By Eamon Doyle

Part 2: How Do I Afford My Rock ’N’ Roll Lifestyle?


9/6/04:

The holiday is winding to a close. My friend Mark and I have just seen a movie and are now walking the ten-odd blocks back to my dorm room so he can pick up his stuff. At approximately 9:35, half a block from the cafeteria, a homeless guy steps out of the shadows, clutching a small, obviously frightened hamster.

“Hey,” he says to Mark. “Some homeless guy just threw a milk crate at me. It had this hamster in it. Gimme a dollar seventy-five or I'll smash it on the ground.”

Of course I know that Berkeley is a strange place. Still: for me, this is a first.

We're sort of stunned into silence for a moment, and then Mark starts fumbling for his pockets. “Uh...” He pulls out a single crumpled bill; it's all he has. “I have a dollar,” he says.

“No,” says the man. “A dollar seventy–five. Or I'll smash this hamster on the ground.”

I've been a city dweller long enough to be able to tell one breed of street person from another. And this guy is no lunatic. He's young, relatively clean, and utterly calm. He just wants money, and as far as he's concerned, this is nothing more than a business transaction. All our immediate questions—Where did the hamster come from? Do homeless guys really call other homeless guys “homeless guys?” And why is he so insistent that it be a dollar seventy–five? Why not two dollars, or five, or ten?—are beside the point. What matters is that right now, we could potentially save a small helpless animal from an unpleasant death.

I reach into my pocket and pull out three quarters, the only change I have. We pool our funds and hand them over. The man passes the hamster to Mark, mumbles something pithy, and heads off down the block.

And just like that, we have a hamster. She's extremely jittery—afraid of people, no doubt. Never one to pass up an opportunity for a pun, I decide to name her Wrigley.

So. Now what?

Okay, shelter. We go to the convenience store adjacent to the cafeteria and procure an empty box that once held Clif Bars. It's better than nothing, but Wrigley desperately wants to climb out, so we have to keep a thumb on her back at all times as we continue on to Clark Kerr.

We know we have to take her to a vet and get her some food and water, but will that even make a difference? I notice that there's a lump of some sort in her neck, and that her tail is awfully short—was she a lab hamster? Do the university labs give cancerous animals to homeless people when they're done with them? Oh God. I'm thinking the worst.

At last we reach the dorm and find a yellow pages. I try one number and get a recording directing me to call another place. I dial this second number and get a rude woman who tells me to “cut to the chase.” When I do, she says that her facility doesn't accept “pocket pets,” and that we should take ours to the all-night animal hospital on University and 10th.

We turn around and start walking. As we pass through the Greek-life district, packs of girls stop to admire Wrigley, agreeing that she is “omigod so cute.” A very drunk young man stares at us in awe and asks, “Are you really gonna eat that thing?” We find a bigger box and press on.

“Do you know where you're going?” Mark asks.

“Yeah, I think so,” I reply.

By the time we get to Shattuck Avenue, Wrigley is seriously flipping out. Mark runs over to a police car stopped at a light and asks the cop if she can take us the rest of the way. She tells us that she wishes she could help, but she's on her way to a possible robbery. Before the light changes, I ask her how far away we are. “Oh, about a mile and a half,” she says.

So I was wrong. I had no idea where we were going. Fortunately, there's a row of taxis lined up along the curb. One of the cabbies offers to take us, and we pile into the backseat.

A few minutes later, we arrive at the hospital and explain our situation to the receptionist, who is very pleasant and understanding. She has me fill out a one-page form—after my contact info, I find myself putting a lot of “unknown”s, because Wrigley and I have only recently met—and then leads us into another room, where a nurse, also very pleasant and understanding, examines our tiny charge.

As it turns out, Wrigley does not have cancer. Her stubby tail is normal for a dwarf hamster. She is, we are told, the picture of health. Not even dehydrated or anything.

The nurse leaves and a doctor enters. He's pleasant and understanding, and looks maybe twelve years old. He checks Wrigley out and quickly reiterates the nurse's assessment. Then he gives us a little cup of hamster food, an eyedropper with which to give her water until we can obtain a proper bottle, and a blanket to put in her box, and sends us back into the waiting room. There, another receptionist charges us the “standard examination fee” of sixty-four dollars. We are mildly appalled. The exam, while reassuring, took all of five minutes. No wonder they're all so pleasant.

“Uh...” We dig into our pockets again. I have three dollars. Mark has nothing. Wait—why do I have only three dollars? Then it hits me: the cab fare was eight dollars. I gave the driver a twenty, and he gave me three singles instead of a ten and two singles.

[expletives deleted]

Whether it was an honest mistake or not doesn't matter. I'm not gonna see that money again.

“Look,” I say to the (highly amiable) new receptionist, “can't you just send us a bill or something? We didn't expect to have to come down here tonight, we got bilked by the guy who drove us, we have three dollars left in the world, and we're just trying to be, you know, good Samaritans.”

He agrees to mail me the bill on the condition that I cough up the money by the end of the month. Dejected, Mark and I take our perfectly healthy (!!!) impromptu pet and begin the long, long walk back to the dorm.

I don't know whether there's some kind of moral here. As morals go, “Being a good Samaritan will cost you tremendous amounts of time, money, and energy, but do it anyway” isn't very convincing. You're on your own with this one, kids.

9/12/04:

Okay. Having thought the whole thing over, I suppose it's not all that bad. Wrigley is now safe and sound in Mark's swanky apartment in the Haight, and Labor Day 2004 now holds the title of Most Memorable Labor Day Ever (beating out the previous champion, 2003).

Besides, I should be grateful for extracurricular adventure of the sort I had on Monday night—God knows there are no thrills to be found in my academic endeavors. Last semester I spent thousands of dollars to stare into space while my instructors lectured incessantly about topics in which I had absolutely no interest. Fortunately, this semester has been different. Sure, I've screwed up all my classes, but this time it took me two weeks instead of three months.

I've learned my lesson: time is money, and I might as well spend mine playing guitar, sleeping until midafternoon, and not going to class. From now until the end of the semester, I shall practice the underrated art of running out the clock.

9/21/04:

I'm having a few issues with my roommate Luke, but not the sort of issues people usually have with their roommates. It's not that Luke's a jerk or a slob or an alcoholic. In a way, it's worse than that. Much, much worse.

If I could work up the nerve, I would give him a copy of the following
letter:

Dear Luke:

Please. Make it stop. Make the horrible music stop.

No more crunk. No more Janet. No more “I Will Survive” and no more “Holding Out for a Hero.” No more “It's the FI-NAL COUNT-DOWN!” and no more “Do you be-lieeeeeve in life after love?” No more ten consecutive spins of the Kim Possible theme song, and for God's sake, no more “Dancing Queen.”

I've tried, I really have, to be open-minded and generous and accepting and all that jazz. But a man can take only so much. I've had alls I can stand and I can't stands no more.

Please, dude. I'm begging you.

— Eamon

I should also address his irksome habit of keeping the curtains in the living room open all day (hello? If I wanted to be bathed in natural light, I'd be outside), but the synth-pop crisis absolutely must come first.

10/6/04:

Thought: An infinite number of crazy guys shouting on an infinite number of street corners for an infinite number of years would eventually produce the complete works of Wesley Willis.

10/12/04:

Aggravated sleep deficiency has given me this recurring tic where a vein under my right eye throbs visibly. It really creeps people out, but that makes me feel like a rock star, so it's all good.

10/15/04:

Tonight I'm going to read at 826 as part of the annual San Francisco literary festival Litquake. It's quite an honor to be a part of this event, although I fear my credentials are not as impressive as they could be. Perhaps the bio I submitted for the Litquake website will give you an idea of what I mean:

Eamon Doyle is a Cancer. In May 2003, he won the 826 Valencia Young Author's Scholarship as a result of what Michiko Kakutani termed “the most unfortunate clerical error of our young century.” He has just begun his second year at the University of California at Berkeley, where he writes for the technically award-winning humor magazine The Heuristic Squelch. He will probably be sending some writing to “them fancy-pants big-city magazines” in the near future, if he can remember to buy stamps. Mr. Doyle is originally from San Francisco but currently divides his time between egomania and self-loathing. His favorite herb is cilantro.

It's all true, except for that Michiko Kakutani part.

10/18/04:

I had a great time at the reading. Jenny Traig and Daniel Handler, with whom I shared the stage, were hilarious; moreover, I made it through my piece without that vein under my eye twitching once. (Score.) In between readings, the three of us played raucous rounds of “826 Jeopardy!” with a staff member named Suzanne. She beat the pants off us, but that may or may not have had something to do with the fact that she wrote half the questions.

Oh, who am I kidding? Suzanne won fair and square. I'm just bitter because I can't be the Ken Jennings of pirate trivia.

11/3/04:

UGH. What the hell, people.

11/6/04:

No, I'm still not over it. Hey, look at it this way: it took me a full three days just to finish my bag of election-night Ruffles, so why should I let go of the election itself so soon?

I'm not sure which angers me more, that Bush won, or that Kerry lost. It would have been so friggin' cool to have had a guitar-playing president.

Obama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Berkeley with the red state blues again?

11/23/04:

The Squelch editors haven't published much of my writing this semester. And since my efforts have been limited to C-list pieces like “Excerpts from Children's Stories in Which Major Characters Have Back Acne,” I can't say I blame them:

“Then Papa Bear said, ‘Someone's been sleeping in my bed! And judging from the greasy stains on the sheets and the telltale tube of Neutrogena On-the-Spot on the bedside table, that someone has terrible back acne!’”

“As all the animals of the forest gathered around the heroic tortoise, he turned to the hare. ‘I hope you've learned your lesson,’ he said. ‘Slow and steady wins the race. Sure, that last-minute outbreak of back acne that led you to scamper off the trail in embarrassment may have had something to do with your defeat, but why get all technical?’”

“‘Come out, come out, or I'll launch an attack!’
‘Not by the zits on my backy-back-back!’”

It goes on like that for a while.

One day in twelfth grade, my classmate Loran said to me, “Writing is your wife, but music is your mistress.” He pretty much hit the nail on the head; whenever one's not working out for me, I can just concentrate on the other for a while. And since I've clearly hit a wall with the prosperous English major thing, I'm now focusing my energies on becoming a starving axe-slinger.

So far it's going well. My friend Peter and I have been playing music together for roughly three years, and now, armed with guitars, keyboards, a well-oiled drum machine, and what the Welsh rock group Stereophonics called “just enough education to perform,” we have taken that all-important next step: we have given ourselves a band name, and created a self-indulgent band website.

Also, I've started making appearances at The Songwriters Symposium, a weekly acoustic open mic at Blakes on Telegraph. I've never played my songs in a real club, so the prospect of performing makes me rather nervous—but I suppose the experience will be worth it in the long run.

11/30/04:

Excerpt from a conversation with my friend Neffy regarding my performance at last night's Songwriters Symposium:

ME: Oh God, what was I thinking? It was a disaster. It was a monstrosity. It was a full-fledged aural abortion. I'm never playing another show ever again.

HER: I'm sure you did gorgeously. Stop letting self-doubt suck at your soul.

ME: If by “did gorgeously” you mean “caused horrible bass feedback, botched the chords to the easy cover song, and topped it off with some truly terrible beatboxing,” then yes, I did gorgeously.

HER: That is exactly what I meant.

I'm going to the cafeteria to drown my sorrows in hummus. It'll do me good to get out of the dorm for a while; if I have to hear any more of Luke's Dance Dance Revolution music, I just might claw my face off.

12/20/04:

All is lost. There is nothing left for me to do now but recall the words of Ben Folds:

Three sad semesters
It was only fifteen grand
Spent in bed
I thought about the army
I dropped out and joined a band instead

Life in the new stapler has not rocked nearly as hard as I assumed it would.