Apartment, you’ve really been great. Honestly I’ve had so many bad relationships with apartments past - inconvenient locations, insane roommates, impossible to locate landlords with almost impossible to pay rents, that after almost two years together I feel we’re really meant for each other. My finding your profile on Craigslist wasn’t chance, it was destiny. The very moment I approached your front door, thick oak attached to an aging but classic late 1800’s brownstone on a tree lined street on the Upper West Side, it hit me (bam!) like a taxi on Broadway –love.
And its been a nice two years, (ed. note: best and longest relationship), and during that time I’ve overlooked a few things. After all, isn’t that what a relationship is all about? Ones ability to let go of and accept all the little things you know you can’t change only to recognize at the end of the day the admirable qualities that outshine the more annoying ones?
Sure you’re just one room with a kitchen sink equivalent to those found on a Boeing 757. You proffer but one closet and provide me with what can only be classified as an eat-in bedroom, what with the refrigerator hovering ever so closely to the bed. But that’s OK. These offenses are nothing in comparison to what I have to deal with once I leave your four walls. Over the years you’ve been there as a constant, well-maintained and welcoming sanctuary from my hectic New York life. My office has no windows but you give me three, and I like to look out of them after a long day at work while eating dinner standing at the counter. You are quiet, save for the man downstairs who takes to playing the piano at late and random hours, but I find I enjoy that, especially in the summer when the windows are open and Rachmaninoff blocks out the sound of car horns.
I’ve even been willing to accept the infrequent strange bug you’ve added to occasionally disturb the peace. So far we’ve bypassed the crazy bed bug scare of 2010 and have worked our way up to the occasional cockroach sighting. Of course I freak out initially, but then take deep breaths and repeat the mantra I always do when things here really start to get me down – it’s OK, this is Manhattan, it’s OK, this is Manhattan. One must take charge of their life here, not run from it. Roach motels were purchased and installed. My Swiffer became my weapon of choice. Smush, Flush, Clean (SFC) became the Gym, Tan, Laundry (GTL) routine of my apartment life.
We even acquired a mouse recently (look at us!). The little guy darted across the floor with such speed I thought you must be playing a trick on me. As one determined to maintain her status as Urban Warrior, and in the vein of Macaulay Culkin in the ultimate bible of residential battles Home Alone (“This is my house and I have to defend it”), I set up traps and simply pretended he was that nice little boy from The Witches.
All was going well. Our future, well, it had never been brighter.
However like any relationship we reached an inevitable breaking point. One night while reading on my couch I spotted a roach having a field day running up and down my nice curtains. I panicked at first, repeated the mantra, then grabbed my trusty Swiffer. Before long he was down the drain and I was fine, knowing that if the past were any indicator I wouldn’t see another one for at least three to six months. Later I drifted to sleep, outside traffic humming, work-week halfway through. Oh Apartment, you’re grand.
I’m not sure how I woke up or why, perhaps it was a noise or a feeling or just a subconscious message from my beloved Apartment trying to help me out - but as I sat up, through the din I could see clearly a dark spot on the pillow beside me. In one quick movement I was up and on my feet with my fingers on the lamp switch. There, sitting calmly on my pillow illuminated by my GE Energy Saver light bulb was Cockroach #1.
At first I wasn’t entirely sure if what was happening was real or just a terrible nightmare, however upon seeing another flicker - Cockroach #2 scurrying through the covers - I became all too aware of just how real this little tableau unfolding before me really was. As the sweat on my brow began to form, I looked up and saw Cockroach #3 hanging out on my headboard as if simply to say, “How you doin’?”
The new mantra quickly became: Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.
In what can only be defined as a panic-induced frenzy tantamount to an epileptic fit, I began to furiously run my hands through my hair, feeling quite certain that there was at least a Cockroach #4 somewhere in there probably laying eggs, possibly burrowing into my brain. As I carried out this embarrassing performance, I managed with extreme precision to throw my thumb and its corresponding fingernail directly into my right eye. It felt like I punched myself in the face. Then, to my horror, the white of my eye began to bleed.
In a state of shock I began to recognize the truth that was slowly starting to take shape in front of me - my lover had just pushed our relationship too far. At the point when I was crying, shaking and holding the Swiffer in one hand prodding the roaches on my bed while dabbing a tissue to my blood-dripping eye with the other - that's when I knew we'd hit rock bottom.
I was reminded of a scene from a movie by another New York lover about their New York apartment, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. When she calls Alvy to come over to help her kill the spider the size of a Buick in her bathtub, Annie presented the age old question: when something bad happens to you in your home, what do you do and who do you call? I called three people in no particular order at two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday, and no one answered. Standing alone and feeling out of options and hope, I let it sink in that my apartment had betrayed me. I suddenly felt like Bill Pullman in every romantic comedy, or at least as devastated as someone who doesn’t get a rose on The Bachelor.
When I finally got through to my sister she told me to calm down and get into a cab and stay at her place. I needed some space. I needed a break. My apartment was turning into Animal Planet. Now, after a few days and the exterminator en route I’m still not quite ready to go back. I still feel a stinging sense of unfaithfulness (in addition to the stinging pain in my eye). But the thing is, what I deep down knew even as this whole horror show was unfolding, was that I’d go back eventually. There was never any question. I’m not sure if it’s because it really is true love or because the whole idea of moving on and trying to find something new simply isn’t worth the hassle - either way I knew I wasn’t ready to give up. And besides, a whole new set of problems would inevitably find me wherever I went. You can’t run from your demons, I’ve learned, because they catch up to you eventually. Sometimes the bravest thing is to choose to stay and fight.
And anyway perhaps we all have a masochistic relationship with the places we live. They can’t be perfect but we know all too well that we aren’t either, and so exceptions have to be made. We live and love in denial and endure the rough patches in order to come out on the other side more enlightened, happy warriors of our homes and our hometowns. Alvy Singer was right. Relationships are irrational and crazy and absurd but we keep going through it because most of us just need the eggs.
All I really know is that according to my optometrist my eye will heal in ten to fourteen days. Maybe by then, Apartment, I’ll be ready to forgive you.
*Note the events of this post took place during the summer of 2010, and while I won that battle the war wages on. If you have stories of battles with your home I’d love to hear them. Please leave them in the comments.
