As Sheri's pick-up bumped along Highway 101 South, back toward San Francisco, Ryan gazed out the window. Silva Island flashed past while the driver recounted another of her never-ending stories. Even his amazed utterances when crossing The Golden Bridge for the very first time failed to fully break her one-sided banter.
"I used to live up here when I was younger," she was now saying. "When I met my ex, I was living on a houseboat just outside Sausalito. It was totally rad."
Set in 1999, “The Houseboat” is the latest installment in “Life By The Bay,” author Pollo Del Mar’s serialized, semi-fictional account of nearly 20 years as a San Francisco resident.
"You lived on a houseboat?" Ryan asked, perking up. Something Sheri said finally piqued his attention enough to interject. He'd hardly said a word since they pulled away from home.
That morning, when his roommate invited him to run errands with her, he debated whether to go. Around the house, it was fairly easy to escape Sheri’s chatter, and their opposing schedules proved a blessing in reducing time spent together.
However, Ryan knew the long drive past Sausalito to drop off their rent -- which, for some reason, she refused to mail -- could easily include an hour of uninterrupted conversation each way. And he meant literally "uninterrupted," because it didn’t seem to matter to Sheri whether he was listening or not.
The thought of seeing previously unseen areas of the Bay, though, outweighed his healthy skepticism. So he agreed to the late-morning adventure.
Even before they pulled away from the little blue house at 23rd and Ortega, Sheri launched into another tale of life on the road following The Dead. Though he liked her well enough, and the stories were always colorful -- frequently involving some kind of youthful altercation with the police -- after scarcely a month, they’d started to run together in his mind.
Now on their way home some two hours later, one of her revelations captured his imagination. He found the idea of this large woman bumbling around the crowded confines of a houseboat amusing -- if not altogether surprising.
"How old were you then?" Ryan needled her for more information.
"It was right after I told my mom to go fuck herself," Sheri said, her knuckles turning pale as fleshy hands gripped the steering wheel more tightly.
"So I was about 15 when I first left that bitch and made my way up here," she said. "By the time I was 16, I was living on the boat."
Ryan was reluctant to ask more. It sounded painful, and Sheri's intense grimace reinforced the idea.
His teen years weren't particularly easy either. By 16, he was trying to balance fairly significant homophobic bullying in his high school, despite being years from coming out, and his parents' recent divorce.
Yet, no matter how difficult it was at times, Ryan never seriously contemplated leaving. On some level, he admired Sheri's (possibly misguided) teenage grit.
"That must have been tough," he said. "Even when I left for college at 18, my mom was always there to help me."
"Oh, my mom was always willing to help," Sheri said, venom in her voice. "She still is -- but it comes with a price, and I'm not willing to pay it."
Ryan acknowledged the statement with an audible grunt. He instinctively knew to guide the conversation in a different direction.
Sheri takes Ryan to visit the houseboat she lived on after running away from home as a teenager.
"Living on a houseboat sounds so cool!" he said, hoping to find neutral territory. "Did you live by yourself?"
A wave of relief washed over him as Sheri chuckled. Whew! He'd sidestepped an emotional land mine.
"I could never have afforded to live there alone," she said, a smile creeping onto her face as she recalled. "There were six of us onboard. They were, like, my new family, you know?
"We all had each other's backs, took turns cooking and grew our own weed," Sheri went on, "It was so fucking amazing -- like a little commune. Free love and shit."
In Ryan's mind, it sounded more like something straight out of the '60s than the early-'90s. Then again, glancing at Sheri's patchwork skirt and peasant's blouse, her red hair pulled into two messy pigtails adorned with pale yellow silk flower clips, so did she. In that light, it made perfect sense.
“Free love?” he asked, unable to hide his curiosity. “You mean like orgies and stuff?”
Sheri pounded the steering wheel in a fit of laughter. Between her hysterics and the fact she smoked a joint in the McDonald’s parking lot after lunch – “You don’t like weed, huh?” she’d asked -- Ryan feared the cream-colored Chevy might cross the dividing line. Fortunately, she righted it just in time.
“God, no,” she finally said amid a coughing fit. “You Midwesterners always think everything is an ‘orgy.’”
“I didn’t mean to be offensive…” he said.
“Yeah, we all fucked around,” Sheri cut him off, “But it wasn’t like we were all just smoking weed and fucking every single day.”
Well, then, I stand corrected, Ryan thought, suddenly very uncomfortable with the conversation. He really regretted asking, so he turned his attention again to the highway.
To his right was The Buckeye Roadhouse, which Sheri told him on their way north was a historic staple in the area. Several small seaplanes bobbed happily on the sunny waters to his left.
“Fuck it!” Sheri announced without warning. “I’m going to show you!”
“What?” Ryan asked, confused. “Show me what?”
“The houseboat,” she said, motioning with a sturdy finger toward the Bay. “It’s right over there.”
Without signaling, Sheri changed lanes and exited the freeway at the next off-ramp. Minutes later, they were driving slowly past a series of colorful houseboats of various shapes and sizes. Some were very sleek and modern. Others had a more rustic feel. To Ryan, each had a romantic feel.
Finally the truck eased to a stop in front of what looked nothing like a boat at all. Ryan stared in relative horror at, for all appearances, a collection of ramshackle sheds stacked precariously atop one-another.
The whole thing was coated in mismatched reds, some obviously spray painted. Plants dotted the deck and lined rundown stairs between levels. A dilapidated walkway sagged between the floating death trap and shore.
“Wow!” Ryan said in shock, taking it all in.
Time must have been quite hard on the place, he thought. That didn’t seem to phase Sheri one little bit, though, as her mouth turned upward in a smile. It was obvious she was taken back in time by the sight.
“I can’t believe it, man,” she half-whispered. “It hasn’t changed a bit!”
Read “Life By The Bay” Installment 1: “And So It Begins.”
“Tales of The City” is the 20th installment of “Life By The Bay,” a semi-fictional anthology documenting Pollo Del Mar’s nearly 20 years as a San Francisco resident. “Pollo Del Mar” is the pen name of author and journalist Paul E. Pratt.
To read more work by Pollo Del Mar, including links to celebrity interviews & all previous installments of “Life By The Bay,” click here.