This Is Where We Used to Live

I rented a tiny studio in this building about 10 years ago. My place had lots of windows, it was surprisingly sunny in there. It also had a kitchen that was big enough for two people to eat in. There was a giant walk-in closet and loads of built in cabinets. For a miniscule apartment, it was quite liveable.

Here are some things that I remember from when I lived there.

• My neighbor, Richard, used to listen to conservative talk radio on Sunday afternoons. He’d be in his living room with the door open to the courtyard and I could always hear him shouting in outrage and disbelief at the radio. “Richard, you could turn that off,” I’d say. “Yeah, I know,” he replied, “but I feel like I should know what these people are up to.”
• On a sunny March day, I called in sick, dragged my armchair in to the doorway so it faced the sun, and stayed home reading Geek Love and drinking coffee.
• We had a courtyard party one summer night, we sat outside having BBQ and drinking beer and smoking a little dope. About 2am I closed the door and went to bed. People were still drinking beer in the courtyard. Someone outside popped open the mail slot. “Hey, you got any more of that pot in there?” After that, I taped a piece of cardboard over the mail slot.
• My television burst in to flames one evening. I very calmly unplugged it and set it outside on the steps.
• One of the girls in the apartment across from me was a firefighter. She saw me one day when she was driving the truck and honked the horn. I jumped sky high. “You know,” she said to me later, “when I’m driving the truck I forget just how loud that horn is.
• I had a huge crush on a guy that I finally got up the nerve to invite over for dinner. He told me my apartment was not the smallest apartment he’d ever been in. We stood back to back and measured the width of my one room in arm lengths.

I liked living there until I learned that the apartment was the cause of my terrible health that year – the building had dry rot and mold and it was making me very, very sick. Tired of feeling so bad all the time, I quit my job, broke up with my boyfriend, and moved, all at once.

The property was purchased by the school on the North end of the block. They’re going to knock it down and expand the school. I’m glad it’s not going to be yet another condo complex, but I did feel a sad, sweet sense of nostalgia seeing it fenced off and graffitied. While I snapped photos, a couple on their walk wandered by and asked me about the building. “I used to live there,” I said. “I’m sad to see it go.”