A Yellow Roman Candle

November 3, 2014

            I have my own apartment now. It’s a terrible place with carpet stains, a view of barbed wire, kitchen cabinets off their hinges, and a faucet that drips a drip that is so constant it’s more like a stream of water, but the place is perfect in every way because it’s mine, and I love it. It’s quirky too. It has a one-butt kitchen so small that it should be in an RV. I like to think of it as adorable. And, we have a hallway. It sounds absurd, I know, but think about it. A house has hallways. A one-bedroom apartment, at least out here, doesn’t. It has a living room with doors off of it. When my new roomie Lauren and I opened the wooden door while touring the place and stepped onto the fluffy light blue 1960’s carpet, we stood in the hallway and mentally cancelled all of the other apartment tours that we had left on the agenda. We were home. We were standing in a hallway, and it felt like a home.

            Fast forward a week and I’m locked out of Jordan’s apartment, so I beg the landlord to let me move into my new apartment early. He complies, hallelujah. Lauren drives her beat-up Honda to Jordan’s apartment to pick me up. It’s loaded full with her stuff, and we make some space in the trunk for every single possession I have to call my own. It seems hopeless – I’ll admit my pessimism for the undertaking. This light blue Honda Accord that she got for $100 because the entire passenger side is T-boned in such a way that you can’t open the passenger door adds to the raw, uncut adventure that we’re having in the city of our dreams. I haven’t touched my clothes that are strewn across Jordan’s living room furniture, so I run in and throw them in some trash bags, grab my guitar, and we peace out. Can’t get a hold of the apartment manager, so there we are on the street corner with all of our possessions jammed in this piece of junk with wheels, sitting on her trunk smoking her E-cig, with nowhere to go. We grab some dude on the sidewalk and ask him to take a picture of us in this moment of uninhibited liberty and excessive idealism.

Can't you just smell the adolescent idealism?

            When we finally move in, it takes us about 10 minutes to unload our stuff. The apartment manager comes in and takes us through the place. His name’s Andrew. He strikes me as some washed-up ex-rock band guitarist who hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s pushing forty so he lives alone in an apartment building that he manages with his two senile pugs while binge-watching Seinfeld. “Call me anytime, day or night,” he reassures us, even though it’s become clear that it’d be easier to get a hold of Obama than to reach Andrew when we need him most. The three of us awkwardly sit in a circle on our stained light blue carpet and sign the lease. A whole year in one apartment. Cheapest rent in the area, though, that’s for sure. Probably because of the shitty carpet.

            We salvage some semblance of civilization by stacking up my vintage suitcases in the corner and then stacking my books on top of them next to a cool lamp. It’s the only thing remotely close to furniture we have in the whole place. Lauren and I sleep next to it on this paper thin matt that eats my vertebrae every night I sleep on it, but after 3 months in a tent and 2 months on a couch, I’m not complaining. And there’s no Wifi. It takes more self-discipline than I’m willing to admit to restrain myself from depleting my cell phone data plan streaming “Orange is the New Black” from my phone. Instead I just play a lot of guitar and read my latest author obsession, Kurt Vonnegut. Everyone should read Man Without A Country. Just read it.

            It’s an adventure. All of it. I just signed a one year lease, and I have no income at all right now. My internship ended and now I’m a free-lance video person. I’m meeting with the right people and I have some side jobs tutoring, so I’m not an entirely useless member of society, but it’s scary. Since starting this blog and posting on Facebook, I’ve gotten some messages from people that say what I’m doing is awesome, how life is so exciting, I’m living the dream or whatever, and I am. It’s awesome, and I love it. But don’t get me wrong – there’s a price to pay for this kind of life, and that price is security. I don’t know where my next paycheck will come from, but I know I’ll have a bill to pay in a month.

            I had a meeting the other day with a big name in the industry, a guy who introduced Bill Gates to Bono and inspired James Cameron to produce Avatar. We met over coffee to discuss where I could go from here in my career, and he gave me some really good advice that I’m taking with me: Jump, and then the net will come to catch you.

            So against all the logic I learned in college, I’m just… jumping.