“Did you see the email I sent you? That houseboat listing? It’s only $85,000,” said my uncle, who happens to be my current landlord, a few weeks ago. He became the gilded landowner that he is now by first rebuilding and flipping houseboats for a few decades. He knows houseboats.
“Also, I’ve been thinking about you for this dock for a while. It’s called Waldo Dock (not its real name.) It’s a commune of people made up entirely of low-income artists and maritime workers. That’s it. They won’t let anyone else take residency. You’re one of the few people in the world that could actually qualify for it.”
Well, damn, I thought. That’s worth a look-see.
Little did I know that this little adventure would shake what I thought were my political beliefs to their very foundations.
For years, because I’d read something I was terribly morally impressed with, by Mikhail Bakunin, I’ve been describing myself as an “anarcho-syndicalist.” I like the idea of strong, protective unions. I’ve mostly considered myself to be more Marxist than Capitalist, without being a communist. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” — that’s pretty much the main slogan I connected with.
I made an appointment to see the houseboat, and my uncle and his lovely girlfriend met me in the parking lot of the dock, next to a little park by the bay.
Readers familiar to this series may recall that I spent my childhood on a Sausalito houseboat.
As we walked past the community zucchini garden (I fucking hate zucchini) and the ice plants potted in giant rusty coffee cans on the wooden dock, my whole childhood came flooding back, with all the weird terror that implies. The shantytown appearance of these floating domiciles. That musty smell of the bilge. The damp wood, rusty nails and moist tarpaper. The dogs with weathered bandannas. The creosote-coated pylons. The black mud and the pure beauty of the bay reflecting the sky, surrounded by the hallowed hillsides of Sausalito.
“It’s all about community, here,” said Darla (not her real name), an attractive woman around my age, wearing yoga pants and rubber-soled clogs, who had been a part of this experiment in communal living for over 20 years.
The “craft,” as it were (it was technically a boat, not a houseboat — at one point it had a motor) was 40 feet by 10 feet. It was more of a plywood barge, or a large shack. It was not wholly without its charms - it had a little kitchen, looking out glass doors over the deck — a built-in little bed cubby, a little metal spiral staircase leading up to a multi-windowed room where there once had been a steering wheel, or something.
Darla gave me the skinny on how to be jumped into this particular residential gang. To be admitted into the community, I would have to woo the current residents. At least two of them would have to write me recommendation letters — I would have to obtain their friendships, somehow. I didn’t know how this would be accomplished. Gifts of exotic yarn? Amazon gift cards? Canned goods? It was not unlike auditioning to be a sister-wife.
“Oh we’ve got committees. Did I tell you we’ve got committees? We’ve got committees, committees, committees for everything,” Darla continued. “I’m on at least a dozen committees. We all do our part in every aspect of managing this dock as a whole. See that boat over there?” She asked, pointing out a larger, more civilized houseboat. “They’re the richest ones here, so they pay almost all of the property taxes.”
This was beginning to be interesting. I could almost see myself setting up a painting studio in the back room, which was filled with tangled bicycles.
“It’s cute!” I said. “So, where’s the shower?”
“Oh, there isn’t one!” Darla smiled. “You can take a bath or a shower, but you’ve got to do it on land.”
We walked outside and down the dock, and indeed, there was a row of fairly clean, semi-public showers, and a bathtub — each of these rooms accessed with a key. It was something like a summer camp situation, only inescapable, year after year. There was also a laundry facility, with a community chore list that looked more complex than a London Underground map.
I shuddered. The thought of walking to the public bath in my bathrobe, in all sorts of weather, I knew would utterly undo me. Put me before the firing squad. It was not going to happen.
And that’s was the moment I realized I was definitely a shitty Marxist.
I existentially dreaded the thought of being on a chore list. I cannot and will not eat group-realized zucchini.
I have been persuaded by capitalism that I need things like an actual bathroom inside my house. Did I think I was an island? Who was I not to want to share my shower with fine maritime workers? I could imagine Che Guevara laughing and putting a cigar out on my driver’s license.
As if on cue, a man walked toward us from the dock who looked as if he had been marinating in wet coffee grounds. Dark brown dirt seemed carefully rubbed into every pore and line of his face. This man was clearly not taking regular advantage of the semi-public bathing facility. He had a jet-black smear of what looked like tar on his brownish clothing from his nipples to his knees, like he had been wallowing on his stomach in it. He smiled at me, a smile full of teeth stained a dark walnut. He was literally the filthiest man I have seen since my childhood, when the guy whom my father called the “Dirtiest Man in the World” would ride around the flea market in a mud-caked wetsuit, on a rusty bicycle, his brown hair matted into one giant dreadlock.
It became abundantly clear to me that I would be nothing but a total disappointment to the global worker’s movement. I had to admit to myself that I have been totally spoiled unto bourgeois turpitude.
I just can’t fucking take a bath after Queequeg. I’m not going to do laundry in prescribed 2-hour bursts. I’m sorry, beloved proletariat, but I want a toilet that isn’t just a shelf that empties into the bay.
With no particular discipline, I had been trying to learn “The Internationale” in French, but that doesn’t seem so important now. I am a yellow running dog lackey that requires various hot water features in my home. That’s where the rubber hits the political road for me. I can go no further.
Farewell, Komrades. I’m tossing my red beret into the bay.
I’m officially a victim of learned helplessness. I am a weak, spoiled and depraved product of a corrupt Western culture .
Oh Marxism, we had a good run, you and I. Democratic Socialism, how you doin, baby? Got plumbing?
Artwork: “Marvelette,” oil on linen by Cintra Wilson, 2022
BOUGIE BITCH