a chunk of my heart is in apt. 4A (Dwell & Tell Part 2)

I was standing on a curb somewhere in Queens.  I'd just seen another apartment that wasn't going to work out for another good reason and I still really needed to get out of my current situation.  It felt like life and death.  I had been given the number for Bill, a professor at Penn State where I'd recently devoted three years (much of which I wanted back.)
"Bill has an apartment to sublet on the Upper West Side, I think.  86th Street, maybe?," says Jen, who had been a student under Bill while we were both in grad school.
For a fortune, I said.
"I don't know, I think it's like eight hundred."
Impossible.
(I love Jen, but she is even newer to New York than I am, and she obviously doesn't know the Upper West side from a small town in Indiana.  $800 a month rent is a thing of ancient history in New York's Upper West Side.)
"Yeah, eight hundred.  Or something like that."
How come you're not taking it?
"I can't make that rent by myself," she said, in a moment of irony that we would address repeatedly in the months, and even years that followed.  She was living, at the time, on the couch of our friend Amy and splitting that already-low rent.  It could not be argued that there was a cheaper option for Jen, but it wouldn't be long before her salary was sweeping mine into the gutters of the Upper West Side.
Also, 86th Street just happened to be mere blocks from my early-morning job and no more than a ten-minute walk.  It was absolutely unfathomable to me that an affordable apartment was available in the proposed location, but there was Bill's number scribbled on a scrap of paper, back in the days where we did that ---wrote numbers down.
Ring, ring, "hello?"  (He sounds a bit like Tim Gunn from Project Runway.  Or maybe I just make that comparison because Bill teaches costume and set design.  Let's just say that if in the movie-version of this story, I'd get Tim Gunn to play the role of Bill.)
A greeting, and then, I explain my situation.
"Of course I remember you!  But, Ginna, I have to tell you, the place is a wreck and I cannot lift a finger to clean it.  You'll have to do all that yourself," he said.
"Yes, West 86th Street, between Columbus and Central Park West," he said.
"The rent is $804," he said.
I'll take it.
"I want you to see it first," he said.

I'll take it.

"I want you to see it first," he said. 

This went on for a bit in pure Looney Tune Fashion until I agreed to take the key from a friend of his who lived in that neighborhood and check it out.  (This would be the moment he should say, "All right, dear, make it work.")  This key and checking-it-out business was a pure waste of time for me.  I knew I was going to take it.  If there was no kitchen sink I would've taken it (I can wash coffee mugs in the bathroom.)  Roaches, I can deal with, though mice or rats would give me pause.  Save possums swinging from the ceiling and pooping on the place, I was going to snatch that bitch up.  I knew I was.  For I had very little else to hang onto.  I was in my early thirties with hardly any money and not the whisper of love in my life.   I'd had five apartment sublets in the prior year and personal disappointments far exceeding that.  New York was hardly spreading its arms open to me.

Bill's actress friend, Jean, unlocked and opened the door to apartment 4A at 34 W. 86th Street.  She, too, lived in an apartment in that neighborhood, one that she too had held onto for years at a rent-controlled price.  I daydreamed about what it would be like to live in one place for many years as an actor in New York, to go to regional theatre jobs and come back to a Manhattan residence, a place where I've painted the walls and where plants thrive.  The door to 4A creaked open; Jean stood back, wisely, to avoid the possibility that something could topple and fall on our heads.  She had been there before...

No possums, okay, but the place was, in no less terms, a wreck.  I had been rightfully warned; it was bad.  Mostly, its offense was its sheer fullness.  The apartment, which was not big, was packed -packed- with stuff.  This "stuff" was primarily Bill's design materials, but the materials knew no limits.  They were piled on shelves and stuffed in drawers and closets.  A big, huge drafting table lived against one wall.  It took up a lot of space and was the single item that Bill had asked me to save, should I accept the mission.  "Sure, that's fine."  (For the rent that was being offered, I'd have kept a small rhinoceros in the living room for two years.)

It was a couple of days before I could actually move, in which I essentially squatted at The Casablanca hotel as a guest of a guest, my Aunt Mary Jane, who was staying there during her visit to New York (see last blog "The Pimp and the Ho.")  Finally, I moved in, or rather, I found a surface on which to sleep inside those four walls while, for months, I scoured apartment 4A.  Cleaning 4A was . . .

my full-time job

my joy and my pain

my life

I started simply by unloading.  Trip after trip, I'd carry bags and bags and boxes and boxes of Bill's old stuff.  You can only dispose of large items on one given day a week in New York City, so on the night before that given day, I would enlist the help of a friend, usually my friend Rob who is 6 foot-something and just plain nice.  We'd place bets on which items would be taken from the curbside first by passers-by.  (This is very common in New York, there is absolutely no shame in tucking a tv or end-table under one's arm and continuing on his way.  Sometimes, cell phones would be pulled out, a number punched in, and then the passer-by would perch patiently on a cafe table, claiming it with his butt until a station wagon would pull up and in would go the table and the passer-by.)  We'd watch from the fourth floor window and cheer when the item we'd bet on was carted away:  "round of drinks for me!"  The unloading of Bill's apartment went on for the whole month of September.  I'd generally go to my job at the gym from 6 A.M. to noon, have lunch/take nap, and then start in on the apartment.  

I had no other life.  

No other desires.

No other creative outlet or relationship to smother.

So, I put everything I had into apartment 4A.

Day after day I shoveled papers and objects into bags and boxes.  Of Bill's items, I salvaged three things 1.) A collection of records in their cases that must have had some collectors' value (which Bill eventually threw away himself when I vacated two years later) 2.) a giant wine glass to compliment my growing collection and 3.) a mug from The Natural History Museum which is situated just a few blocks away from the apartment itself.  

4A did have a kitchen sink, but if you are not from New York City, you might mistake it for a shoebox or miss it altogether.  One time, I saw a mouse, but just once.  It scurried up on top of my cafe table and just looked at me like, "Yeah, you see me.  I am what you think I am.  Scream if you want, but we both know it won't do any good."  They put out some traps after that and I became much more diligent about sweeping.  The biggest fault of apartment 4A and the job that was most likely to kill my affection for it, was the bathroom walls.  Bill had made it clear that while he himself hadn't lived there in years, his partner's nephew had lived there from time to time.  I think Bill was making the point that while the clutter was his, the recently accumulated filth was not.  Now, I am not specifically accusing the nephew, but someone stumbled into that bathroom night after night and did not take perfect aim at the toilet.  After a few minutes of scrubbing the lower tiles on the walls that surround the pot, I realized with a gag what it was that layer after layer was making its way from the walls onto my scouring brush.  Ga-ross.

But I kept at apartment 4A like it was my sick child whom I would not abandon.

I painted the walls of the single, long room cocoa brown.  Amy and Jen helped.  It was about at this stage -when one could actually see the potential of the space- that Jen started to question her refusal of this incredible location.  Still, she climbed up the ladder and helped me paint.

A couch cover.

Some pictures on the cocoa colored walls.

Some thoughtfully placed bookshelves as room dividers.

And then,

it was done.

The hardwood floors shone from my hard work.  The bathroom absolutely glistened.  And before long, I was hosting small gatherings and dinners for Amy and Jen.  It was during the two years I lived at 34 W. 86th Street that I mustered the courage to leave my soul-killing job at the gym and forge my way as an independent personal trainer.  Once out of the claws of that machine, and with more control of my time, I wrote a full-length play.  I had two rooftop birthday parties there and hosted many many out-of town visitors.  I did a lot of dating when I lived on 86th street and while there, met my husband.

But, as so many good things do, my time in 4A of 34 W. 86th Street came to an end.  It was a legal sublet agreement which cannot exceed two years.  Try as I did to take over the lease in my own name, the landlord/owner wanted me out so she could get someone new in there and double the rent.  I was devastated to be leaving my apartment.  It could be argued that if I hadn't poured so much time and effort into it, then I wouldn't have felt so robbed by the agreement.  But, that's kinda my tragic flaw:  Love things that can't love back.  Love them so much that I lose little chunks of myself into them.  Then feel betrayed that those things disappear and I can't get those chunks back.  Then heal.  Then do it again.

The day I found my next apartment (in Queens) I called my friend Rob who had been helping me with the search and advising me on my decision.  I was freshly broken-up with again (See previous blog "The Pimp and the Ho") and totally freaked out about the rent that would be required of me if I continued to live alone, which I was determined to do.  Poised with the down payment and ready to commit, I called Rob for reassurance.  I sputtered out some details and concerns to him when he picked up the phone, failing to ask how he was doing or if he was free to chat/listen/advise.  When I eventually paused in my speech, Rob said, "I think if you like it you should take it."  Good!  I'm going to go make the down payment!  And I started in on more chatter.  "I'm going to have to call you back," Rob said in a tone I'd not yet heard out of him before. "I'm at the doctor."  Oh, gosh, is everything okay?  "Um," he said, "I don't know.  I'll call you back."  We hung up, and I didn't know what else to do but to travel further into Queens to the place where I would pay the security deposit.  The metro is above ground in that part of Queens and I can still picture the view from the tracks as I rolled deeper into Queens, further from my friend who couldn't tell for sure if "everything was okay."  I got to my destination where I left a big check with four dudes at four desks in one small office.  Rob called back.  He'd been diagnosed with cancer.  

We were 32 years old.  

I would find out the next day that I didn't get that apartment in Queens.  Huh.  

I rolled back over the tracks of New York City's subway system heading to Downtown Manhattan to find my friend.