I was new in town, didn’t know anyone, needed a place. My old apartment in New York had made me sick of cramped quarters; I needed space.

I had no intention of moving into some tacky Houston apartment complex with a bathtub-size swimming pool and nosy neighbors. I wanted something different, something with character. A room in a house with laid-back people. Cooperative living. I’d done that back in my student days. It might be just what I needed to made me feel at home in this fucked-up town.

They say New York’s impersonal. Give me those hordes on the subways any day over the automatons in steel modules that cruise the superfreeways in Houston. Forget the sweltering heat; this town is all cold concrete and glass. Maybe that explains the incredible murder rate. There’s a lot of mental illness down here.

On Saturday morning I took the Harley 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 register. One of the classifieds seemed to be just what I wanted:

Liberated person needed to share 3-storied house w/2w, 1m. You help in house, garden, get privacy, fresh vegs. $90/mo.

The address was on Beauchamp Street. I asked the cashier if she knew where it was. North of downtown, she said. Pronounced bee-chum. Sort of run-down, but gentrified around the edges. Lots of big oak trees and old houses. A mixed neighborhood—Chicanos, Blacks, old couples, student types.

I loaded my salad with alfalfa sprouts to get in the mood and then biked up to Beauchamp. I thought about removing the studded leather armband from my left biceps, but decided against it. If I moved in, they’d figure out where I was coming from soon enough. Better to start out being open.

The house was set on a corner and dominated everything around it, a fine example of Texas Victoriana, with lots of decorative carved wood, yellow clapboard walls, and a green shingle roof. 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 jungle, dense and green. Shady trees, century plants, stands of wild bamboo, even a few spindly yuccas. The more I saw, the more I liked it.

Two women were sitting on the front porch. As I walked up, they stopped talking and looked me over. They were both dressed in loose, lacy cotton dresses and sandals, and wore their hair long and frizzy.