PATRICK WALSH: JULY 2004

Continued from here.

To read the entire backlog of entries about my years in New York, use this link to get caught up.

In the last entry, I discussed how everything ended in disaster with my Jersey City roommate. This entry will focus on moving forward. A new roommate, a new apartment, a new job, a new city. What could go wrong? Right? Am I right? Guys?

My new roommate/friend and I would head out every Saturday and Sunday to apartment hunt. Looking for places in New York is miserable. You're not going to find some $800 a month three-bedroom jewel with a pool and a balcony that everyone else missed. You're going to pay out the ass for a tiny place with bugs/mice in the city, or you're going to pay slightly less out the ass for a slighly larger place with slightly less bugs/mice 20 minutes outside of the city. There really aren't any other options. Oh, and sometimes you have to pay the renters money just to announce that you're interested, even though they could decide to go with someone else and keep your cash. It's really magical.

We saw some places in Manhattan, all several hundred dollars out of our price range. I remember one meeting in particular where we a snooty woman gave us a tour of an apartment on the upper east side. The tour consisted of moving our heads slightly from side to side, it was that small. She told us the price and we literally laughed until we cried. I couldn't get out sentences. She got very annoyed and showed us the door. I believe she actually used the words "Good day." We were out of our league in the city.

Eventually, we settled on Brooklyn, specifically the up-and-coming hipster paradise known as Williamsburg. We didn't know much about the area, but time was running out on my new roommate's lease and my patience. We had to make a choice.

We were driven around the neighborhood one Sunday by a Hasidic Jewish gentleman with a horrible (horrible!) skin condition named Mr. Stool. And if ever a man lived up to his name, it was Stool. Just an awful human being. We made it very clear to him that we could afford $1500 a month, tops. He took us to place after place, would show us around, we'd say "Great, how much?" and he'd come back with "Excellent deal, my friend. Just $2200." My roommate, a hotly tempered fellow, eventually set Stool straight, and the dude finally led us to something in our price range, about $750 a month each.

It was an abandoned "railroad style" apartment, meaning that all of the rooms are in a straight line. Meaning that unless you're at the end of the hall (I was in the middle room), people have to walk through your bedroom to get to the kitchen or bathroom. Don't ever buy one of these apartments.

Mr. Stool told us a great many lies that fateful Sunday. He promised he'd fix several things that were broken. He did not fix them. The place looked like John Waters had vomited on the walls, and he promised to repaint. He did not. He told us the subway was "just around the corner." It was 15 blocks away. He also didn't have an explanation for the incest porn video that was lying in the center of the dust-covered wooden floor. Called Taboo, the film graphically depicted sexual encounters between a mother and her son. Imagine you're a realtor, showing off a piece of property to potential renters. Wouldn't priority #1 be removing any and all incest pornography from the premises? Maybe it's just me.

Making another in a long line of mistakes, we took the place.

You'll recall that moving day started with an enormous fight between my Jersey roommate/lover and me. It didn't really improve from there.

Here was the plan:

1) My new roommate and I would meet at the moving truck place at noon.

2) We would drive into Jersey, and pack my belongings into the truck.

3) We would drive to his place in Manhattan, and pack his belongings into the truck.

4) We would drive out to our new home in Brooklyn, where we would unpack all of our belongings, return the truck by 10PM to avoid extra charges and fees, and then enjoy a tasty beverage to toast our new lives together (in a totally hetero way).

Here is what actually happened:

1) I got in a massive fight with Jersey roommate, and had to spend better part of the morning dealing with that.

2) New roommate called and said he couldn't meet me at moving truck place, something came up. He'd meet me in Jersey.

3) I picked up the moving truck alone and headed back to Jersey. New roommate did not show, so I loaded all of my belonging into the truck alone. For some of the larger items, carrying them on my back was the only way I could get them down the stairs and into the truck. I've got to tell you, this really hurt my back. At one point I offered a neighborhood kid ten bucks to help me move a ceiling-high bookshelf into the truck. He laughed at me and rode off to continue selling/purchasing drugs for what I imagine was considerably more than my ten dollars.

4) Did I mention this was July? Drenched in sweat and smelling like a wet dog swimmin' in a port-o-potty, I drove into the city. I hadn't driven a vehicle in a year at this point, had never driven in Manhattan, and had certainly never driven an oversized moving truck anywhere. Combining the three was a nightmare. Oh, and it was about 5PM, the start of rush hour. Oh, and my new roommate lived in the 100s, so it was a lengthy drive. As I drove this massive beast up the Manhattan streets, the edges of my truck poking into the lanes of traffic on either side of me, people screaming "Watch where you're driving you pasty fucking asshole!" at me, I realized I was living the dream.

5) I met my new roommate at his place, and to make up for the fact that he hadn't helped me move...I helped him move. From the eighth floor of a walk-up building. By the time we had everything loaded, we were both drenched, shaky, and a little slap-happy. Though I could barely raise my arms to the steering wheel, I drove us out to Brooklyn. We had roughly an hour and a half to get everything unloaded and get the truck back to avoid a late charge. We walked everything up the incredibly narrow stairs, three flights to our apartment. As we struggled and strained, neighbors opened their doors and stared at us, never once offering to help, even as we gashed our arms and legs open repeatedly. It was a dizzying mix of exhaustion, blood, sweat, and sadistic laughter. A lot of screaming things like "OK, if you bend the couch right and I go left, that should work! Hm. Wow, that really didn't work!" and "My fucking fingers! My fucking fingers are pinned! Lift your side up! Oh God! No! Down! I meant down! Jesus, have mercy on me! Please Jesus! Shower me with your mercy!"

6) We did not get the truck back in time, and no tasty beverages were consumed.  

After a good night's sleep, everything looked a lot better. The two of us got along splendidly from the start. Sure, he loved the marijuana, so sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and $50 worth of my groceries would be gone…but he was a great guy and we had similar tastes. Plus, he had a penis. Thus, there was much less chance of us sleeping together than in my previous living situation, as I prefer vaginas to penises by a considerable margin. Yessir, it sure seemed like everything was gonna go my way in Williamsburg!

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We moved in on a Monday, and I came home Thursday night to find all of the tenants of my building in the street, in robes and underwear. Babies crying. Mothers consoling. Trucks everywhere. Thick black smoke. Our building had caught fire in a big bad way.

My roommate was sitting alone on a sewer, staring at the ground and fiddling with a rock. I took a seat next to him.

"You think this is a bad omen?" I asked him.

"Patrick my friend," he replied, putting an arm around me. "I certainly don't think it's a good omen."

tags: new york  nbc  nbc page  roommate  brooklyn  williamsburg  apartment  story of my life  

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