Everything Happened | vol. 148
The “lasts” have started. We move next week, I had my last haircut with Michelle on Wednesday. The last visit from our beloved house cleaner, Joy. I notified Desi’s daycare administrator of his last day. Friends have started checking their calendars and panicking and trying to see if I can grab lunch. I need to finish my library book and return it. I’m on the third book of Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels, three years after everyone else read them. I guess I’ll be checking out the fourth one in my new town, from my new library.
I never expected to live here this long and I never expected to like living here. I love it. I am also exasperated by it. Anything, any place, any person that you get too close to, you have to hate a little bit. Nick and I caught a movie last night (Sorry To Bother You, run don’t walk!!!) and drove through a part of town we rarely have reason to visit. An entire block of it was leveled, bulldozed, gone. When did this happen?? We marveled at the waste and made bitchy speculations about the luxury condos that were sure to sprout up there any day now. I will not miss bitchy-townie-us. It’s not our best look. When we move away, we won’t hate it anymore because it will quickly become a different place. And, besides, it won’t be ours to hate.
I always used to say that I don’t want to grow old and die in Columbus just because it’s where my high school boyfriend picked to go to college (!). It recently occurred to me that I’m following another man to another college.
When we were looking at houses a year ago, the house where Nick and I met went on the market. I couldn’t believe it. It had been at a house party at a punk house, and it happened to be my birthday, but the party wasn’t for me. A punk house, for the uninitiated, is a group of people sharing a home under some pseudo-anarchic communal living agreement. What all punk houses have in common is they smell like a gas station burrito that’s been left out in the sun, and there is always a pitbull in the middle of the room licking its boner.
I remember that night that I was wearing a tube dress that I had sewn from an oversized men’s t-shirt with a Coca-Cola logo on it, and a big chunky plastic Wilma Flintstone necklace. I was the youngest person ever invented. Nick was wearing a hat? and I don’t remember much else, but he was the least aloof person there. He is still the least aloof person in any room.
There’s no good “how we met” story here. My unpopular opinion is that “how we met” stories are never good. If yours is, and I’m so sorry but it probably isn’t, it’s the exception that proves the rule. I introduced myself. He got my name wrong the first few times he said it, like everyone does. I corrected him, he apologized. Then we didn’t see each other again for six months.
That house, the former punk house, was hardly recognizable in the listing photos. The walls had all been painted flipped-house-gray. The wobbly banister that couldn’t bear weight looked sturdy. The bathroom, where a girl named Danielle once gave me a haircut when we were both drunk, now had one of those raised glass bowl sinks like they have in corny restaurants. The attic where touring bands crashed had been finished and converted into a nursery with an airplane theme. A child’s name was spelled out in a bunting hanging over the changing table. I emailed the listing to Nick. “Should we?????? Do you think it still smells?”
For a lot of reasons, we shouldn’t and didn’t. It wasn’t the right neighborhood, it was was 1,000 more square feet than we needed, and we aren’t nearly eccentric or rich enough to buy up every monument to our life together. This was no Casa Azul! And we’re no Frida and Diego.
We bought a little blue ranch instead, a lowercase casa azul, on a sleepy street. I’m not sure I “recommend” this financial gamble, but if you want to call the academic job market’s bluff, buying real estate in your current location might be the ticket. It got the tenure-track job offers rolling for us. Next week there will be a ‘for sale’ sign in the yard, after we’ve already headed east to create new ghost stories at new addresses. I’m probably not going to die here after all, although there are still a few days for a rogue tractor trailer or runaway train to finish the job. Goodbye, Columbus. Spectral-me-in-my-20s will always be lurking around every corner of this city. If you run into her, please have her drink some water.
yr mate,
Evie
###
P.S. You might have noticed the newsletter looks different! I made the switch to Substack. I migrated all my TinyLetter subscribers, so there’s nothing you need to do to keep receiving Everything Happened.
If you’re a new subscriber and want to read through the archives, they are all still hanging out here until I figure out something more organized and cohesive to do with them.
Forward this to everyone in your coven!