Cloyne Court- Excerpts 17 and 18

Cloyne Court, Episode 17
By Dodie Katague
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Rated "R" by the Author.

Cloyne Court, Berkeley, California in the late 1970s.
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Astronomy 10: Heavenly Bodies

I grabbed my toiletry bag and towel and headed to the basement. Leaving the shower room was Laurent, the house drug dealer. He was of French, Middle-Eastern descent, had a full but well-trimmed beard and like any successful commissioned salesman, he was gregarious and friendly to a fault. He was wearing a silk bathrobe with a designer logo on the front-left pocket.

“Derek,” he said, as if we were best friends, “I’m Laurent in room 8A. You should stop by, and we should party sometime. You are into partying, aren’t you?”

“Sure, Laurent,” I said cautiously. Why did he want to party with me? We didn’t have much in common. I wasn’t female, and I didn’t have any spare cash to buy what he was selling. Why was he acting friendly?

“Awesome! I have some quality shit from Hawaii—Maui Wowee. It’ll send you on a wicked trip. If you want anything special, let me know. I can usually obtain it at a good price. Leave a note in my message box.”

I could not see myself spending money I didn’t have to buy any of his goods, and I didn’t need too. The weekend parties at Cloyne were accentuated with a distinct reefer smoke that permeated the hallways and furniture and lingered for days. You could get high just breathing the secondhand smoke.

At that time of the morning, the communal shower room was as busy as Grand Central Station. Two women and one man were taking a shower.

When I tell people about the co-ed showers, they titter and wonder what kind of depraved lifestyle I was living. However, the novelty of seeing naked bodies everyday in the shower room wore off quickly and became nothing more than a hygienic, morning ritual.

The naked female bodies in the shower that morning were typical of what I would see while I lived in the house. One woman, Betsy, had firm breasts with pink areolas, bushy pubic hair and nicely shaped hips. She was washing her hair with a lavender scented shampoo.

"Good morning," I said in a pleasant voice.

She gave me the once-over and went back to washing her hair.

Because most of us at Cloyne Court were eighteen, nineteen or twenty, I did see some gorgeously shaped female bodies. While I lived there, I ogled only a handful that could have been Playboy centerfold material. However, for every attractive eye candy I saw in the shower room, I also saw a mélange of bulges, flabbiness, tattoos, birthmarks, scars, moles, skin rashes, and unusually hairy body parts, including backs, necks, legs and armpits. Actual nudity without the proper mindset did not live up to its billing as a sexy experience.

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Cloyne Court, Episode 18
By Dodie Katague
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Rated "R" by the Author.

Cloyne Court, Berkeley, California in the late 1970s.

After a few weeks, I attributed private body characteristics to people when I saw them at meal times or walking down the main hallway. Just as I would meet people and recognize them by a distinctive facial feature like a big nose or a dimpled chin, I would also think, “That’s Susan, nicely trimmed pubic hair, or there’s Jennifer, big half-dollar sized areolas.”

The other woman taking a shower was Cindy, who I had first met at the telephone switchboard. Her breasts were shaped like pears and sagged. This morning, she wasn’t sporting the nose ring, but as I looked her over, I saw a flash of gold in her shaved pubic region. She had a gold ring attached to her labia. I had never seen one before. As I imagined how and who did the actual piercing, a tingle went through my groin.

Before becoming desensitized to seeing a naked female body in the shower, I worried about embarrassing myself by getting an erection. While that possibility always remained, fortunately for most of winter quarter at that time of morning, it was cold in the large shower room and nothing could coax a chilly Willie to raise its bulbous head in excitement. At least, not mine anyway.

The man showering opposite the two women was Richard Hein, whom the women in the house nicknamed 'Dick Fine'. He was a six-foot tall Adonis with short curly blond hair, a muscular V-shaped chest and a washboard stomach. Richard didn’t earn his nickname from his six-pack abdominals. He had a ten-inch long male member that was two inches thick in its flaccid state, and I was only guessing. I never actually measured it. I had no idea what it looked like in an erect state, but many women did, hence his nickname. He was a second-year senior, graduating in five years instead of four. At twenty-one, he had more worldly experience than a freshman. He walked the halls and played basketball in the courtyard with a self-assured air and an innocent smile that attracted women like night bugs to UV lights. He had certainly zapped his share.

Down in the showers after a basketball game when it was just the guys showering, someone tried to get Dick to tell stories about his love life. "So, Dick, who are you fucking this weekend?"

Dick was a gentleman and wouldn’t brag. "I have a dinner date with Lorna tonight."

"Lorna?" someone said. "She's the ugliest women in the house. Are you desperate?"

"She asked me out."

"And you said yes? You'll need three paper bags. One to put over your head and two to put over her head in case one breaks."

Dick just smiled with confidence.
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Happy Veterans Day-Obsession for 11-11-11

Today is Veterans Day. I salute you All! Happy Birthday to my cousin in this posting.

Obsession for numbers 7 and 11 | ViewsHound

Heaven is Real-After a Near Death Experience

Image from heavenquestions.com

Cloyne Court- Excerpt 16

Cloyne Court, Episode 16
By Dodie Katague
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Rated "R" by the Author.

Cloyne Court, Berkeley, California in the late 1970s.

"What is it with men and their need to overpower their natural environment?" Carrie, the lesbian, asked the day after Alan went on a Saturday afternoon marathon of loud music in the backyard.

I replied, "The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.1]"

She huffed. "You men are all alike. You stick together even when you know you're wrong."

"Wrong about what?"

"His choice of music. Making fun of transvestites just leads to violence against transgender people. Besides, The Kinks are so passé."

"Lola was only one song out of the dozens he played," I said, and thought she should have objected to Alan's airing of Village People's Macho Man, which he played repeatedly. I was humming the chorus for days afterward.

I told Alan what Carrie had said. The next Saturday he proclaimed it "Transgender and Crossdresser Appreciation Day" and recorded a cassette tape of songs that included Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne, Little Richard's Long Tall Sally, Led Zeppelin’s Royal Orleans, Rebel, Rebel by David Bowie, Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side and Monty Python's The Lumberjack Song, which he played repeatedly all afternoon.

* * *

Our third roommate was Mark or Mike or Matt. I never actually knew his name. Alan and I hardly saw him. When we did, he was asleep. He was an engineering student from the San Jose area not far from Berkeley, so he went home most weekends. He may have had a girlfriend back home, but he was shy, didn’t talk much, and Alan and I didn’t get to know him well enough to learn anything about him.

One weekend, Alan came into the room looking worried. He said, “I met some homeless dude downstairs. He doesn’t live here, but I think he sleeps in the basement. He knows I have some cool, stereo equipment. I think he’s been peeking in our window.”
“Alan, everyone with ears knows you have expensive stereo equipment. I think everyone within six-blocks knows.”

“Well, I think we need to take some precautions. Someone may want to steal it."

“What do you want to do?"

“Let’s take a bed sheet and cover the window, so thieves can’t look into the room."

We looked at all our possessions. We did not have a spare bed sheet to cover the window. Our absent roommate did. It was on his bed, neatly made.

“Let’s use our roomie’s bed sheet," he said. "We’ll have to put it back before he returns Sunday night.” He pulled the sheet off the bed.

"We should use duct tape to hang that up," I said.
"Naw, these thumbtacks will do just fine."

For weeks, after Mark or Mike or Matt left for home on Friday afternoons, Alan removed the bed sheet from his bed and thumb tacked it over the window. Every Sunday afternoon, we would have to remember to take it down and put it back on his bed. This worked fine until the end of the quarter during finals, when both of us forgot to remake his bed and Mark or Mike or Matt returned to find his property covering the window. He didn’t say a word. He took it down, made his bed and moved out at the end of the term. His only complaint was left in a written message in my telephone message box at the front switchboard. It said, "There were thumbtack holes in my bed sheet". I knew we should have used duct tape.
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This episode is based on a true story.

Although seventy-five percent of this memoir is factual, liberties were taken with the other twenty-five percent for plot purposes. That is where scenes were recreated from memory when they were not clearly defined in the journals written by the author from 1976 to 1980.

Individual characters are composites of several people and do not represent any one person, and the names have been changed to protect innocent people that may be guilty of indiscretions in their youth.


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[1] However, as I was to discover in my mid-forties, the price of a sports car is inversely proportional to the amount of hair remaining on your head.

Ten Tips to Delay/Prevent Alzheimers Disease

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I am going to be 77 years old by the end of this year. I know my memory sometimes goes to a blank stage I called senior momentitis. However, most of the time (99%) my mind is clear and sharp, inspite of some aches and pains in my joints and other body parts, etc., a reality of growing old.

Here's my ten tips to all senior citizens or senior citizens to be reading this article. I believe if you follow these 10 items rigorously, you will maitain a sharp memory and perhaps even delay or prevent the dreaded Alzheimers disease.

1. Quit smoking if you are a smoker. The earlier you quit, the longer your life and hopefully dementia and Alzheimer's disease will not be in your future. I have never smoked in my life, but I know nicotine addiction is hard to break.

2. Join clubs or organizations that need volunteers. If you start volunteering now, you won't feel lost and unneeded even after you retire. In my case I do volunteer work as a medical mission volunteer sponsored my Marinduque International, Inc. in the Philippines.

3. Develop a hobby or two. Hobbies help you develop a robust brain because you're trying something new and complex. In my case I play bridge and other computer games on-line.

4. Take dance lessons, yuga or tai chi. In a recent study of nearly 500 people, dancing was the only regular physical activity associated with a significant decrease in the incidence of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. The people who danced three or four times a week showed 76 percent less incidence of dementia than those who danced only once a week or not at all. My wife and I were dance champions in the 1980s.

5. Start gardening or have daily walks for at least 30 minutes per day. Researchers in New Zealand found that of 1,000 people, those who gardened regularly were less likely to suffer from dementia Not only does gardening reduce stress, but gardeners use their brains to plan gardens; they use visual and spatial reasoning to lay out a garden. I have a big garden at Chateau Du Mer in Boac, Marinduque and I did all the landscaping plans and plantings in the beach resort. I walk for at least 30 minutes daily.

6. Read and write daily. Reading stimulates a wide variety of brain areas that process and store information. Likewise, writing stimulates many areas of the brain as well. I have 8 blogs that I maintain daily and read about 3 hours per day. I also write articles for ViewsHound.

7. Listen to classical music. A growing volume of research suggests that music may hard wire the brain, building links between the two hemispheres. Any kind of music may work, but there's some research that shows positive effects for classical music, though researchers don't understand why. I have several collections of classical music both in my blogs and my CD collection.

8. Pray, meditate or go to church regularly. Daily prayer appears to help your immune system. People who attend a formal worship service regularly live longer and report happier lives according to a recent study. My wife and I attend Catholic mass every Sunday rain or shine.

9. Be sure you get enough sleep. Studies have shown a link between interrupted sleep and dementia. I sleeped between 7 to 8 hours every day. Last but not least

10. Eat more foods containing omega-3 fatty acids: Salmon, sardines, tuna, ocean trout, mackerel or herring, plus walnuts and flax seed. Flax seed oil, cod liver oil and walnut oil are also good sources . Eat more fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants in fruits and vegetable helped repair some of the damage caused by free radicals, one of the leading killers of brain cells. I am not a vegetarian, but I consumed a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and sea foods in my diet.

Do you have another tip? I will love to hear from you.

Reference: Wikipedia

Cloyne Court- Excerpts 14 and 15

Alpha, Epsilion, Pi Fraternity Logo

Cloyne Court, Episode 14
By Dodie Katague
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Rated "R" by the Author.

History 4G: The Modern Greeks

I awoke forty-five minutes before my eight o’clock morning class. During the second week of January, my room was still dreary and dark at dawn. I cursed myself for deciding early classes would give me more time to do the things I wanted to do, because now, at 7:15, I wanted to stay in bed.

One of my roommates, Alan, was still asleep, snoring gently, hidden under a pile of bedding and blankets. He was a large, rotund man with a hairy chest, legs and back. I wondered about the beauty who would want him lying on top of her, humping the hairy beast.

Alan was living at Cloyne Court by default. He needed a cheap place to stay for one quarter as he rushed the different fraternities. The Co-op was a wayside inn for his true housing and social goals.

Alan made no secret about his reasons to join a fraternity. "My father was in a fraternity at UCLA in the mid-1950s,” he said. “He met my mother at a sorority party. He loved the Greek system. It was the best thing that happened to him in college."

According to Alan, his parents, Marvin and Rachel Schwartzman's college romance revolved around the Greek system at UCLA. Therefore, he wasn’t surprised that they expected him to follow their example.

However, Alan was at Berkeley, not UCLA. Instead of following his father’s goose step, he sidestepped, skipping and hopping around what was expected of him. Alan was outright relieved, but his father’s influence had done its damage.

Alan explained one of his many fraternity secrets to me one day. “Never tell a sorority woman you live here in this dive or you live in the co-op housing system. That’s like telling them you’re a communist sympathizer. Lie and tell them you live in the dorms. People start at the dorms and move to fraternities or sororities. But telling them you live here means you’re too poor to afford the dorms or you’re too freaky to join the Greek system. No sorority woman will go out with me until I’m in a respectable fraternity with an outstanding reputation.”

He went out most nights during rush week visiting different fraternities, drinking beer, trying to act cool and impress these guys, and act as if he belonged. But each evening, he'd come back to Cloyne Court and kvetch about the whole experience.

"What a bunch of idiots. I went to a jock frat last night. They took one look at me and ignored me. One guy told me that I should find a fraternity with my kind, because I wasn't their type."

"What type were they?" I asked.

"Assholes."

"Why do you want to belong there?"

"I don't. I just want someone to tell me they like me enough to want me to live with them."

"Isn't that what a girlfriend is for?"

No matter how persistently Alan tried to find his type, he came up lacking. With a last name of Schwartzman, it was obvious he was Jewish. He looked Jewish. He had the Jewish nose. He talked like a New York Jew, though he was from Southern California. I am not saying fraternities are anti-Semitic. Alan’s father was a Polish Jew who found social success in the Greek system. Alan needed to find a fraternity that had Jewish members who would mentor him and champion his admission into their brotherhood. He was having no luck. Alan did not fit into the milieu of rich, white-boy suburban snobbery.
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Cloyne Court, Episode 15
By Dodie Katague
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Rated "R" by the Author.

Cloyne Court, Berkeley, California in the late 1970s.

Alan was also overweight. Not obese, but fat enough for women to scan a group of young men and unconsciously not give him a second glance.

Alan said, “Getting into a fraternity is like going out on a blind date. You keep wondering as you're talking to these guys whether they’re going to call you for a second date.

“I asked the recruiting chairman at the Pi Delta Phi's frat house what type of members they're looking for and he said it was a je ne sais quoi feeling. I don't even know what that means."

"How do you feel when you meet them?" I asked. The feeling had to be mutual if there was going to be any chance for a long-term relationship.

"All I get is a stomachache and gas." He punctuated his point with an explosive example.

On the final day of rush week, after Alan received no bids from any fraternity, he said in a pique of sour grapes, "I don't know why I wanted to join a fraternity. I'll have better luck losing my cherry in a place where I can shower with naked women and watch them sunbathe nude in the backyard than at some snobby fraternity."

His admission to me that he was a virgin bonded us in mutual support and common need. It overcame our different upbringing and culture. And if we hadn’t looked like Laurel and Hardy standing next to each other, the boys in room 4C might have been more successful in our endeavors.

Room 4C was a ground-floor triple on the north side of the building. Trees shaded the large set of double-hung windows with thick black security bars bolted to the outside window frame, so even on the sunniest days the room rarely received any natural light. The windows had no curtains permitting any passersby a full and unintentional view of a room with its false ceiling of water-stained acoustical tiles, a cold linoleum floor and fake wood paneling on three of the walls. Each of the three occupants claimed possessory rights to one wall. We decorated and furnished the room with what we could scrounge like the plastic milk crates stolen from a 7-Eleven store. The red bricks and pine-board shelves gave it an eclectic early college, post prison ambience.

I didn't put up my Cheryl Tiegs and Farah Fawcett Majors posters I had in my room during high school. I was a college man now, not some pimply adolescent groupie having wet dreams about television idols. Whatever I exhibited would have to reflect my experience, my good taste and be a conversation piece. My walls were bare.

Instead, I had one of my artistic color photos of my best friend Jeanette in a five-by-seven black frame on my dresser. I hoped the picture would lead to a conversation about my photography and of course, the women who came by my room to see my artwork would learn about the talented, sensitive, caring, Renaissance man I was, or trying to become. Who knows what would happen? Weren’t women looking for that type of man?

Alan decorated his wall with the same panache. What would create the most attention for women to notice us? He used his first scholarship check to buy the most powerful stereo system he could piece together and placed the two five-foot tall, floor speakers in each corner. He put on his shelves the Marantz turntable, a Sony preamp and tuner, and the envy of audiophiles everywhere, a TEAC dual cassette deck, the newest technology in the market at the time. When Alan cranked up the volume, no one in the house was spared.
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This episode is based on a true story.
Just in case this is your first time reading this post.

Although seventy-five percent of this memoir is factual, liberties were taken with the other twenty-five percent for plot purposes. That is where scenes were recreated from memory when they were not clearly defined in the journals written by the author from 1976 to 1980.

Individual characters are composites of several people and do not represent any one person, and the names have been changed to protect innocent people that may be guilty of indiscretions in their youth.

"Cloyne Court" was written by Dodie Katague my oldest son in 2009. As his father who is also a blogger and an aspiring writer, I am really proud of my son's writing accomplishments, considering this is not his primary job. He is a prosecuting attorney for a local county in Northern California speciliazing in computer crimes.

Below are several reviews of his book as published by www.virtualauthorbooktours.com. I hope you have time to read his book, Cloyne Court.

"In 1977, when 18-year-old Berkeley college student, Derek moved into the student residence co-op, Cloyne Court, sight unseen, little did he know he would learn about life, love, sex, drugs, music, alcohol and co-ed showers—all on the first day.

Located one block North of the University of California, Berkeley campus, this real and notorious student-run house has provided an alternative, counter-culture, hedonistic, raucous, and unique living experience for the “Clones”, as the students call themselves, who choose to live here each year, despite the public and parents calling for a permanent shut down of this enduring and historic building.

Based on his journals and memories of his college days at this real-life “Animal House”, author, Dodie Katague weaves true events of life at Cloyne Court co-op into a zany, wild, and nostalgic story about the carefree time of every college student’s life.

"Sure to entertain any of those who enjoy a good story of the world of the fraternities and sororities. " Cloyne Court" is a fine memoir and a read well worth considering." Midwest Book Review

"If you like the movie Animal House, and have any interest in the going-ons of College in the 70s, or Berkeley in particular, you're also going to love this book. Get it, read it slowly, and enjoy!"-S. Davidian, Amazon Reviewer

"I found this book to be an AMAZING, page turning read. The rich story is very much worth it and leaves you dreaming of college days, and thinking about taking a drive to Berkeley to see the real Cloyne Court."-L. Couture, Amazon Reviewer

"I wish I had as much fun as Derek did in college, I recommend this book for anyone that has gone to college, or plans to go to college, or thought about going to college. Also for anyone who knows someone who went to college, because that buttoned up shirt wearing respectable man might have some stories to tell"-Genoa Dillon, Amazon Reviewer

"Sex, Betrayal, Drugs, Rock and Roll, nudist, co-ed showers, and the politics of the house make for a novel that has to be read. I loved this book."-Lori Cianfichi, Amazon Reviewer