The life and times of Jaime Stevens

My young life begins…

I was born, naked and screaming (as most babies are), to my parents on April 2, 1980. I crawled, toddled, and ran through my first few years of life, a bundle of boundless happiness who would talk to just about anything that would listen, primarily people, animals and trees. I bonded with children and animals, and often got them confused (there were several occasions at petting zoo where I would go pet a goat, then turn around and pet another kid who happened to be nearby), but it didn't seem to effect me, and I happily made it through those first few years.

At the age of 4, my parents divorced, and I was thrust into the interesting life of the single-parent household. My father wandered in and out of my life until I turned ten, when I put an end to his infrequent but nonetheless painful and awkward visits. And from then on, it was just me and my mother, who did her best to give me everything she could get her hands on.

From first grade to eighth grade, I attended a private grade school called Saint Mark's, where I stumbled my way through and, despite my unwillingness, managed to come away with a lot of good knowledge and a an incredibly good education, considering the fact that most of it was force fed to me. During the summers of the time, I attended the Marin Jewish Community Center's day camp. I know, going to a Christian school and a Jewish camp seems pretty bizarre, but I went to both, not for the religious background, but rather because they offered me the best opportunities around. I loved camp with all my heart, and wound up going all the way through; I started in the youngest section of the camp, and left after being a counselor for two years. The JCC and Saint Mark's both gave me many good memories that I still hold dear today, and I still keep in touch with a few of my friends from both…Carey, Alexis, Allison (who I had actually gone to preschool with, as well), and Cory, all of whom I knew from Saint Mark's, still write occasionally; Morgan, Becca, and Jason I also hear from occasionally, and all three of them are still working at the JCC during at least part of their summers.

Anyway, so my life between the ages of 5 and 13 pretty much consisted of Saint Mark's during the school year and camp during the summers. My love of camping and the outdoors grew as I got older, and soon I was river rafting, spelunking and repelling from random high places as I got older and had more opportunities at the JCC. I discovered that I had could do more at this day camp then I could at a sleep away camp, so I never did make that move. But I made up for that in high school.

Up until 4 days before my freshman year, I was going to go to Redwood High, a decent public school in Marin County. But, the Thursday before school was to officially start, I received a call from Santa Catalina, a private, all-girls boarding school in Monterey, to which I had been admitted but had not received enough financial aid to attend (remember that my mom is having to fork out the dough without any assistance from anyone, and secretaries really don't make enough to be able to pay $20,000 a year to a school). It was the financial aid folks, saying that they had enough money, did I want to come. In a matter of days I was in Monterey, with some clothes and bedding, sitting in a dorm that I would be calling home for the next year.

The decision to go to Catalina was the best that could have been made. The education I got there was incredible, and I had some of the best teachers there that I have ever had. One example is Broeck Oder, who was my history teacher for my sophomore, junior and senior years. He is someone who I admire and trust, and is the best teacher I have ever had, which is pretty incredible, considering the fact that I have been blessed with so many remarkable teachers. We still keep in touch, and I gotta say that he has been the closest person I have ever had to a father figure in my life. So thanx, Broeck, for everything that you have done.

In addition to all my awesome teachers, I made friends who were closer than I ever imagined possible. And, as any only child who had always wanted siblings, this new situation of living with 50 other girls my age was a dream come true. I bonded with a group with the first hour I was there, many of whom I ended up remaining close friends with all the way through.

My co-conspirator and accomplice in crime was Langley, who was (and is) my best friend. Our first time a roommates was 3rd term freshman year (SCS had a policy which made you change roommates 3 times a year), during which we drove our friends crazy with our fights. The amusing part of this situation is that neither of us remembers any of these so-called "fights." But our friends insist that they did, indeed, happen, and we tend to believe them. Well, despite that rocky start, we managed to pull through, and were roommates every year following; we are the only people in our entire class (or any other recent classes) that can make that claim. Living together for that long caused us to grow as close as sisters. We shared many experiences, both extremely good and inexplicably bad, and we always managed to come out on top, and closer than before. We snuck a rat into our dorm, escaped from campus in random guys' cars (highly illegal), sped down the main drag in Monterey at 110 mph in our respective boyfriend's cars, and once one of us even kicked a hole through our dorm-room wall (a total accident, but stupid nonetheless). Anyway, you get the point. Our capers were numerous and varied.

In addition to Langley, I was also frequently seen in the company of Billy; so often, in fact, that we were often introduced as "Billy and Jaime," and as a result many people didn't know who was who. One of our English teachers was always fumbling, and we used to tease him incessantly ("Billy…no! Jaime…er, *sigh*…you!"). Billy, who's real name is Megan, but chose to go by Billy (taken from her middle name, Billien), due to the fact that there were so many Megans in our class, was (and still is, I'm sure) as much of a goof as I was, and we used to stay up late on many nights just being stupid. When we were both on a sugar high, it was all over, and our dorm advisors would be ready to kill us by the end of the night.

Elizabeth (a.k.a. Strump) and Jen were both frequents in my room, and during my senior year, there was always a steady stream of younger folks in the room, whether it was Strump and her younger sisters, Annie and Julia, or the various freshmen I befriended, particularly Liz and Kristie. It's funny; most people would have been driven mad by this constant flow of people, but I loved it…. Now that I am at college and no longer have that, I really do miss it.

Another close friend of mine at Catalina was Gianni. She was a day student, unlike most of my close friends, who were boarders. But, despite this, we managed to find each other, and discovered that we had a tremendous amount of things in common. We kicked it together a lot, particularly during our Junior and Senior years of high school. She got me drunk for the first time, introduced me to the Lethal Weapon movies (which later became some of my favorite movies), and also suggested that I come be a counselor at the camp she worked at. And so came the next major change in my life.

After going to the JCC for 12 years, I knew everything there was to know about the camp…the procedures, the songs, the people. By that time I had been at the camp longer than the majority of the people there, including the every supervisor I had. But, after hearing about all the fun Gianni had had at San Jose Family Camp (SJFC), she had sparked my curiosity. So I applied, and got a job there as a lifeguard and member of the Recreation Staff.

So, at the beginning of the summer after I my junior year, I came home, unpacked from Catalina, repacked for camp, and within a week I was in Yosemite, moving my stuff into a large permanent tent on the "s-side" which I later learned was short for "staff" side. That was probably one of the best summers I had experienced to that point. It was just like school, in that I was living with a bunch of people who were generally my age, except it was coed, and there weren't as many rules. I was thrilled. In no time I had established a group of friends, and was generally harassing the surrounding forestry departments with the numerous missing signs (which increased tremendously this past summer). I grew to love SJFC even more than the JCC in that one summer. I loved the fact that I knew more songs than anyone else, I enjoyed leading the campfires and learning how to lead the stargazing hikes, including ten constellations. I was in constant company of Jen and Gianni, my two tent mates, and we were occasionally accompanied by other members of the staff.

I returned to camp for two summers after that, this time to live with the older staffers on K-side (the better side to live on, I assure you), and still living with my close buds, G and Jen. Gianni was often with her boyfriend, Calvin, this summer, but Jen and I still went for frequent grub-runs, making the hour drive to Sonora several times a week, rarely before 10:30pm. I was really close to both of my supervisors - Jen, who I lived with, and Scooby, who lived one tent over and who was a ton of fun to be around - and as a result was often hijacking a sign or just generally causing trouble with at least one of them. Needless to say, I loved camp as much as I had my first year, and still miss it tremendously.

After high school I wandered into college, but never really found my nitch. I went first to Agnes Scott College, a single-sex school in Decatur, GA. It wasn’t too bad, and my roommate, Maggie, and I got along well, but the school wasn’t all I had hoped it would be. I loved the surrounding area, though—Atlanta was a lot of fun. Additionally, I got to meet Maggie’s brother, Zach, and his clan: Grog, James, and Donny. Mag and I would go over to the house they shared fairly regularly to harass the guys, I got addicted to Tekken 2 and Half Life, and was introduced to the glorious world of whiskey sours. I made an ass out of myself several times as the ex-frat boys set out to get the freshman drunk, but we became friends despite that fact, and I still keep in touch with the guys to this day. Maggie and I also talk every once in while; she recently married her high school sweetheart and moved to Tennessee. Grog also got married a while ago, and apparently has a baby on the way. Judging from Grog’s dog, the child will no doubt be well-loved and spoiled.

After a year at ASC, despite having made such good friends with Maggie and the guys, I couldn’t stand ASC and went in search of some place else. I considered several schools in GA as transfer possibilities, but wound up settling on Hollins University in Roanoke VA. You would think after not liking ASC, and having most of my friends in GA being guys, I would have thought twice about going back to a women’s school, but alas, logic wasn’t first and foremost on my mind, and so off I went. Bad idea. The school actually wasn’t too bad. I liked my teachers, and generally speaking, my classes. But Roanoke left a LOT to be desired. I concluded that the reason why Roanoke was a lost colony was because no one actually wanted to be there. There wasn’t much to do, the public transportation blew, and I, as a carless sophomore, had nothing to keep me occupied besides the internet and tv. Depression over took me in no time, my friends grew worried if I didn’t respond to their emails within a few hours (that’s how much I was online), and I soon decided that college wasn’t for me and that I wanted to go home. Additionally, I still hadn’t been able to settle on a major—Psychology, music theory, English, vet med, philosophy, computer science, graphic design, business—nothing seemed to fit. Conclusion: go out, live life, get some experience under my belt, come back when I have a clue. One huge argument with my mom later, I had dropped out and was on my way back to California.

After dropping out of Hollins in December of 1999, I moved in with the Kidneys in Kentfield, CA. My mom and I had a huge fight about me dropping out of college, and I decided she could, well… I was frustrated and didn’t want to live with her, at any rate. So the Kidneys took me in. Liz, their oldest, had been one of the freshmen I took under my wing senior year of high school, and they paid me back for that one ten fold. I worked over at In-n-Out Burger (INO), where I met some awesome folks, including Jason, Rudy, Denny, Mikey and Dawn. I worked outrageous hours, but was paid decently and had a great time despite my 10+ hour days. For my 20th birthday I got my first tattoo, which is a tribal design of a cat on my lower back. It was pretty fun, over all.

Sometime during the summer of 2000, I moved back in with my mom. We had reconciled a bit, and it was time for me to move again. I was still working at INO, but now I had a much longer commute via bus. Between that and my mom and I bickering at each other again, it wasn’t long before I got fed up and left home again, this time to move in with Rudy closer to work. We had a great time, and I learned just what the phrase “work hard, party hard” meant. It was madness, but a great time nonetheless. I also finally got my driver’s license during that time. It wasn’t long before I adopted my car, a little red Honda CRX which I dubbed R2D2 (he beeps when you turn him off, so I thought it fit). And poof! I had transportation.

Sadly, Rudy moved back down to Los Angeles soon after that, so I moved across the Bay, where I crashed on Dawn and Jason’s couch, in Hercules. It was great fun—Jason and I would commute over to Marin together, blasting the soundtrack from the musical Jekyl and Hyde and singing at the top of our lungs. At work we would randomly burst into song, or quote Wallace and Grommit. We were the obnoxious when were together. Fantastic! Unfortunately, Jason was a Southern California native too, and he soon got itchy feet and returned home too. The bastard. I hung out with Dawn for a while after that, but when she moved to the South Bay, I was on my own again.

During this time, besides hanging out with Jason and working, I was also hanging out with Langley again, who was going to school at UC Berkeley, which was just a hop, skip and a jump away from Hercules. Armed with a car, I now could visit her at will, and had a great time doing so. I also started hanging out with a guy named Faisal, who I had met while I was living with the Kidney through Langley, but we lost touch. He hung out at a little kaufe haus in Berkeley called Wall Berlin, which had sort of a goth/industrial type theme. Through Faisal I met a whole new group of friends: Dylan, Cady, Tony, Ben, and Jamie, among others. Wall became my home-away-from-home as I couch surfed and continued to commute over to Marin.

With Jason, Rudy, and now Dawn gone from INO #141, and with living in Berkeley, I got sick of the commute and missed the atmosphere that had left with Jason. So I left INO and began my stint as a temp worker in Berkeley. Faisal and I were both couch surfing at that point, and soon he was sleeping at Cady’s, and I had moved in with Dylan. Every morning I would roll out of bed, get Dylan up, we’d drive over to Cady’s and grab Faisal, and I would drop everyone off at work. We’d meet up at wall later in the day for coffee, where we would sit outside and smoke cigarettes and watch the people of Berkeley wander by. Sometimes we’d go across the street to La Val’s, a pizza place with pool tables and video games. I became a regular there, playing pool and occasionally pinball. It got to the point where I knew the workers there, as well at Wall and at the little Gyro place down the street and was getting discounts, or at least not having to give my orders to folks working since they already knew what I wanted.

I met lots of very interesting people during that time; Jay, who was a straight bouncer at a gay bar who couldn’t stop talking about the status of his penis; Heather, the kick-ass industrial barista at Wall who had this fantastic pair of goggles that she would always wear on her head; and many others who would wander into my life for a few hours, swapping cigarettes and stories until they would move on. It was killer. When I wasn’t hanging out on Telegraph, all of that group lived within a 4 block radius of each other, and we were able to get together easily. I would watch a movie over at Ben and Jamie’s, then go over to Dylan’s and drink with him and the folks there. Inevitably, drinking parties at Dylan’s brought out the shenai (bamboo practice swords), and thus I learned just what “drunken monkey fighting” meant.

During my days, I was working as a semi-permanent temp for Alta Bates Hospital, in the Accounts Payable department. It wasn’t a great job, but I worked with some pretty cool menopausal women who were for the most part very amusing. Trish would call me over to cubicle at least twice a week to check to make sure that the heater wasn’t blowing directly over her. Every time I would come over, check tell her the heater hadn’t moved, and she would exclaim “good lord! Power surge!” and fan herself frantically with her hand. It was a trip.

I soon found a place in Berkeley—a rent-by-the-week hotel on University Ave. It wasn’t great, but I was able to take all of my stuff out of my car, finally, and could stop mooching off of my friends. I was working, playing, and a core group of folks I was comfortable with. It was great. But something was missing.

I had itchy feet again. I didn’t know what was up, but I didn’t want to keep living in my rent-a-week room, and I couldn’t afford to get a place in the bay area. Cady provided the excuse to leave, Faisal’s folks provided the location, and poof! My solution: Flagstaff, Arizona.

I drove out to Flagstaff with Langley, a car full of crap, and less than $80 in my account. We drove all day and half the night, making the trip from Berkeley to Flagstaff with a detour to Phoenix in a little over 14 hours. When we arrived, it was cold and snowy, the house had no heat and neither did my car, and I was a cranky monkey. But we had made it, in one trip, in one piece, and I slept soundly that night.

Thus began our stint in Flagstaff. We had very little money, but we did have ramen, a computer, and resumes. We all signed up at the temp agency but soon discovered that Flagstaff employment opportunities were few and far between. I soon found employment at Barnes and Noble, despite that fact. Cady finally broke down and got a job at Jack in the Box. We found a coffee house called Macy’s, and we were soon trying to make ourselves at home.

Things weren’t perfect, but they worked. We fell into a routine. We had house, food, a fireplace. Cady and I settled into our jobs. Faisal fumbled about for one. We made a few friends, Barbi, Aziah, Derrick, Shane and others. Ben and Jamie moved out for a bit, but couldn’t handle it and soon moved back to California. Cady found a boyfriend, Teva, who soon moved in with us. Sometime late in that summer, Cady quit Jack in the Box, and things got pretty tight. Luckily, Cady found a new job about a month later, as did Teva, and things started to look up again. I hooked up briefly with Corey, a guy from work, although that soon went caput with a little help from Faisal, who expressed an interest in dating me, and who I had been in love with for months. Soon after, Cady’s frustration with Faisal’s lack of employment became too much for her to bear, and she and Teva moved out. So our house of four became a house of two. We still had people come over all the time, but Cady and Teva wouldn’t hang out with Faisal, so I was torn between friends and my boyfriend. Things got hairy, but we got by nonetheless. Faisal grew depressed because he had no one to hangout with when I was at work, I got upset because he was alone and didn’t have a job, and after several months, in February of 2002, almost exactly a year after we had moved to AZ, Faisal and I broke up, and he moved back to CA. I moved in with Lisa, a coworker of mine, nursed my broken heart, and started again.

After living with Faisal, it was weird being single again. I had become so accustomed to sharing a bed that I would wake up in the middle of the night when I would reach out a leg and not find anyone there. Lisa and I worked opposite schedules more often than not, so we rarely saw each other, and Cady was working graveyards at Denny’s and was hard to see. I hung out with Teva occasionally to play pool at a bar. I met a guy named Dale and hooked up with him in a non-committed sort of way, but still hadn’t found what I needed. Then, one night after a particularly rough day at work, I went to the bar and all that changed.

Bun Huggers was a bar down the block from BN, and I had gone there a few times after work with coworkers to drink and play pool. So, after being tempted to quit at work, I tromped over to Bun Huggers to take my frustration out on pool and alcohol. There I saw a guy named Mike, who I had met a week before while playing pool. We started talking, hung out for a while, and played a few games of pool. His friend Chris decided to have an after hours party, so we grabbed some alcohol and went over to his place.

Unfortunately, Chris invited to jerks from the bar to come with us, too drunk to know better I guess. At any rate, as thery were leaving one of them picked up a brick and chucked it at the guy standing in front of me. Thinking quickly, I caught it with my eyebrow as it missed him and bounced off the wall. I was a bloody mess. It sounds horrible, I know. It certainly wasn’t pleasant—I had a fantastic black eye, my nose was sollen, and I was a mess. But I was hooked on the folks who I’d been hanging out with, and had now made myself memorable. And thus, Bun Huggers became my own personal Cheers. It wasn’t long before I knew most of the bartenders and waitresses, and folks knew me by name, drink, theme song and pool game. It was great.

I was getting itchy feet again though. I wanted to go back home. I loved Lisa, but was having a hard time living with her, and decided that I could find a new place to live in Flagstaff, or I could find a new place to live in California. I opted for the golden state, applied for a transfer, and several months later, I was off and running again.

The trip back wasn’t nearly as painful as the one out had been. Partied the night before at Bun Huggers, was able to say good-bye to nearly everyone I wanted to, hunted down those I didn’t that morning, and hit the road by 10 am on July 27th. At 7:30pm I pulled into LA, hot, tired, salty, and armed with the knowledge that driving through the desert in the middle of the summer in the middle of the day in a car without air conditioning was a BAD IDEA. I saw Faisal, saw Jason, and few days later headed up to camp to sepnd a few days there. I got to see Gianni and Jen, then headed back to the Bay Area. Home, sweet home.

I’m now working at a different BN here in town. I share an apartment with a really nice woman named Hannah, and see Langley, Tony, Dylan, Ben and Jamie occasionally, although not nearly as often as I wish I did. The combined efforts of Langley, who provided a loner computer, Tony, who hooked me up with a modem, and Dylan, who flung a driver in my general direction, I am no once again online and may even update the REST of my web site. Who knows. At any rate, I’m back home, and although nothing is perfect, I’m pretty happy now. Maybe I’ll go back to school someday. I figure I’ll probably try and get my AA next term, since I’m pretty close anyway. Who knows what lies ahead!