On Greene ave, above a pharmacy, we eventually got a couch that I had assembled while I had strep. The couch sank in the middle and after Halloween, had a large teal eyeshadow stain on one of the cushions but I was happy to have a couch as it took us 9 months to finally decide we should get one instead of laying on our bellies like seals on the dirty rug. I remember we never washed the tub in that apartment. There were nights I would come home to towers of empty beer cans. There were mornings in the summer we dragged each other out of bed to go eat eggs somewhere on Dekalb. I don’t remember being alone and I don’t remember staying in. I don’t remember ever catching my breath. Just huge gulps of laughter and staying up too late only to be dehydrated and withered at my various temp jobs I oscillated between.
When I first moved to NYC, I didn’t care much or know anything about where I wanted to live. Prior to living here, I had only spent time in NYC that felt beyond my means so I put my trust in a friend who went to Pratt to pick a place within our shared budget. Most of our furniture those years were collected from street corners before the invention of the instagram Stooping NYC. It became a gallery of tchotchkes and potential. An attempt at adulthood as we barely touched the edge of 21. For about a month, we didn’t have a bathroom. I would pee in a large KFC cup huddled in the corner of my room where the floor tiles were cracked and peeled by a leaking heater. It was then I fell in love with you. I would wait until the sun rose to run north on Nostrand ave to your place to take a dump because it didn’t feel feasible to poop directly into a fast food cup. I think that is romance- letting someone you love shit when they need to even if it feels inconvenient.
I sometimes feel tired of moving homes. Tired of relocating my heart. In every home you have not seen, I wish you were there. To lay in a hammock, to see how good my cooking has gotten, to rest your head, to escape.
The day I got moved into my studio on the 5th floor walk up in Bay Ridge, I was told to wait by the truck as I would slow down the process of trying to carry my own things. I was reminded that I am a hoarder. I was moving from a single bedroom in a shared apartment into a well sized studio and yet, I had too much stuff. Stacks of books, bags of VHS tapes, too many jacket options, shoes I was saving to wear when I learned to walk in heels, carefully folded postcards etc. This is the last home of mine he ever got to see. Years later, I would help him into bed and watch him sleep as I shoveled leftover pasta into my mouth with my glasses reflecting the TV screen. A few weeks after that, I would lay on my couch catatonic at 10am drinking boxed wine while my phone rang for months after. In that apartment, I experienced a multitude of grief. I found myself re-sewn into new shapes, new forms, with new goals as each new wave of catastrophic change landed on my doorstep. But between each new kind of heartbreak were evenings on my fire escape reading poetry and painting. Afternoons where I wrung out clothes I dyed and mornings when I dug my thumbs into a small garden. I isolated myself before it became a necessity. I mopped my floors frequently and put bowls over my burners, afraid of mice and other demons that may have been hiding in the sunshine.
There was a brief blip of time when I used to go to the Western Union on Bedford ave to take out wads of cash to stuff under a door of a Polish family’s home. Every evening, the street in front of the small house I lived in was riddled with stray cats in love. I once got scolded for having people over in my room to watch a movie on my laptop. In that room, I sent chaotic break up texts and struggled to stick to my intuition. When I decided to move, I didn’t have anyone around to help me so I hired a man with a van who cradled my things in a way I didn’t know was needed as I made my first steps in piecing together a new means of life.
If I try hard enough, I can relocate myself back to the apartment above the pharmacy. I am back to seeing you at the foot of my bed. You are reading me Welcome to the Goon Squad. Our faces are puffy from the night before. I am telling you about how I spilled barbeque sauce on my comforter and the comforter is too big for our washing machine. I feel unfit everywhere else but here in this moment but while the moment was happening in real time, I failed to feel cognizant of it. When I finally make my way out of my room to face the day, I see your guitar case splayed open in the middle of the taupe frayed rug. You are playing the same song you played about things you shouldn’t say so I just never asked.
I began waking up at 5am with a routine. First, I let my cat Beans into my room and make my coffee and eat granola. I wipe down the counters. I wash my face and make my bed. By 6:30 am I head to the basement to roll out a yoga mat on top of the rug Beans has managed to ruin in his 3.5 months living here. I listen to a white woman on YouTube tell me to lift my right leg high up in the air then bend at the knee. Breathe through the stretch, she reminds me, and I feel annoyed at first. Of course I am fucking breathing- what the fuck is breathing through a stretch? I guess everyone is right- I am too angry. In this home, I earnestly try my best to become zen. I do things like step onto the turf in the yard to close my eyes and feel an afternoon sun. Each action I take towards self-actualization is laced with a cranky remark and me saying dumbass to someone or something. I can’t help it. However, I decided to reconfigure this behavior as a form of balance.
We once sat on the couch and watched True Romance. I laid my feet across your lap out of the necessity to stretch one glass of wine deep. Beyond that, I felt nothing for you. So much so I fell asleep in my bed and made you sit on a stool to avoid getting your “outdoor pants” on my comforter. You were not invited in that room. I kept myself tied shut with you, barely touching lips. In that room, I learned the value of time. The value of tiptoeing in and asking myself about intentions. Through my window, I watched a new ugly building get developed. I saw my white landlord put up a hideous mural of the Brooklyn skyline. I hurdled myself forward through love interests and developed a light addiction to weed and disappointment. I watched Romeo and Juliet with Melissa and got tucked in by Alex after drinking too much at the Jane Hotel. In the month leading up to my move a few blocks west, I avoided having you over because we both had not revealed ourselves to each other yet so I thought you were plain. I thought you were quite ordinary. It is the energy of that room and of that mindspace I have been trying to reconjure as of late.
I got into a passive aggressive fight with my downstairs neighbor when covid hit. They left a note telling me my music out my window was too loud. It was from an apartment that had multiple bedrooms while mine was not even one- it was just a room where, when the oven door was open, it touched the edge of my bed. “It’s very Sylvia Plath of me….” I would say to my suitors who asked. Even when alone, I discovered that I am too much and too loud. I am perceived even in obscurity. I don’t know how to remain hidden. I decided not to die after that because I was worried the smell of my body would seep into the crack and make the couple even angrier.
I am lucky to be transient. Lucky to be an air plant of sorts- roots in the ether I’ve created out of my constantly changing desires. A moveable body- I am able to travel anywhere. I find ways to remain the same. Each room is a mirror of the last but with different characters entering and exiting. This home is no different. A neon heart on the wall, a painting of you above my bed, velvet hues, and the same TV with an attached VCR from 1997. The same body slightly aged, collapsing, with the same heart, a bit wearier, winding down. A mind overthinking with regret. Eyes closed with secrets tucked into sheets.
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