strange musings of a distracted spunk

The thing with moving away for a year is you expect everything to be the same when you get back. You expect the little sister to be the same snot-nosed brat she was for the last twenty years, instead of the more mature and humorous twenty one year old she’s turning into. You expect more arguments and getting stuck in the middle between your bitterly divorced parents, instead of the rational conversations and less badmouthing. You expect your friends to kind of be the same, even though you know they’ve experienced tons of milestones in their own lives.

Moving away for a year also makes you forget how many friends you actually have. I knew I had friends. I knew I had people who were excited to see me. I just didn’t realize twenty five of them were going to come out on Friday night. Had my six usual players been in this part of the country or not a Mets game, they would have been there too. Going from living in Berkeley, where I knew all of nine people that I would regularly see for a once-a-week social life to being in the middle of a bar with people I know everywhere…it’s overwhelming. I forgot how much it hurt to talk that much. My voice was scratchy by the end of the night. Yet it was absolutely wonderful to be with everyone again, because I was reminded of my history with each and every one of them. I forgot how fun it is to just reminisce about silly things with people who have known you for years. I had a little bit of that in Berkeley, when we would create new memories, but this was like slipping into an old sweater and the most comfortable pair of jeans and just being yourself.

I was surprised at how easy it was to hug everyone and fall back into the same patterns. With my life partner, we hadn’t seen each other since November, but we fell right back into almost finishing each other’s sentences. With my Pea in a Pod, though I talk to her every day, having that face-to-face interaction where she knew how I was feeling and having her be there was just really really nice. But perhaps the biggest surprise was when D showed up. I knew he was coming, having invited him, but I wasn’t prepared for the actual interaction. When I gave him a hug (because let’s face it. I’m a hugger now. I have no idea where this came from, as my family is all too happy to share stories of how I would punch them were they to try hugging me, kissing me, or even pick me up when I was younger), he was slightly awkward. But then…he would poke me if he wanted my attention, just like he used to. He ended up being my ambassador of sorts, because outside of Thailand and Avocado, he knew almost everyone there. We slipped right back into our old routine of chatting away and absorbing each other’s attention, and then I would remember there were still twenty four other people there. Needless to say, the whole night was a success.

Then came Saturday. After a lovely brunch, I had a family party to attend, before stopping off at a friend’s birthday party in my old town. I got a phone call. “D is going to be here. Is that okay?” Coming on the heels where I got furtive whispers about, “When did you and D start talking again? I thought you said you would never talk to him again!” it just felt another, “Oh boy.” So I got there. And we chatted. This time, we both tried to redirect our energies towards other people in the room, but quite simply, there was no one there as interesting as us. We caught the whispers and stares and “When did this happen?” We fell back into laughing at one another and just moving around each other to talk. It was like old times, where we wouldn’t plan it, but we’d end up hanging out multiple nights in a row.

And suddenly, it felt all too comfortable. The whispers. The stares. Him poking me and me laughing at him. The ease of our conversation, even when we talked about my now ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend. And suddenly, I felt as though I needed to leave. Because it had only been my first venture out back into socializing the night before, and already I had seen him twice. And I can’t do this again. Are the old feelings there? I don’t know. They were too tied up in comfort and familiarity for me to really ever accurately separate them. So I left, because it was too easy to see this going down the same road. Of the friendship and comfort building up until one day, I decide that he’s the right one for me.

I wondered if I was displacing my feelings for GDB onto D; as though he were the brief interlude during this year and a half we hadn’t seen each other. Is D the Harry to my Sally? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. I’m glad we were able to spend time in each other’s company, and see that we still have that same ease of comfort, playfulness, and interactions with more awkwardness, but I think…this isn’t a path I want to head down again. What it means, I don’t know. I just know it’d be too easy to make the same mistakes. How is it that everything really can change and yet nothing change at all?

Maybe it was the balding black guy with yellow teeth screaming in my ear as I walked past, that Jesus would be coming back and what are you doing to repent?

Maybe it was the rush of fashion and comfort, with hello nipples everywhere.

Or maybe, it was just the steamy, arid breath of Manhattan as it forced its way back into my lungs, like a long-lost lover who needs to drink every breath in again.

I walk slower this time, taking in the stained glass art in the walls of the tunnels beneath Times Square. I watch men in suits and briefcases and boys in polos and jeans, flipped and shaded. I listen to the subway announcement, the loud ding of “The doors are now closing” more quixotically poetic than I thought those words ever could be. People rushing to work, to lunch dates, to meetings; this is life in the fast lane again. I once lived like this too.

The RW line has been updated. This is new, I think, as I watch a commercial on the train. I remember the last time I took it was with GDB, on one of our last dates before we left New York. Pangs of nostalgia hit me, for the love we didn’t know we had then, and the love we soon will watch fade away. People still hurry about with ipods clashing discordantly, songs in their ears to ignore the music of New York. The streets are still far too crowded, with pedestrians, SUVs, and the standard yellow taxi. But there’s a rhythm here that congas its way back into my veins.

I wonder, how did I ignore you for so long? And more importantly, how did I ever leave you?

Will I forget your tune, when I too become one of the masses, rushing to work, to class, to the gym? Will I forget to breathe your noxious and intoxicating air in, so consumed with my self-worth and reality? Or will this time spent away remind me to love the drop of water from scaffolding above, unexpectedly plinking the street?

Hello New York. I’m home.

She dropped us off at the dance studio, after telling us our father would pick us up. We hadn’t seen him in three months, not since before we left camp in August, before we came home to a household full of possessions and a broken marriage. My sister went to class in her leotard and black ballet shoes while I buried my nose in a book in the waiting room. When I next looked up, there was a brand new white car in front of the studio. He took us to see the Santa Clause, a first date of sorts with our father the weekend figure. We wouldn’t have any more Sunday mornings playing Monopoly and Life on their gray platform bed because we were now divorce kids. Our life would consist of being shuttled between houses and cities for the next eight years.

I found myself missing him while I was in Thailand, wanting to be able to tell him about what was going on and everything I had seen and experienced. I would have called but the connection was faulty. So instead, I sent him an e-mail.

Four months after he left us, he told us he was inviting a friend to come out with us. She walked out of her house, long black hair, Barbie pink lipstick, and the smell of coffee and dog clogging up the air. It was a sickly sweet smell that made me want to throw up, gag out the window for dramatic effect but the only one who would have noticed would have been my sister, and only to complain at that. Something was off; once she entered the car, it was like he forgot about us. I threw gum in her hair, kicked the back of her chair, did whatever I could to make her experience with us an unpleasant one for the first few years.

I asked him if he would be around on Saturday afternoon. It surprised me how much I wanted to see him, considering I sometimes hate him with more passion than I’ve reserved for any of the boys I’ve dated.

She came with us everywhere. He’d pick us up originally in Brooklyn, then Staten Island, where we would slowly make our way over the Verrazano bridge, over the Belt Parkway, to the Long Island Expressway, and finally his house. By the time we got to his house, all we had energy left for was grilled cheese, TGIF, and bed. When I’d wake up the next morning, she was already sitting at his kitchen table. I once asked him if she absolutely had to come to the dentist with us, since I couldn’t imagine that being a very romantic date while [sister] and I got our teeth drilled. He replied, “She has no one else but me.” I thought, But what about us?

He e-mailed me back. “I’ll be in New Jersey on Thursday and Friday nights, but I leave Saturday morning. I guess I’ll see you next Thursday.” There was no explanation needed; Saturdays are his days with her.

It never seemed to occur to him that by making her his priority, he became at best an embellisher, at worse, a liar and a cheat. I still wonder if he’ll ever admit cheating on my mom. As it is, I never could look at him again in the same light. Many of our fights, when they weren’t about him badmouthing my mother or making excuses for my sister, were about her. It seems no matter how hard I try, it’s impossible to show him his words mean nothing when his actions say everything to the contrary.

That sucker punch hit hard. The wind fell out of me and my breath ran jagged miles over my tongue.

In some ways, I wish I knew how to stop wanting him to change, wanting him to become the man I admired for so long as a child. So instead, I cry, for all the years and arguments, for my inability to ever properly articulate how I feel, for always wanting more than I’ll ever be able to have because he’ll never understand.

He always did know exactly where to make it hurt the worst. Even when he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

Jazz music wafted into the air, slow notes languishing upon one another, dancing on elevation of keys. For the second time in two days, and the second time in the year I’ve been here, I entertained. We sat on my floor, trading stories of doctor horror stories, pending engagement (theirs, not mine) and just enjoying each other’s company, something that hadn’t been done in a long time. For the first time in what feels like years, my ribcage hurt from all the side splitting laughter where there would be that moment of silent comprehension and then as the joke became clear, we would crack up.

The music provided a background to what will definitely be one of my favorite nights in a long time. Why is it that it’s only when one is leaving that the earth conspires to make everything seem beautiful and lovely, after putting one through so much emotional trauma? My apartment glistens with its quirks and charms, and I think of how much I’ll miss the sunlight streaming through the bathroom window, lighting up the bath and making my baths in a clawfoot bathtub ones that I sorely needed. The kitchen with the oven I still have not bothered trying to learn how to use because it’s from the 1940s is a testament to all things old fashioned that I love. Even the construction zone outside my window, where I used to wake up naked and find construction workers leering at me in through the window while I stood in front of my mirror trying to decide what to wear before I noticed them will be missed.

I am ready to say goodbye, to this, to so many things, but I’m not. I want another day. I want a few more days. I want more days of this, of sitting on the floor and laughing, eating grapes, apples, cheesecake, whatever we can find that will help empty out as much as we can before it all gets turned over to McGee. I want more days of sunshine, of meandering down streets with McGee and Skylar Blue and Not Mary and all the other wonderful people I’ve met out here in the past nine months; I got so lucky in being able to meet such amazing people. I want less days of running packages to UPS to be shipped back east, thousands of dollars worth of clothes in a single box. I want more days of actually being able to walk around my room, no longer cluttered by all the furniture that it once held, hiding the narrative that would unravel my story.

It feels empty somehow, and almost too big now with all this space. There are moments when I lay catatonic, unable to do anything because I am so exhausted from the poor sleeping, from the overactive dreams, from the packing, from the lifting, from the moving, from the $400 bill I’m being charged to cancel my cable service, from the medical bills I just received for no reason, for all the money that moving requires, not to think about traveling.

I haven’t even wrapped my mind around the fact that tomorrow’s my last night here, in this apartment, in Berkeley. That Friday morning will see me get on the fourth plane ride in a month, having taken a brief respite this past weekend to stay in one area. That come Friday, my address with the quirky “__24 and a half” will no longer be mine. I’ll be back to a perfect Court, the residence of my parents, where my bills and mail will pile up for a month while the East Coast not-so-eagerly awaits my return.

There won’t be a bar outside my window. There won’t be jazz music wafting into my room, or even marching band music, which was the soundtrack for a conversation I had with GDB several weeks ago over webcam. It’s hard to have a serious conversation when the band outside sounds like it’s about to break into a rousing rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever, made more so by the irony of it being at one of the best places to get beer in town. There won’t even be an odd neon blue phone on my wall anymore - not that it actually works, but I always imagine that one day, it will just start ringing, and on the other end will be the fairy tale life one always imagines one is due.

Why is it that life always pushes us into a crossroads before we’re actually ready for one? It’s so hard to pretend to be strong all the time. Part of the reason I look forward to all this traveling is because there’s no time to think; there’s only time to do.

I will miss this place. I will miss the memories I’ve made here, the laughter I’ve had, the friends I’ve hugged and said hello and goodbye, the hills I walked and the streets I tripped over, the laundromat with the homeless people stripping down in front of me, the Tibetan protesters and the tree huggers, the radical Berkeleyan neighborhood, the walks down as the sun sets upon the Golden Gate Bridge, far off into the distance and the bay gleaming below, the crappy drivers and the awful BART, the bubble baths, the huge library, the high schoolers hanging out on every corner when school lets out, the absurdly long lines in Walgreens at all times of day, the amazing French bistro a few blocks down, the random Victorians only a few blocks away, all the little nooks and crannies that you find on Shattuck Avenue, and more. I will miss Berkeley.

But most of all? I’ll miss those quiet nights, with or without laughter, when I could write, jazz music lilting the air around me, instantaneous in its relaxing effects, as though all it took to soothe the uneasy world was a calming balm of saxophones and guitars.

Last week, I watched water fluctuate in gradients, mountains rise up from the road almost out of nowhere, hairpin curves and bathing-suit less boys. Seagulls were shameless and squirrels motioned to attack. Redwoods soared beyond measure, I hiked in flip flops and socks because I forgot sneakers and it was cold, and I tucked everything aside for five days.

I didn’t worry about what I would do what I got back. I didn’t worry about what would happen with GDB, though we did have a discussion during my trip that opened new doors, but leaves things as open-ended as ever. I didn’t worry about how I would get the five remaining pieces of furniture out of my apartment and all my clothing and books home. I just drove. My shoulders began to ache, helmed at the wheel, and I would pause every few hundred yards to stop, run out, snap a picture, admire the breathless beauty of the Pacific coast, especially in Big Sur, before finally heading home. I watched sea lions play in Monterey Bay. I slept better, more soundly than I do in my own bed, where my subconscious infiltrates my dreams with thoughts of everything I have to do. To say the last time I slept well was Wednesday night would be truth; and only because I was so exhausted from exploring coastal California so intensively. Since then, my dreams dance with a future that still wavers with that same boy in Chicago who can fulfill my needs so well, yet walks a fine line between being my love and being my friend.

You would think that the world would give it a rest.

I went to my office on Thursday, cheery with the knowledge of all the travel I had planned. It became clear that my bosses had explained my leaving as my decision, saying, “She’s moving on.” They sought to assign me new projects when I was only in to finish old ones. They even asked me to put my dentist appointments on Friday down as sick leave, when I technically didn’t even have to be in the office that day, or ever again after they told me I wasn’t a good fit. By the way, showing up to the office with the right side of your mouth numbed out on Novocaine is one hell of a way to make an exit. I felt a bit like a 40’s film star, speaking out of the left side of my mouth. I should have said, “Take this cigar and smoke it, kid,” but alas, I waved and said, “Bye!” The impulsive trip up the coast somehow made it manageable for me to walk into my office, not take the sympathetic look one of my former bosses gave me personally, listen to my boss jumble her words as she said, “I really appreciate you coming in; I realize how awkward this must be,” and have the wherewithal to reply, “I’m not awkward at all,” and even allow them to take me to lunch. No hard feelings? Check.

Leaving somehow felt more freeing than it did when I left in tears just a week and a half ago.

Yet in that same week and a half, the hits keep coming. My tuition bill made an appearance, asking for almost five thousand dollars that I certainly don’t have. My grandfather landed in the hospital for the fourth time this month, and is having surgery tomorrow, a surgery that has me racked with guilt for making plans to travel instead of flying directly home to be with my family. My stepgrandfather has been sedated for the last week because blood stopped traveling through his intestines; a man who is almost 90 and has been a cigarette chimney and a beehive of Coca-Cola activity for most of his life without a single effect.

You would think that the world would give it a rest.

My bags are getting packed, the furniture emptying out. All that’s left are toiletries, about 20% of my clothes, and four books. The electronics are slowly dissipating as buyers exchange me their cash for my used toaster oven, television, space heater. And yet, I worry. I worry that I won’t be able to find a job when I get home. I worry that somehow, this month of irregular communication is going to end up hurting me more than anyone else. I worry that I’ll land down in Thailand and get the phone call that I need to come home. I worry that somehow, going home is going to lose the me that I’ve found in the last year. Where I become wrapped up in family obligations, commitments to friends, jobs, school, and the time that I had to write, to think, to reflect, to regain the little sanity I had is going to dissolve. That my writing will change as my voice changes as my habits change because I’ll return to a fast-paced lifestyle that keeps things zooming and zipping.

How do I make the world stop turning again?

Crawling into my bed, pulling the blankets up to my waist and sinking down into my soon-to-be-sold mattress, I can’t help but sigh. The exhaustion of going to work to clean up shop after five solid days of traveling will be nothing compared to what’s in store.

Next week, this bed will belong to someone else. Next week, I will officially live out of a suitcase for a month. Next week, I say goodbye to my lifestyle in Berkeley, only a transient visitor. It’s strange not having an address to recite anymore. It’ll be stranger still to see the pile of bills awaiting me at my parents’ house when I finally arrive.

But for tonight, while this bed is still mine, I’ll wrap my arms around the bear my father brought home from Boston when I was seven, snuggle myself more tightly within the layers of blankets, and enjoy the last few nights of living on my own.

A year ago, if you had told me I would someday live in California, I would have laughed at you. A year ago, GDB and I were still circling each other, looking for the chinks in each other’s armor where we could slip through to endeavor forward on the march of relationship being. A year ago, I had a job where I read all day, and then went to class, and while class was getting on my nerves, I loved my job. A year ago seems like a mighty long time ago.

It seems funny to me that the last few weeks have found me struggling with different things. Rebound Boy. Student loans. GDB’s reappearance and subsequent announcements. My asshat of a roommate. Missing my social life from home. Wondering if I was still funny if I never laughed anymore on this coast. Figuring out what I need to do to make school work in the fall. Working overtime and stressing that this wasn’t a job I could do forever. What did I want to do? Declarations of love. Declarations of apathy. I’ve been bending every which way I can, and yet the hits still keep coming.

I taunted fate last night. “What else can you possibly do?”

Apparently, fate always has the last laugh.

I left my office this morning at 9:30. After arriving at 8:30. In that short hour, I managed to send out a few e-mails, schedule a few meetings, and get fired.

You would think I would have better been able to control myself. But there’s only so many times you can hear, “We’re not sure if this is the right fit.” I heard it once before, with AmeriCorps when they couldn’t decide if they wanted me to do more or less, and when I tried to do what they wanted, I failed anyway. I heard it again today, when they said, “You’re fantastic and we love having you, and you’re great at all the things we didn’t hire you for, but you’re not so good when it comes to the things we did.” Meaning, I suck at copying, filing, calendaring, and other basic administrative responsibilities.

I almost laughed. Am I being fired because I have a brain and prefer using it? Maybe it’s because the one day I called out sick last week after working overtime multiple weeks in a row, they panicked and thought I didn’t order their lunches. Am I being fired over lunches? This is almost absurd.

Yet tears still clogged up in my eyes and no matter how I tried to hide them, the red around my now turquoise colored irises gave them away. I was offered tissues. I was asked, “Do you want to talk about anything?”

Is there ever anything to talk about when you get fired?

I left, after it was disclosed that I could stay home for the next two weeks and they would still pay me anyway, until May 7th. I went home. I called my parents. The first time I’ve ever been fired.

On one hand, this solves the whole roommate asshat problem.

On the other hand, what am I going to do between now and school in September?

I cried. I texted my closest friends and e-mailed the ones who could maybe show me some hope. I realized, I now have four months of nothing to kill. So I thought about it.

What if I go to Thailand? And visit my best friend who has been living there for almost a year now? (And try to convince Lisa to get her passport and meet me there?) What if I do the famed drive down the California coast line, scarf blowing and wind in my hair? What if I stay with Avocado a few days in San Diego? And visit friends in L.A.? What if I extend my trip to Seattle to include Vancouver and spend more time with Princess Pointful? What if I drive back across the country in someone else’s car, just driving to see the lands and not necessarily even the sights? I learned in Arizona that I can happily gaze at a cacti-grown landscape for an hour without a single comment, admiring the beauty of such a stark land. What if I make this the road trip I’ve always wanted to take, my laptop my only companion and my thoughts centered on the scattered white lines of the road below?

Suddenly, the paycheck seemed insignificant. My passport flaunted its empty pages, with lands I’ve always wanted to but never have been. It still stings to know I couldn’t make it work here, after everything I’ve somehow endured. But somehow, having this physical escape from the shackles of this life that I constructed here suddenly makes all the difference in the world. Calmly, rationally, I posted all my furniture on Craigslist. I put together my list of things to do before I move. I made some tentative plans for the summer, feeling my way towards some form of income.

It’s not about California or bust anymore. Admittedly, I am hesitant to try my hand in a new city, but I am reluctant to make New York my safety. She should never be anyone’s safety.

In the gears of the landing wheels of a plane, the churning of a bus’s wheels, the quiet rev of a car’s engine, I don’t expect to find any of the answers I’ve been looking for. I know things are going to remain unsteady for a long time, wish as I may it weren’t. But I will find adventure, words on lined notebook paper inspired by my journeys, temporary escape from the things that have weighed heavily on my mind, dancing wind chimes upon a Pacific breeze.

I may not be leaving for a few more weeks, California, but you showed your teeth. And somehow? I know no matter what happens, I’ll land on my feet. Slightly worse for the wear, perhaps a bit battered and bruised from all the curveballs I’ve been hit with since moving here, I’m looking forward to leaving you behind. My story is meant to continue somewhere else.

One Month Ago

As I walk back to my room, finally relaxed from a long soak in the clawfoot tub after all the latest battery and assault my heart has just taken, Roommate stops me. “Hey DS. I just wanted to let you know I’m moving out at the end of April.”

Heart stops. “What?” I say.

“Yeah, I got accepted into this program in Atlanta. I’m not sure what I’m doing after then, so I’m going to move out.”

“So I guess that means I need to find a new roommate, huh?”

“Yeah.” Roommate turns to go back to his cooking, casual and apathetic as can be.

I freak out. Living in a college town is not exactly the most profitable enterprise during the summer. Especially seeing as we live in a relative construction zone, behind a crowded and noisy bar that plays live music late into the night, I didn’t think I would get anyone. That I would be forced to cough up the rest of the rent for both apartments, when his apartment is more than mine, and I’m so caught up in student loan debt, credit card debt, and my regular bills that I would more or less drown.

Like any normal person, I immediately post an ad up on Craiglist, hoping I’ll at least get a nibble or two. Imagine my surprise when by the end of the week, I had more than fifty responses. I was thrilled. I might be able to find a new roommate after all!

Three weeks ago:

Roommate hunt #1 begins. I begin to think there are no normal people in Berkeley. Roommate stops by, the day after Roommate hunt #1.

“I was thinking,” he says. “I’m not sure if I want to come back to Berkeley after the internship, but I’d like to have the option. Also, I know you’re moving back East in August, and I thought maybe it’d be easier if we do a sublet. Instead of transferring everything into your name or someone else’s name, and worrying about a rent increase because the apartment’s been rent controlled for the last three years, you could just go pay me like you have been, I’d do a sublet, and you can find someone who can move in for the summer, or can stay beyond the terms of the sublet and take your place once you move out.”

I pause. I think. Technically, this idea makes sense. It would work for me.

When are you moving back?”

“If I move back, sometime in mid-August.”

“That should work out fine, because I should be gone by then.”

“Okay, well let me know how that goes.”

During Roommate hunt #2, I’m able to offer people the option of lease or sublet, explaining that I will be moving out in August, and my current roommate may move out for good or may move back once I leave. I meet Awesome Cat girl, we hit it off. Things are great. I offer her the apartment.

Two and a half weeks ago:

“Hey Roommate, I was just wondering if you had a chance to figure out your details, such as when exactly you’re moving out, so I can let Awesome Cat Girl know she can move in and such.”

“Yeah, I’m moving out mid-May.”

“Wait, what? I thought you were moving out at the end of April.”

“Oh, that was only if I was moving out-moving out. If we’re doing the sublet, I’ll leave when my flight leaves.”

“When’s that?”

“May 20th.”

“So you’re now moving out at the end of May is what you’re saying.”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” Fuck. What if Awesome Cat Girl wanted to move end of April? Then I’m screwed. Again. *slight heart attack*

I call her. “Hey, Awesome Cat Girl. Here’s the deal. Roommate wants to stay till mid-May. I know I told you end of April, but I guess he changed his mind. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah, no problem. I’m not in a rush, I just want to live someplace I like with someone I like.”

“You are fucking awesome.” *huge sigh of relief*

One and a half weeks ago:

“Just so you know, I need a bigger deposit to cover the cat,” Roommate says to me as I’m walking into the kitchen.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, technically, we’re not supposed to have a cat in the apartment. But when I spoke to the manager, she said it was okay. But I don’t know how she’d feel since it’s not my cat. So if you can ask Awesome Cat Girl to give me a bigger deposit, I’ll hold onto that and if the cat doesn’t scratch anything up, I’ll give her her deposit back.”

“Why would you give her her deposit? Shouldn’t that go to the landlord?”

“Nah, I have your deposit also. You would get it back from Awesome Cat Girl when she moves in. That’s how it always goes.”

“Why would you have my deposit?”

“It just makes things easier.”

“Uh….what? Okay. I’ll talk to her.” Fucking mother fucker. How many times is he going to come up with this bullshit? Make a fucking decision and stick to it!

“Hey Awesome Cat Girl. Roommate wants a deposit for the cat, just to cover his butt.”

“Is the cat not allowed?”

“I thought it was. But the lease technically says it’s not. But when Roommate was planning on getting a cat, he said it was okay with the manager. So he just wants a deposit to make sure things are copacetic.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s fine. As long as I can bring my cat!”

This girl is officially the most awesome girl ever.

One week ago:

Jack of All Trades is over. We’re watching a movie. Roommate’s girlfriend cackles, a la Fran Drescher. I cringe. He looks at me. “Wow. You weren’t kidding about how bad it was,” he says.

I notice there have been dirty dishes from Roommate piled in the sink for the last week. His girlfriend has slept over on average 4-6 nights a week now. We are out of toilet paper. We are out of paper towels. The toilet often has pee and floating paper in it. Not mine. I generally make a habit of flushing.

“I can’t wait till he moves out,” I sigh.

Yesterday

Awesome Cat Girl and I talk about upcoming move. We’re super excited. Whoo! Roommate sends us both an e-mail.

“I’ll be moving out on May 22nd, so Awesome Cat Girl, you can move in after then, but you don’t have to start paying rent until June 1st. DS, if you can be out of the apartment by August 8th, you don’t have to pay any August rent.”

What? I thought his flight was May 20th. How…what? And August 8th? But I can’t leave until August 23rd, as I’m planning an event for my job on August 22nd, that evening. What?

I come home and pass out, exhausted from taking an early morning flight from Tucson back to Oakland, and then going straight to work without recuperating.

Tonight

I pass Roommate on the way to the bathroom to get ready for bed, intending to make an early night after this week’s stress and zombie-fication. I have bubbled. I am content and calm, and had joyful conversations not involving boys.

“Hey, Roommate. Where did August 8 come from?”

“I always said August 8.”

“Um….no. You said mid-August. If you even came back.”

“I don’t know when I said that, but okay.”

“Well…I can’t move out by August 8th. I have to work until the 22nd, and I will need a day to gather all my stuff together, as I am going to be working overtime the entire week or two leading up to the event.”

“I guess Awesome Cat Girl will have to move out for two weeks, until you move out.”

“What? That’s not fair to her.”

“Well, can you go somewhere for those last two weeks?”

“Are you kidding me? I know all of seven people in the Bay Area. A few of them are moving in July. No, I can’t go somewhere else. And I’m not moving out two weeks before I move across the country! You know more people around here, can’t you find somewhere to live for two weeks?”

“It’s my name on the lease. If you want me to set this up as the agreement, then these are the terms. If you don’t like it, you can either get the new lease taken care of with a rent increase, because it’s been stabilized due to my having lived here for three years, but I don’t know if the landlord will let you keep the cat, or you can both move into the apartment across the way, or you can just move out.”

I stand there, completely flabbergasted, growing more and more furious as the conversation builds. I’m also growing more hopeless. How many hoops am I going to have to jump through, just to stay in my apartment until I leave?

I realize that I don’t want to live with this jerk, ever again. He’s become increasingly disrespectful, and I’m tired of the games. Of course, my landlord has an Asian accent, which is not easy to understand in person, let alone over the phone and I have no e-mail address at which to contact her to price out these options of negotiating the lease in Awesome Cat Girl’s name and subletting from her.

Do I:

A) Move out two weeks early and live out of a suitcase again, much like I did the first month I moved out here, making my life in California a full-circle (but hopefully without the anti-semitic crazy old bitch I first lived with?)

B) Try to re-negotiate a lease with a woman I can’t understand and hope that she lets us keep the cat and lets Awesome Cat Girl become the primary leaseholder, and me a sublet until I leave in August, and kick this fucking asshole roommate out?

C) Suck it up and search for another sublet option, who moves out when he moves back out, and deal with him for the last two weeks that I’m in California?

Fucking A.

Update, 11:15 A.M.: It’s all over. I’m leaving California. Guess that takes care of that.

She peeked out at me, with bright brown eyes (I never knew brown eyes could be so bright), sucking on a lollipop, easily fascinated with me the way I was with her. The register held a relic of Indian heritage, but her shirt proudly broadcasted her Dora the Explorer upbringing. Maybe three or four years old, she stood on a stool, accompanying her mother on the register as though she were playing at Play-Skool store. Her curiosity was minimal, extending no further than a few brazenly open glances my way, examining the curves of my red hair, so unlike hers, black and straight, upended in pigtails. She mildly examined my pale, alabaster skin, smattered with light freckles which even at their darkest were still lighter than her own brown skin, unblemished with the marks of time. Her sense of initial wonderment left me slightly bemused. What did she think I was doing as I ordered my chicken tikka masala and naan? Who did she think I was?

I remembered then, how from the time I was three till about five, my father and I had a morning ritual, before he took me to the school for the deaf in Long Island. We would drive several blocks away from our house in Brooklyn to this small coffee shop where I loved to climb up onto the stools that were almost as tall as I was, so I could swing my legs and spin around while we waited for our food. The luncheonette was always dark, wood paneled walls with chrome and black stools, and the register upfront was the one where my father would buy a lotto ticket, the religion to which he prayed daily. It was at the counter that I would always order a scrambled egg with ketchup, french fries, and apple juice. I would also order up a custom-made drawing from Kathy, the waitress who served my plate daily.

When I was younger, I had an inexplicable fascination with unicorns; maybe it was an extension of my love for My Little Pony, or perhaps my theory that Starlite was a unicorn, but his horn was hidden behind that dazzling mane of color. I don’t remember how it came about. I just remember that Kathy would use the back of her waitress pad to draw me a unicorn, one to keep in my pocket or in my bag or wherever it is that a pre-schooler keeps her belongings. I treasured those drawings, where we would talk about what a unicorn could and couldn’t do, how they moved, and what color it should be. Sometimes Kathy would surprise me by having a purple crayon in her possession, purple being my favorite color growing up, and she’d make me a purple unicorn. It didn’t get any better than that.

I didn’t know much about Kathy, other than she always brought my breakfast, with rye toast, and made me unicorns. For several years, even after I had rejected the school of deaf in favor of the public school across the street, she was always there. When my third grade class walked to the movie theater to see Beauty and the Beast, I popped in to say hello to Kathy. She had wavy blond hair, short, and in my mind’s eye, I remember her being more trim, with multiple earrings, and a pleasant demeanor.

Several years ago, I found myself back at the breakfast joint, and Kathy was still there. She was a bit heavier, less earring’d, yet she still smiled the same easy smile she wore as she handed down my plate. My feet no longer swung off the stool; my spins were foiled by the roots my legs suddenly planted on the ground. I wouldn’t know what to do with a waitress pad unicorn anymore. My pockets were full of keys and money, memories of the life I was just really beginning to understand, shaped by my own choosing. We talked, about the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters; she remembered how I loved unicorns as a child, and indeed, when I finally went to the Cloisters, I stood transfixed by the Unicorn Tapestries.

I wonder now, who was Kathy? Was she an art student who just found herself working at the luncheonette to pay the bills? Did she take the L into Manhattan on her days off to wander around the Met and the MoMa and all the art galleries in SoHo, before coming back to sling plates and draw unicorns on pads? Was she a daughter who grew up nearby, who had no direction and chose to make this hers, chatting up the regulars and serving coffee? Did she ever dream about traveling, leaving Brooklyn and its overdrawn cawfees and dawgs for lands where a dog was cane, and eggs were l’oeufs, where she no longer wore the black apron and white shirt, but instead sat at a sidewalk cafe as someone else rolled around in black shoes and took her order? I spent every day accepting her gifts of benevolent horned unicorns, yet I never knew who she was.

The little girl tonight probably won’t remember me, and chances are, I’ll forget her too, because that’s the nature of life; we meet, we leave. But inevitably, someone will become her Kathy, a childhood memory tucked away to be drawn out in the least likely moments, thousands of miles away from the scene of the shared moments. I wonder if Kathy remembers me. Am I still the little girl with the Annie-like curls and bright blue eyes, chattering away with mispronounced s’s and dimples that beam upon the newest drawing bestowed upon her? Does she remember me more as the young woman, on the verge of adulthood, from the last time she saw me? Or maybe, I’m just a folded piece of paper, creased with time, that only comes out when someone reminds her of a unicorn.

I received a letter from my mother yesterday.

We’re not typically mushy, gooey, I miss you, I love you. We talk but I’m as cryptic with her sometimes as I am with the rest of the world. It’s no surprise that my family thinks I’m cold, emotionless, and unaffected. Hell, even my best friends think that sometimes.

But a few weeks ago, I started writing, about when I was twelve and angry at my mother for somehow having encouraged my father to leave her. Even though I knew my dad had cheated on her with a woman thirteen years my senior, I still thought it was my mom’s fault. I like to think of it as my teenage rebellion years, several years shy of my actual teenage years.

It wasn’t until we were in Disney World that year, at the New Orleans Resort more specifically that my grandfather sat me down and more or less told me to stop being a little bitch and grow up. In those exact words. To open my eyes and realize how much my mother had to sacrifice, change, lose to find a home for me and my sister after my father left her with a house newly sold and nowhere to go. I began to see things a little differently after that.

The latter half of my thirteenth year involved commuting; quite possibly the reason I swear I will never commute more than twenty nine minutes today. Having been uprooted to New Jersey in the middle of the school year, she and I were both still committed to our respective schools, in Brooklyn. She worked, while I went to class, danced, told my English teacher she was boring, and more. We would drive in, a red Chevy Blazer more our home than the new townhouse we just moved into, and talk.

I don’t much remember what we would talk about. Sometimes, we would drive in on the Belt Parkway, and find the ocean lapping onto the highway, just before we reached the exit for where I got my ears pierced for the first time, when my cousin who was a full year and a half older than my wise five years chickened out. We’d watch fog blot out the apartment buildings and rides of Coney Island, typically visible from the Verrazano Bridge and home to my mother’s childhood and unwrapped Chanukah presents in my grandparents’ closets. Sometimes, I’d nap in the fully reclined front seat, eyes shutting in the dark and opening again to see the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean.

We did this for six months. Then I started high school in New Jersey, and she transferred to a school district in Staten Island. Our conversations were more for the drive back into Staten Island on a Friday night where we’d meet my father, for the bi-weekly drop off of child custody. College came, and with that, graduate school. Yet somehow, we would inevitably find ourselves in the front seat of her car; a Chevy Blazer soon became a Honda Accord, which became a Nissan Maxima, handed over to me in favor of a Mitsubishi Eclipse, traded in for a Montero Sport. Let it be known that my impulsive nature is ingrained by my mother’s DNA.

It was during these car rides that we would talk, candidly. About her experience with my father. About her bitterness towards his family, and how he treated her. About her childhood, and how different her parents are now from when she was raised. About her job, to my schooling, to my decision to move to California impulsively, to the aftermath of D, hinted at but never fully disclosed. I am nothing if not consistent when it comes to revealing my love life to my family. The last time we had one of these car rides, absent of my sister, was probably right before I went to the airport. Where we spent the morning driving around town, running errands, finding clothes for me to wear to a new job, and just talking about all the possible changes coming my way.

We’re not Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. We don’t talk about everything. But I found myself on that night a few weeks ago inexplicably missing her so much that I cried. I had to write her, to let her know how much I loved her for letting me go, for understanding that I needed to do this for me, and that I know how scared she was when I finally told her I was going to a therapist, but that instead of trying to pinpoint where along the line I became fucked up, she just said, “Okay,” even though I know she wanted to know why. How proud I am of her for making her life one that anyone would envy, fashionable, but comfortable, happy, and content. Wishing that I could just go home for the weekend, sit next to her on our beige suede couch covered by cat hair and the scratch marks left by our eldest, clawed cat, and watch hours of The Real Housewives of the O.C. and laugh at them.

So I wrote her. I wanted a card, but Walgreens had closed ten minutes prior. I knew if I didn’t write all this out now, I’d lose the moment and it wouldn’t come back, not for a while. A piece of looseleaf paper did the trick, and I wrote it all out, careful to keep my tears from smudging the ink. The next morning, I woke up feeling detached and removed as ever, and I felt grateful that I’d had the foresight to write while the moment was still hot.

I knew she got the letter; she thanked me for it, but we didn’t talk much about it. What I didn’t expect was the letter I got in return. I won’t post the whole thing here, but it was strange receiving it at a time where I’m feeling so conflicted about my future in New York, and if I even want it beyond my degree.

“Dear DS:

I miss you so much. It’s just not the same talking on the phone. I would like to tell you that I am so proud of you. I admire your bravery and courage and always knew that you were the one who would step outside of the box and try new things regardless of where and how hard. You make every challenge look like a walk around the park. Always know that I am your greatest supporter and rooting section.”

I guess that sweetens the pot to move home a bit, eh? I don’t talk about her much, but she is one of the few women I admire, for her strength to rebuild our home when it was shattered, and to provide me with love and support, even when she didn’t understand what I was doing. I’m still terrified about moving back. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to reveal all my cards, about what I want and where I’m going. But I know that when I’m home for that wedding in July, there will inevitably be a car ride. And just like old times, we’ll fall into a comfortable routine of talking about anything and everything. Who knows. There just might be a different front seat to sit in this time.