Living with 'The Dead'

The summer of '87, I moved off campus to a house on Biltmore street.
A dingy little brown 1940's style bungalow, behind the Tri-Pigs...oops, I mean Tri-Sigs...sorority house. (Sorry, but they were little rich girls with really bad attitudes.)
My house mates included:
Sue, (a psych major...who was a huge fan of the Grateful Dead...Mother Earth type of girl,drove the VW van and seriously looked like a younger, prettier, Janice Joplin.)Marty,(an art history major/violin player, who looked very straight-laced, but was a lot of fun.Marty used the enclosed back porch for her 'room' as a decoy so her parents would not find out she was sleeping with her boyfriend... she was NOT a 'Dead Head'.)
Annie,(an art major,willowy and pale, big huge Dead Head.)
...and then there was me,(advertising design major, wholesome, innocent,extremely studious, and solely dedicated to summer school...(hahha)...and NOT a Dead Head.)
Don't get me wrong...I was a hippy chick with the flowy skirts and the wild long hair...and I wore patchouli...but I was more of an artsy-gypsy-hippy...and I never ever did the drugs. (THAT I am serious about.) I never dropped acid, or any of that stuff, because I was so afraid someday one of my kids would have a ear growing in the wrong place...or something horrid! Never did 'ecstasy' because it apparently messes with your spinal fluid---I was a dancer...hello! I needed my back to function properly.(I did make some yummy cheap sangria though.)
I also disliked the Dead. *gasp*! I liked the percussion jams because they were fun to dance to...but Jerry's voice was like nails on a chalk board to me. (sorry to degrade St. Jerry...)
All 4 of us were there for Summer School, so people were in and out of our front door continuously...and then, Marty would be practicing her violin, Annie would be weaving anklets in her spare time, and Earth Mother Sue...well, I'm not really sure what she was working on back in her room.
I was taking a painting studio class and a dance class...so, I was in my studio a lot....I never knew what or who I would find at our little house.
My boyfriend at the time, was in a band...he played rhythm guitar and was soooo cool.The rest of the band consisted of a drummer, a smelly german singer, and a guy named Tracy, who played bass.
Tracy was hilarious. He was super smart, and extremely talented---but not motivated in the least. He was working the summer at Burger King, and would come over to the house to practice with the band in his BK outfit. He was the first person I ever saw smoke a cigarette without holding it, and play guitar at the same time...I was fascinated by this.
Tracy and another Dead Head girl, who lived across the street, drove totally buck naked back from DC to Greenville...(I KNOW!)...and could not stop laughing about the truckers reactions.
I had a pet miniature rabbit at the time, named Winfield, and he LOVED Tracy...he would sit on Tracy's shoulder and let him walk around. (Winfield was killed by someone who fed him drugs when I was away that summer in San Francisco. Nice.)
One morning after a long evening downtown with the boyfriends band, I woke up and almost tripped over...Jesus? It was the Lord, laid out on my floor...and look, he brought apostles...and fair maidens! (Sue had invited some people back to the house.)
They ate our food and left around 3pm.
We never knew who--or what--Sue would bring back from her latest Dead Show. Mainly fellow Dead followers who apparently had not showered in years...hence they would decide they would shower off the lovely sludge in our one shower...and again, would eat all of our food and leave.
(I think this may have been when my affair with Clorox started.)
We had Indecision stay at our house...but those guys were cool. Shep, the lead singer from Awareness Art Ensemble was a staple in the menagerie. He was the first rhasta dude I ever got to know. He was really really great---and he smelled like incense...I was fascinated by his dreadlocks.
My boyfriend's family lived in Richmond, so, when the food supply got low, we'd go to his parent's house for the weekend. His mom was an angel and sent us back with food, and canned goods.(I only had $75/month to eat off of, so this was a blessing!)
Our neighbors across the street raided our pantry as well. This guy named Shane would always eat my cereal, and drink all the milk. I finally had to have an 'intervention'...and he stopped.(Which led to his frog gigging, and the BBQ-ed frog legs he would cook on the sidewalk.)
Annie's cat had kittens that summer, and my boyfriend adopted a dog named 'Ripple'...we had fish...and a rabbit---(until he was murdered.)
All in all it was a pretty good summer. It definitely opened my eyes to some things---good, and bad.

That Fall, my mom made me move back to the dorm.