Scanning Wednesday: Places I have lived

Here are some places I have lived.

The house on Wayne Street in Chicago. I lived there with Ken, Mitchell – and, briefly, Jim. Poor Jim slept in an airless pantry on the floor for a couple of months and then I moved out to come to New York and he took my room. We were a big happy family. There were two cats in the house – Sammy and Duffy. We all gathered at night to watch 30something on Lifetime, having raucous in-depth conversations about the show. On occasion, M. would crawl through my bedroom window to attack me in the dead of night. On occasion, I would forget my keys and crawl through the front window of the apartment until Mitchell scolded me: “Sheila, you are advertising to burglars how easy it is to break into this place.” We had a front stoop where we would sit and have coffee on the weekends. There were green velvet couches in the front room. I loved that place. The apartment itself was no great shakes, but I loved the vibe there.

Here is the door to the apartment I lived in in Boston, for one weird surreal summer. I had graduated from college, and my boyfriend was interning at a bigwig law firm in Boston and convinced me to live with him for the summer. This went so against the grain of my family that I was shunned by my grandmother at a family party (she got over it, but still). The funny thing is: everyone lives with each other now, but I was the first to openly be sinful in my family – on EITHER side – and I remember at that one family party, I was kind of upset because everyone was just abuzz with judgment about me – but all of my cousins kept pulling me aside and saying, “Thank you … You are paving the way for us …. it’ll be easier for US now.” And it was. Because I took the fall for all of us. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t lived with him that summer. It was a stupid-ass summer. I worked in a gourmet deli, my boss was satanic, my boyfriend worked 90 hours a week, and I felt lost lost lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. We also had gotten an apartment based on what my boyfriend could pay – meanwhile, I was making minimum wage, and ended up BROKE. It was a nightmare. Dumb summer. Let’s erase it.

This was the first house my parents bought. They moved there when I was 5 years old. We stayed in that house until I was 11. It was in a big neighborhood, with tons of kids – all of whom were my friends but my main buds were Jen and Katy – and my main memory of that neighborhood is being outside all the time and ignoring our mothers calling us in to dinner. Playing baseball, tag, having mud wars in the woods, skating on the pond in the woods, and generally living in a world of make-believe. It was a classic childhood neighborhood – with trick-or-treating (there was one weird guy whose house we wouldn’t go to), and one house with a scary Doberman, and we all took piano lessons from one lady in the neighborhood, and we all stole raspberries off the one bush in that one lady’s backyard, and etc. etc. It was a tiny house with a massive yard surrounded by forsythia bushes. Billy Hodge ran through the forsythia bushes one day and upset a beehive and chaos ensued. I will never forget that day.

This is the absolute DUMP in Hoboken where my dear friend Jen and I lived for, oh, six years? It was on Monroe, a couple streets north from Frank Sinatra’s birthplace – on the less-fashionable side of Hoboken, full of bitter Italians who have no idea what has happened to their town. Such a person was our landlord. Now, he was very good to us (in a weird way), and the rent was outrageously cheap – small wonder, the place was FALLING APART. We had to bungee-cord the cupboard handles on and crap like that. But let me not paint too bleak a picture. The place was enormous and it actually had a lot of character. We were on the top floor. We had a huge strangely-shaped foyer – big enough for a couch, a table, a coat rack, a bookshelf – there was a big living room – a small room off the living room that we used as an office – there were two bedrooms, and my room had a closet the size of a small Manhattan studio. It was HUGE. I had a chair in there. Mkay? There was a kitchen and out of the kitchen windows was a fire escape where Jen and I would sit, watching the sunset. Our windows faced West – so we could see the tip of the Empire State Building as well as the World Trade Center from our kitchen. It was a kickass apartment. But the landlord was a bitter man – and he didn’t like what we represented – he liked US, but he hated who we were … and he eventually ran us out. Great apartment. You’d never know from looking at that dumpy exterior, huh? Included a link of the view from our kitchen window as well.

I don’t mean to try to sound like Jewel – because, ew, who would want to do that … but my boyfriend and I lived out of our van for two months. It was a true unmooring – we weren’t on a vacation – we were on a break from LIFE – my possessions were stored in my parents’ attic, we had no apartment to go home to even if we had wanted to, and we had no forwarding address. As far as he and I were concerned, we were both moving to San Francisco. But then, somewhere along the way, I realized what a dreadful idea that was – and decided I would move to Los Angeles instead. Having no place to stay once I got there. And no furniture, no clothes, no nothing. Crazy. I can’t say it was cool to live out of a van. You start to appreciate things like warm water and laundry that doesn’t freeze on the line. But there were moments – like this one – we kept running into this guy in the photo across the country. We’d be at some truck-stop and there he’d be. Three states later, we’d go to some county fair, and there he’d be again. Guess we had the same itinerary. It was pretty funny. He was really nice. He “came over for dinner” one night, and we cooked quesadillas on our little stove, and then drank whiskey as the coyotes howled around us. That’s what’s going on here. I know it sounds like a total cliche, but whatevs, that’s how it happened.

Okay, so this is a weird photo but it’s really the only one I have of this apartment that really shows the dysfunction. Mitchell and I moved there after living in “the box” on Melrose Street, a one-room studio. This was a two-bedroom apartment on Ashland and Berteau, a classic Chicago apartment, with a wooden staircase in the back – and … what can I say, it was a lovely apartment – but we NEVER. MOVED. IN. Mitchell said we “belligerently refused” to move in. And the funny thing is, I don’t think he and I ever discussed it. We never said, “Should we maybe unpack a little bit? Should we maybe put some stuff up on the walls? Should we maybe ADMIT that we live here?” There was no reason to be ashamed. It was a nice apartment. But we were insane then, our lives were a whirlwind of bacchanalian adventures involving insane Lebanese cousins, various wrecks of boys from improv clubs, and happy hours at gay bars. We could not have cared less about putting up posters or maybe getting a plant or two. Who gives a shit about that. Let’s dress up in each other’s clothes and take pictures. This photo – I assume we’re getting ready to go out – but let me point out that we have been living in the apartment for MONTHS at the time this photo was taken, and you can see that things are still in boxes. We only lived there a year before we moved to Wayne Street (see above) – in one of the most infamous moves of all time (a story in and of itself) and it’s funny: Ann Marie helped us move (and got so hyped up on the whole MOVING thing that she promptly moved herself) … and she noticed how at the last moment, with the last box going out the door, Mitchell and I had nary a response. We didn’t turn to glance back, we didn’t “have a moment” – we were already halfway down the damn stairs, chattering about going to some stupid improv jam and fucking with people’s minds. We laughed about that later. Ann had more of a response than we did. “Ohhh, you guys … you’re moving! What a great time we’ve all had in this apartment, haven’t we? Uhm … where are you guys? Oh, you’re already down the stairs … Pardon me.”

I have more photos of my various abodes. Just need to find them and organize them.