One of our classmates in grad school lived in an illegal “apartment” in a mostly empty warehouse in the West ’20s. She occupied the whole entire floor, and she put up partitions. The space was massve and it had huge grimy windows. She couldn’t get mail there because … she wasn’t supposed to be living there. Nobody was. There were no amenities. There was a bathroom but I don’t think a shower. No kitchen. Oh, New York in the ’90s. Those warehouse spaces were the coin of the REALM. If you had one? You squatted there forever. The best parties I went to in the late ’90s were at these crazy warehouse spaces on darkened blocks. We filmed a short film at her apartment. It was huge, enough room for all the equipment. I have pictures of me at all these different parties and my hair color and hair style is radically different each time. I had black hair. I had platinum blonde hair. I reverted to my regular red hair. And then, I got sick of it and shaved my head. (To date, it’s my favorite haircut.) In this pic, Jen and I are clearly madly in love with each other, but the funniest thing to me about this picture is that we were not only friends but roommates. We ended up being roommates for nine happy years. NINE. YEARS. So it’s hilarious to me because … this is us. We LIVED together, it’s not like this was a rapturous reunion. We were literally taking the PATH back to our apartment together after the party. This is who we are as friends. I just saw Jen two weeks ago. Forever friend. Just FYI, Wade took this photo.
