them the serial number.

I’ve never written about this year. I never told Scotty how disappointed I was that he betrayed me. It was the school of hard knocks, and I’ve lived west of the Mississippi ever since. Distance can be a form of safety. I “figured it out,” but it took a while.

What acts of self-advocacy were hard for you, but worth it?

Self-care in troubled times

My love for the outdoors called me to Yosemite this week. Self-advocacy includes getting away when you need to restore your soul, and the waterfalls and rocks did just that. I swam in the shadow of El Capitan, ducked my head under the water at Yosemite Falls, and basked in the mist on the Mist Trail at Vernal Falls.