My first place in downtown Boston was a $23-a-week rented room in the Parkgate on Hemmenway Street, just behind the conservatory on Fenway Park.
One week after I moved in, a man's body was found in the room directly above me. He'd been dead a week.
For most of that 1973 fall semester I had stayed in Beverly, Massachusetts, with my former Drew Hall roomates from Gordon College. They had rented a sprawling Victorian near the train station, and I had the last-claimed and therefore smallest room in the house right at the top of the stairs. It had a tiny window overlooking the downtown street near the railroad. A twin mattress fit the floor with just enough space left over for my violin case, my clothes, and some books.
I never missed a class the whole time I was there in the Beverly closet. The conductors on the commuter train knew me and would just say "Good night!" as soon as I boarded in the early mornings. At Boston's North Station I'd switch to the Green Line subway, standing up the rest of the way through the city under Park Street and Boylston down to the Fens.
When I finally moved into downtown Boston around Thanksgiving, I began to sleep in and missed some morning classes...even though I could walk through the alley and right into the school's back door. The elevator down the hall led directly to the orchestra rehearsal room, the classrooms, and up to the tiny practice rooms lining the attic.
Moving into downtown Boston was at once exhilerating and profoundly isolating. I would walk over to the market store on Mass Ave and buy cans of tuna and mixed vegetables, cottage cheese, and sunflower seeds. That was my big meal. Some days it was just the 25-cent slice of cheese pizza from the grill around the corner on Boylston. Newport cigarettes rounded out my nutritional plan, with an occasional half pint of brandy, if I could afford it. I kept the food on my windowsill to avoid the shared kitchen.
Across the hall was a woman who collected dolls. She'd invite me in to show me the collection on her bed, and ask me if I wanted one. I'd decline.
After Christmas I moved upstairs to a little studio on the top floor. My neighbor up there was a veteran who studied military history. He had shelves of books in his tiny apartment.
I was busy at the conservatory, studying music theory and solfege, playing Berlioz overtures, Mozart symphonies, the Kabalevsky concerto.
My dreams got worse, the night paralysis holding me down with hypnogogic force. I wrote bad poetry:
(Public Alley 909)
Parkgate
Ugly little tenement slum
I’m now a city bum
you couch my nights and
bedridden worries
the sleepless thoughts encumbered
by the blue tones floating
the dark lips pursing
the gaiety in the corner bars
all floating up and seeping
between the Venetian blinds
the acres of surrounding land
are upwards built and full
the light and dark of worn out souls
in other chairs at other windows
the calling drunks and gunshots
roll down the damp alleys
to the rhythm of the constant traffic
rushing on below.
So they have salt shakers and
electric can openers and
carpeting to cushion
I have left for this civilization
the phone gets put in Tuesday
I’ll be so settled then
Today the old Berklee School of Jazz on the corner has merged with the Boston Conservatory, calling itself The Berklee College of Music.
The death of the pour soul one floor above haunts me still.
(MARCH 2024)
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