When I lost my lease, Ara said there might be a room in the house on Montgomery Street, and so I moved in with Alice, Hannah, Sarah, Bianca, Kate, and Annie.

The house was close to the art school and the women’s college, and stacked full of the mismatched, unclaimed belongings of five or six roommate generations.

At first I hid in my room and tried not to be noticed; I was so conspicuously male, and so out of proportion with the cats, curtains, and blankets. I never had sisters.

Everything overwhelmed.

I was enchanted with every move, fascinated with every gesture.

They cooked together, mixed teas and tinctures, dyed fabrics in the backyard, designed costumes for children’s plays, wrote songs and poems, gave each other late-night tattoos, smithed jewelry, and stitched leather. They read tarot, talked aura, charted horoscopes, and parked their dirt bikes in the basement.They smoked on the porch in their underwear and wore whatever the fuck they wanted. 

The everyday physical, emotional, and spiritual closeness completely flooded me.

The place and the people and the pictures all started to bleed into on another.

The paintings on the wall became our own poses, the drawings on your body drip back into the books on the wall.

The clutter made room for you and all of your contradictions.

I couldn’t believe the caring touches, the open hearts, the blushes of affection.