Moving Along, Then...

Flyover and his girlfriend moved out today. Except for the miscellanea in the fridge, some battered furniture they may or may not intend to keep, and an inexplicable pile of clothing, they’re gone. I feel like I ought to be sad about this, since Flyover was the one who invited me to live here, or at least buy them a bottle of prosecco, since I’m upgrading my square footage for the duration of the lease courtesy of their desire to get out of this apartment post-haste.

But you know what? No sorrow, no prosecco.


The living room, last night.

I expected living with people to be a convivial experience, sort of like 509 but with fewer people and a less repulsive kitchen, and I wasn’t wrong. It’s just that I’d estimate that most of my socialising has been with Florida. Even during football season, when the three of us were in the same fantasy league, Flyover streamed games in his bedroom and we’d yell at each other through the wall. And when his girlfriend moved in, he was wholly subsumed into the Borg of his relationship. The two of them would go into their room, close the door, and shut out the world. And I would be disappointed, since I like both of them and didn’t see the need for insularity.

I joked with mutual friends that I never saw Flyover either, and I lived with him.


My future bedroom, this afternoon.

Eventually, it got less disappointing and more annoying, and I found myself looking forward to their move as much as they were. There were little moments when I’d remember, oh, right, we’re friends but they were rare enough that I’d always come to that same realisation, which always lead in turn to, wait, I probably shouldn’t need an active reminder that we’re friends.

To be honest, I am a little sad. But it’s because living with a friend couldn’t prevent us from drifting apart.

Memory Lane

While I walked to Duane Reade, I was thinking two things: I can’t wait to live alone again and I remember this.

It was seven o’clock, which is a fine hour to be awake if you’re a morning person or your dog needs walking, and a less fine hour to be awake if you only got back from Williamsburg at two and have totalled four hours, at best, of fitful sleep. But I guess no one had noticed, between the time I left on Friday afternoon and returned in the wee small hours of Saturday, that the last roll of toilet paper was damn near depleted. I’d been afraid this might be the case and considered stopping at the 24-hour bodega right across from the train station, but I decided to have some faith in my roommates’ observational prowess because it was cold and I was tired.

Although they are lovely people, that faith in them was unfounded, so when I woke up for the third time, late enough for the city to be stirring and stores to be opening, I threw some real clothes over my pajamas and headed out. This would never have happened to me when I was living alone, I thought as I walked down my street, and if it had, I’d only have myself to be annoyed with. But it wouldn’t happen. I would at least have known to make the late night dep run. (I say bodega, but in my head it’s still dep.)

Then I hit Amsterdam, and suddenly I remembered another Saturday morning in February. It was the beginning of reading week, and I was on a night bus. I fell asleep after customs and woke up in Jersey to watch the sun rise over Manhattan. Then I was waiting for the A at Port Authority, rehydrating, explaining to a guy on the platform that I was from here originally but living out of town, and bidding him a good weekend when the train arrived. I got off in my current neighbourhood, to stay for a few hours in my current apartment, just after seven in the morning, and the scene was exactly the same: faintly peopled streets, trash blowing along the sidewalks, all illuminated by the early morning light particular to wintertime.

I was born here, in a hospital I pass whenever I take the M3 to the Met, so I’ll never have a story of my first time in New York, but I have places to which I return and return and return, where I have overlapping layers of memory. When I walk along East 77^th Street, where the sidewalk sparkles, I remember my teenage self wearing Converse and a camel-coloured coat and being enchanted, and I am enchanted all over again. When I sit with a book and a coffee at 9^th Street Espresso, it makes me smile to know that my order has never changed even though the colours of the walls have.

I have a whole set of memories of this apartment from before it was mine. Sometimes I’ll walk into the bathroom to do my makeup, and I’ll remember reapplying red lipstick the first time I was ever here, and I’ll remember that night and that party and the dress and the shoes and the cab ride uptown, how the first things I wanted to see were the washer and dryer. I stayed over the night before I moved in and it was just like all those other nights I’d stayed here, when I woke up early and walked into the living room to see Florida sitting on the couch, eating yogurt.

It’s strange to be surrounded by things I remember. All my life, my modus operandi has been to get up and go someplace new, where I can reinvent myself as necessary. Even as kid, I chose to go to a sleepaway camp where I didn’t know anyone.

Sometimes I wonder whether I’ll feel this same way when I go back to Montréal. I stayed long enough to have favourite cafés and routes to walk, and whenever I passed my old buildings, I’d remember the experience of having walked through those doors and lived in those places, but I don’t know whether it can ever have the sheer depth of memory that New York does.

Memorandum

To: my roommates
In re: glassware

Yes, you do need to wash the glasses with soap. No, ce n'est pas difficile. I didn't buy frosted glassware, so that's not what I want to find when I open the cabinet.

Regards,
M.

I'm working on two real posts, and hopefully those will be up soon.

Out of Town

After I finished with my bedroom and the kitchen, when I was seriously considering taking on the loathed task of the bathroom, I realised I was going to run out of rooms to clean long before my foul mood ran its course. Besides, neatening the site of my anger kept me in the apartment, seething as I scrubbed.

I made a mental list of my options: the gym; a bar; it’s a Friday and you live in New York City, dumbass, find something exciting. I decided to take a ballet class, my first in four years, and while it was a worthwhile endeavour in and of itself, it was only an effective coping mechanism until my sweat dried.

In Montréal, whenever I felt bad, I’d retreat into my windowless box of a bathroom and sulk beneath a pleasantly scented pile of bubbles. But I am of the mind that unilateral actions—it was a roommate’s unilateral action that had gotten me angry in the first place—and bathroom monopolies are both privileges of living alone. Besides, our bathroom is a black mark on the value of this apartment. There are no taps, so to take a bath, you need to shower the tub full of water, and because our shower has terrible, terrible water pressure, that’s a slow process.

On Saturday morning, my mother called, and I suddenly felt like an idiot. The solution to my problem was a train ride away. I could go back to my parents’ house! That would get me take me away from my apartment to a place where there are three bathtubs, all with taps. I got dressed, crossed town, and caught the first train I could.

I only intended to stay for a few hours, but I didn’t dump my purse and make a mad dash for the bathroom as soon as I walked in their door. At the height of my anger, I’d been reduced to thinking that it would have been better to live with my parents, and the time I spent with them that afternoon, reading the paper and arguing about politics, didn’t really change my mind. Sitting in the living room with my cup of coffee and an actual, tangible newspaper, safe in the knowledge that they’d never spring any surprise roommates on me, I wondered whether I’d made the right decision in moving out.

Sure, I’m fundamentally a city person, and it’s a lot easier to have a social life when I don’t have to get back to Grand Central before the last train leaves... but I don’t have a job, so I don’t have the money to go out, and I don’t have that many friends in New York, since it’s hard to meet people when you’re not in school and you’re not working.

I ended up spending the night.

The Roommates, and a Brief History of Real Estate

When I chose McGill, I didn’t have a clear idea about what I’d be studying. I knew I wanted to do history, but I didn’t know much about the department or the professors in it. It wasn’t a major drawing point. The decision came down to three things: the appeal of living abroad, the appeal of living in a city, and the appeal of McGill’s particular housing situation. Students are only guaranteed a place in residence for one year, and many—most, even—of the options are not traditional dorms.

For my year in rez, I got my first choice: a single in one of the converted brownstones. The next year, I moved into an apartment with one of my housemates, but that only lasted a month before I found myself alone on the lease. My ex lived with me in practice, but not on paper, and when I decided to move, the apartment hunt was per my criteria and my criteria alone. I found a place I loved and, when he and I broke up the day before our third year of classes started, began living alone both on paper and in practice. I stayed there for two years, the longest I’ve stayed any place since I moved out of my parents’ house, and still hold the lease for it, although I’m subletting it right now.

So here I am in my third apartment. It’s not necessarily a place I would have chosen on my own, but it has its advantages.


Advantages!

It also comes with two roommates, henceforth Flyover and Florida—so named for reasons of geography, although as I later learned, Florida grew up a few blocks away from my parents’ house in Westchester—both of whom I met in the summer of 2009. There’s a photo of us from a party, which I jokingly refer to as “Why I Live Here Now.” The night it was taken was the first time I met Florida, and we talked about sports because that’s my default when meeting new people. We didn’t have another conversation until the day before I moved in. It’s probably fortunate we get along. Sure, he sometimes plays Call of Duty: Black Ops for hours at high volumes, but at least he roots for the Giants.

Which brings us to Flyover, who was a 2007 bandwagon fan but otherwise more closely allied with losing franchises from all over the Midwest (no, seriously, in order of rooting interest: Bengals, Lions, Rams). We’d only met once before the party, and he thought I hated him, so he bought me drinks and we started an ongoing argument about whether the 2004 draft day trade for Manning was a good idea. Since then, we’ve been friends. Whenever I came back to New York during the year, he provided me with a non-suburban, non-dorm place to crash. And he’s the one who suggested I move in when I mentioned that I was returning to New York.

Could I say more about them? Probably. But for now, this summary should do.