I can still smell my old apartment sometimes. It was not the smoky smell of pizza and shit that permeates every square inch of this building, or the sort of clay smell that was my house growing up in the Palisades – it was clean, it was crisp, it was home, all designer aftershave in beautiful cold blue bottles and fresh linens and Jen’s perfume and something like plants, in a nice way. And every morning, I awoke swaddled in the plush of 8000 thread count-sheets and the bright white of my down comforter, the same color as my teeth, and now I still have the down comforter but I sold the sheets – who the fuck sells their sheets? at what point did I go mad? – and now I have the kind that feel like some heavy metal guy’s t-shirts.
Here’s the point, as tears stream down my face, it goes like this: you’re on the fourteenth floor, #1407 and you walk in. You are wearing an asphalt gray suit and burgundy tie and you are tired and you miss your girlfriend and your house, and underneath your feet, underneath your designer shoes you shine every night so as to avoid scuffing – yeah that’s right you shine your own damn shoes – the floor is sad and water damaged and this gross kind of wood that looks unfinished and you can totally sense the fact that it is not happy to see you, and you’re not happy to see it either but this constant sense of opposition, the glares perennially turned your way, are killing you softly and you cry some more. And you might think, someone robbed my apartment. NO, IT’S JUST BARE. And you might think, I can taste the air in here. BECAUSE YOU CAN. And you might think, God, let me jump out of that window. BUT SOMETHING INSIDE TELLS YOU YOU CAN’T AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHY BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOU WANT. And you take in your surroundings: frameless bed against the far right corner with the down comforter that looks so all out of place, that down comforter wants to cry; and the large oak dresser with all the carvings from your clay-smelling childhood home in the Palisades to the left, with the big mirror that’s the only thing you can properly keep clean; and the door slightly ajar to the bathroom which is a hell in itself; and the wall of kitchen to your right facing the bed, and your dishes are washed and put away because you have subjected yourself to a Mexican woman’s work; and the completely and totally unused dining table the size of a shoebox and the two chairs on either side of it looking forlorn and disgruntled; and all the other stuff: microwave, tiny Sony television, black area rug that’s just a little too nice for this place, CD player and small CD collection next to the lamp on the bedside table, Venetian blinds on the two windows gone gray with age/dust that hide the cruel of the disgusting world from the cruel of this disgusting place.
And you’re not retarded, and memories come to you of a home in a place that was neither cruel nor disgusting, a place that was warm, that meant nothing but good and happiness, no, more like euphoria: floor-to-ceiling windows with breathtaking views of a place you knew you could hold in the palm of your hands if you kept at it, real pieces of strange art on the walls you bid high enough on, frosted cabinet doors in the stainless steel kitchen, a glass coffee table littered with magazines and books, yeah, and room for a coffee table, and more than one mirror in the bathroom, and casual get togethers with the gentlemen’s club, chewing cigars, saying stuff like “God, it must suck to be poor.” Yeah, it must suck, but what would you know about that? What would you know about walls the color of strained pea vomit? What would you know about making a weekly budget for groceries? What would you know of the gross kind of people who are poor and the gross reasons for why they are poor?
And your face is wet and so is the floor of the bathroom and you think that maybe if you don’t feel any of this, don’t touch any of this, it will be less real, less of a life worth pity and more of a dream, and so you stand still at the entryway, keeping your hands at your sides, eyes closed, and you can smell the old apartment, you really can, and you realize that this is the story of men everywhere, sad men shit out of luck and with erectile dysfunction, and that’ll probably be next in the suicide note that is your life, and you are shaking but none of this changes anything at all, none of this changes the fact that your paycheck’s not due for three more weeks and you live in a studio apartment.
