A room of one's own...

I've been a New Yorker now for two full days, so let me know if you want any pointers on living in the city.

I moved to 22nd street in Park Slope, a neighborhood in Brooklyn.  A few months ago, Bliss and I frantically searched online for a place of our own here.  We finally landed on the idea of subletting so as to avoid paying large sums of cash in deposits and broker's fees, only to arrive and find ourselves living on the set of Angela's Ashes.  So that's what we did -- we found an affordable apartment in a good location with a renter (I'll call her "H") who was leaving for South America for a couple of months.  Perfect! H wrote to Bliss and me via email several times to give us the low down on her place.  She seemed funny and charming...and she even knocked a couple hundred bucks off the rent each month if we agreed to care for her cat while we were here.  While neither Bliss nor myself were particularly thrilled at the thought of kitty litter maintenance, we remembered that we're in no financial position to be turning down rent discounts, whatever the request.

Waking up today, I felt good.  I thought, "you know what would be good for you, Tracey?  Saving money by walking your bags eight blocks down to your new place.  Yeah, that's what people do here.  They walk with stuff."  So after packing up my three suitcases, I carried each one down three flights of stairs to the bottom floor.  It was here that I called a car service.  I didn't feel as good anymore, and I now thought that walking these really heavy bags for eight blocks is truly stupid. One can always make more money, but one cannot always breathe when walking uphill with a suitcase full of shoes.

Twenty minutes and ten dollars later (worth it), I arrived at the new apartment.  My apartment. Our apartment. Our FIRST New York apartment.  Sure, the keys H sent us in the mail were a little tricky, but "that's part of the charm" I said to myself with a smile.

Arriving in oxygen debt at the top of the stairs, I could hear H's cat meowing at me from just inside the door.  Let me say that while H never revealed her cat's name to us in her emails (so I'll call him Lucifer), it did not go unnoticed that she loves this animal very much.  The cat, while "not much of a biter," apparently scratches up one of her couches on a regular basis, and we're supposed to allow this to happen.  "Don't worry about it!" H says.  That's the kind of feline love we're talking about.  Cat > expensive furniture.  So when I opened the door to the apartment and the cat immediately ran out the door and down the stairs, I figured this wasn't something H would be cool with.  Dropping my bag, keys and a couple of curse words, I ran down after Lucifer in hopes that 1. this was a game he and H played regularly, and he was just initiating me into the apartment by showing me their routine, or 2.  he would crawl into some sort of secret passageway that I would follow him into, making this the best apartment ever.   Instead we stood and stared at each other for a solid four minutes until he calmly walked past me and back up the stairs to wait for me to open the door. 

Open the door I did, and it was then I saw what Lucifer was running from.  His surroundings. 

Earlier when I said that I was still in vacation land, I simply meant that Brittany's apartment (and roommates) are fairly clean at all times.  This isn't the case with H and Lucifer's place.  I suddenly had the terrifying thought that I had gotten the wrong apartment OR that I would turn the corner and find H's body sitting in the chair like on an episode of Criminal Minds.  But alas...her (living) body is in South America, and this was in fact the right apartment.  Now, it's not just that it's dusty.  Or cluttered.  Or grimy.  Or that it has a distinct, unfortunate smell.  It's that all of these things are true, simultaneously.  And as silly as it sounds, I hadn't considered that I would be dealing with a stranger's dust, clutter, grime, and smell.  The fridge has many, many expired products inside with a thin layer of dried expired product-juice covering each shelf.  The bathroom is decorated with a mixture of H's and Lucifer's hair, and the baseboards throughout the apartment have a noticeable layer of grime that's beginning to venture up onto the walls themselves.  And to note, it's not the endearing, historical grime that's been there so long it has become a part of the building's architecture.  No, upon further inspection, I found this is simply the regular kind -- a collection of hair, skin cells and dust that reflect a world that has yet to see a Clorox wipe. 

In H's defense, she has some cool items.  I like her collection of literature and her original PanAm stewardess bag.  Her old-timey type writer is neat, and she has a large collection of vinyl and a working record player.  But listening to the Ramones while staring at the apartment doesn't make it any cleaner.  I was afraid of moving to New York and having to emulate Mary Poppins just to make money as a nanny, and now I find myself wishing she would show up and clean my apartment.  But since she has yet to float down into Brooklyn, it looks like I'm going to have to do this myself.  And in all honesty, I'm glad.  I was getting a little nervous about how easy this had all been...the move, the interview, getting the job, etc.  Something about this apartment being so incredibly Sanford and Son makes me feel better about living here.  The place itself will be great after (much) cleaning, and I'm even getting used to H's eccentric decor (i.e. a mobile made of hedgehogs, an enormous poster of Brian Eno, and a sign above the couch that reads: "it must give pleasure if it's black and wet").  And I suppose I will just have to acclimate to the idea of being a cat lady...despite my better efforts to stay aloof with Lucifer, he's currently curled up next to my pillow with his tail swishing over the keyboard as I type...ugh. 

Yes...all will be well after I bleach the place.  I've seen Annie enough times to know how to make my new floor shine like the top of the Chrysler Building.