Home Again
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As usual, this isn’t proof-read.
I just sat down at my desk for the first time in more than two months. The last time I was here was in this apartment was on May 21, I think, at around this time, getting ready to fly out to LA to meet the dudes in the Jonbenét for the tour. And when I got here tonight it was a total scene worth sitting down to immortalize via the worldwide web.
In order to sublet this place (a totally open loft space with no walls, no privacy and a serious rodent problem in the most dangerous neighborhood in the New York City) we had to find people who basically had no choice in where to live. We needed people who were desperate and going to take the first thing they could find. We found exactly what we were looking for in four college students up from Monterrey to intern at the Mexican consulate.
I remember being light on the details when I started talking negotiating with them back in May. I was already on the road when they responded to my CL post, and I needed to lock them in. “It’s a Spanish-speaking neighborhood,” I think i said, maybe even adding something along the lines of, “You’ll get along there better than we do. They moved in. They paid my roommate June’s rent in cash. We were majorly relieved.
June went pretty smoothly, if I remember correctly. I got a call at one point that the fridge was broken. I called the super about it and that seemed to put the issue to rest. July was a different story.
I was in Northern California visiting my Uncle and his family when my roommate called. We were eating dinner so I didn’t pick it up. But then he called again and then again. I called him back. The conversation went something like this.
“There’s a problem at the apartment,” I remember my roommate telling me.
“Is it a crisis?”
“Well. It’s not a crisis really because it already happened and there isn’t really anything we can do.”
“They’re leaving.”
“No, no, they’re staying.”
“Thank God.”
What had happened was that the sewer had backed up into our basement. Everything sitting on the floor down there (including all the clothing that I hadn’t taken with me on my trip, will’s bass and amp and a friend’s drum kit) was ruined. Also, like so much icing on a shit-flavored cake, the company that owns our building had just been purchased by another company, and so total strangers were marching in and out of our apartment all week long getting the problem fixed.
While all that was going on, a wad of cash had vanished from the hiding place where one of the girls had been keeping it. As a result, she wasn’t able to pay her share of the rent, as Will explained to me after I got back to New York. So the girls had an outstanding balance of $225 that I would have to collect.
This whole time, neither Will nor I were able to call these girls because they had an international cell phone number. When I got back, I used skype to call them, but I would just get an operator message in Spanish I couldn’t understand. The same thing was happening for Will. I emailed them, but no response.
“They don’t come home until like 11 at night,” Will explained to me. He had been living with friends upstairs and said that whenever he had to get ahold of them for something, he just rang the bell every couple of hours until someone was finally there. At one point, both of us needing things from inside, we actually broke in. This required my wriggling thru the security grate and going in through a semi-open window.
The first thing I noticed inside is that the kitchen trash can was gone. I let Will in and then went to take a piss. The bath mats were missing from the bathroom as well. Other than that the place seemed in pretty good shape – way neater than we ever managed to keep it - only that they seemed to be hoarding empty cans of Arizona tea. They were everywhere. I’d even knocked over the ones that had been neatly arranged on the window sill coming in from outside. Will and I agreed we had no idea what they were doing with all those fucking cans.
We got what we’d come for and left them a note with my phone number instructing them to call me.
“I need to know when they’re leaving so I can get the keys back,” I told Will a couple days later when I still hadn’t heard from them.
“Oh. They’re leaving on the 30th. At like three in the morning,” he told me.
I emailed a couple more times with no response. The 30th came.
Tonight I walked from the friend’s place where I’ve been staying to my apartment on Stockholm street in Bushwick. I followed some people in the front door (my unit has no functioning buzzer) and rang their doorbell. I stood therein the hallway looking at my own front door. I could hear the Lion King.
“They’re watching the Lion King.” I actually said it out loud.
The door opened. It was Alejándra. I introduced myself and put out my hand which she awkwardly shook and then she kissed me on the cheek. There were only two of them in there. One had gone home early I was told, and another was out saying goodbye to her “summer lover.” Every light bulb in the apartment was burnt out save one in the back. The internet had been disconnected. The bathroom was lit by candles. A couple of trash bags were piled up where the trash can used to be. My comforter was missing. They had no plan about how to get to the airport.
Over the course of the next few hours, while they packed and cleaned, I help them make arrangements to get to Laguardia. This took a lot of time because without the missing girl, the two were hesitant to make any decisions. In the end, we settled on the simplest plan. at 4, I would call Bushwick Car Service, my being the only person with a phone.
At 2:45, Georgina turned up with her “summer lover,” a Greek guy who had to be pushing 40. (The girls were all 18.) He sat down on Will’s bed, and we talked about politics while the girls finished getting ready.
I just saw them off. When the car showed up, Georgina haggled with the driver over the cost of the ride. All the times I’ve taken Bushwick to the airport, I’ve never actually thought to do this. I have, however, changed many light bulbs in my day. Tomorrow, I’ll change many more.