apartmentalism (one)

Remember 1738 West Alabama?

It was a strange, mutant apartment complex with a wild, jungly courtyard tucked back from the busy road, and I lived in an apartment over the garage that looked like it was built inside out. You stepped down into the apartment, and there was a wrought iron railing you could grasp as you came into the front room, which had, to your left, a white-painted brick wall with two electric candle lights embedded in it. I lived in this building for years -- in fact, I spent most of my twenties there. I wrote my dissertation there. It was next door to a funeral home and across the street from a head shop (the beloved Smoke'n'Toke -- the residents joked that there was a secret tunnel that led from our place under West Alabama into its bong storage room). My rent was $410/month when I moved in (1996), and $525 when I moved out (2004). My apartment had a six-sided kitchen with a mosaic tile floor. It jutted out at an odd angle into the trees. The bathroom was pink tile with a sliding glass door. There were built-in bookshelves made of beautiful blonde wood, wooded walls in the front room, and tons of closets and drawers and cabinets; electric plugs on the ceilings, light switches that turned on nothing, and hand crank windows; cubby-holes, mirrors at every turn, and glass shelving tucked into its corners.

None of the apartments resembled any of the others, and there was actually a sixth apartment that was underneath my own that had what my landlord (who, at 78, was the epitome of Incredibly Bizarre Old Lady who wore wigs, tight jeans, and red high heels and smoked like fiend) called the "ha ha room." The "ha ha room" was a small room that had, off to the side, a frosted glass shower door and, when you opened it, there was [suprise!!] a toilet inside, instead of the expected shower. Not many people ever got to see this secret apartment, although a few people tried to live in there over the years.

Every once in a while, the landlord would find some vagabond and let them stay in that place if they promised to "keep up" the premises. I don't know how she met these people, but one was a man named Joe who moved in with his wife, Rusty. They cooked nutria and squirrel in the kitchen and, to me, it stank to high heavens. They also did a lot of drinking and fighting, and she finally called the cops on him one day and they took him away and she moved out. (One night, after watching Channel 2 local news coverage about registered sex offenders, I decided to go on-line and check out my neighborhood to see who lived in the area. The first name that came up was Joe's, and the site listed our apartment building as his address, accompanied by his information that he had recently been arrested for aggravated sexual assault.)

A few years after Joe and Rusty moved out, a guy whose name I can't remember moved in. He was a laughing sort of guy who spent several days fixing my broken toilet, and every time something went wrong he would say, "Whooops! Looks like it's time for the 611!" It took me a while to figure out that the 611 is a gay bar near Pacific Street, notorious for its seediness and rough-and-tumble clientelle, and that he was a regular customer there. This guy moved out after not too long, and I wouldn't even be able to recognize him if I bumped into him at the grocery store.

I met a lot of wonderful and unusal people who moved in and out of this place during the time I was there, almost too many to count. Many moved out because my landlord was too insane to deal with, and since the place was so old there were problems with leaks and flooding when it rained. I felt blessed that I was in apartment 6, since it was pretty sturdy and it only started leaking towards the end of my time there. There were times that the whole upstairs was vacant, and I would open my door and let the incense drift out onto that awesome porch (which had, when I first moved in, a roof with little tiny white Christmas lights woven into its beams, but was, after a year of my stay there, actually torn off and blown away by a hurricane), and I would sit in the doorway and look up at the moon and stars, cigarette in hand, lost in thought. I would think about everything, intensely wonder about my future, and if anything would ever change or if this was basically it and life had already reached its zenith.

The complex is gone, now. If you drive past, there is just a dirt lot surrounded by a fence. I was shocked into tears when I drove past and saw it being bulldozed one day, and I remember saying that I felt like my memories were being destroyed, since so many of them were in those walls, up and down that winding iron staircase. The owners of the funeral home purchased the building and the landlord moved into a home for senior citizens ("I'm only going," she said to me before she moved, "if they let me do the breakdancing"). Even though some of the residents lived there for a little while longer (including my friend Chickpea, who moved into my apartment but had to move out once they started storing coffins in the garage), they eventually evicted everyone and tore it down.

Before it was demolished, I went in to visit one last time. The building looked really beat up, sick. The windows were broken and there was cast off furniture lying around the grounds and up on the porch. I felt a pang of grief when I saw that the daisy curtain I hung in the front door window (when I first moved in) was still there, but the window itself was smashed in and the door starting to splinter. There were newspapers all over the floor (someone's bed?) and beer cans tossed in a corner. The door to the bedroom was pulled shut, and I really didn't want to open it and disturb anyone who might have been squatting in there, so I stayed quiet and just kind of poked around the front room, peeked into the other apartments, and then left. There wasn't much to see.

A few months ago, I learned that one of my favorite and colorful neighbors, Colonel, had passed away during Christmas 2005. Colonel (yes, pronouned "kernel") was a handsome down-on-his-luck chef-turned-waiter who lived in the biggest of the apartments with his boyfriend, Miguel. I remember when I broke the news to him that I was moving out he said, "I've got to get out of here, too. I don't want to be the last rat to jump this sinking ship." And, around 2003, it did seem like the ship was sinking. The landlord couldn't keep residents. The rooms remained vacant for months and months. Everything was in disrepair.

After I moved out, I ran into Colonel every great once in a while, but he seemed more and more distant, more and more sad, although he wouldn't say what was wrong. He was losing weight. He had broken up with Miguel. Finally, he just disappeared. Much to my surprise, I found out later that he was really sick (Colonel was so public about so much of his most personal habits, but so private about this particular matter -- and who could blame him?), his HIV had advanced to full-blown AIDS and, apparantly, he moved back to New York state where he lived with his parents until he finally passed away, as they say. I don't know what happened to Miguel, although I worry about him.

It was ironic that the end of the building was also the end of Colonel as well as the end of the landlord's independent life. But there were many years there where it really felt like such a lovely little community. We left our doors open and wandered in and out of each others' places as if they were our own. We cooked for each other. We brought all of our friends over and had them meet each other at parties. We welcomed newcomers and threw goodbye parties for those who moved out (if they were cool. We also made it difficult for anyone who was mean, snobby, or a jerk so that they would move out quickly.) We shared our stories, food, worries, politics, plants, pets, problems, questions, and noise.

After Hank and I moved in together, I was confused by our non-relation with our upstairs neighbors, who came and went without ever coming inside and asking me if I could help them do X or if I wanted to go to the grocery store together so we could cook up a big batch of Y. At 1738, I was so used to neighbors who were friends (no matter how much this did drive me crazy), I felt like something was missing in this place on Hawthorne. Of course, after two years, I am used to it, and I think some of the communal eating I have done with Miah, Raj, Kayte, and Carl, David Embry, etc. has helped.