The decision was a marriage
between unpreparedness and impulse. Jimi played the reasonable older brother
and voiced his concerns but gave in without much fight. I think he gave in
knowing it was likely to blow up in our faces and then he would be able to
smile and we would know he was thinking, “I told you so.” The late Stephen Covey would be disappointed with us, Jimi. This is a prime example of two
people with win/lose attitudes combining to create a lose/lose result.
After filling out our paperwork and handing it back
in, Natalie told us we would be able to move-in in August of that summer. None
of us planned to move in the first week because Homeschool’s last semester
didn’t start until the end of that month, Jimi’s job transfer hadn’t officially
been approved, and my new job wasn’t slated to start until late August.
Even though I didn’t need to move in right away, I felt a more urgent need to get out of
my parents’ house than my roommates. That summer I had told my parents I wasn’t
going back to SUNY Albany in the Fall and I hadn’t anticipated the existential
crisis that followed, culminating with one of the most regretful nights of my
life. (I’ll maybe write that story up another time.) To cope, I spent a lot of
time reading biographies and autobiographies like Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and RZA’s The Tao of Wu, but I should probably get
back to the story…
I was pretty amped to get into the new place and be
away from home. Natalie was lolly-gagging, giving us the run around, and just
being the annoying, terrible person we would learn to hate. We’d call and say,
“Hey Natalie, we’re just checking up to see when we’ll be able to move in.
How’s it coming?”
And she’d respond with a statement leading us straight
into a brick wall: “Oh, I am cleaning. Khristoff has finally moved out
upstairs, but leaves me all his stuff. He is such a pig.”
Yes but when the fuck are we going to be able to
move into the apartment we already started paying rent for? “Okay, Natalie,
we’ll check back soon.”
Our patience soon waned and we started moving in
without telling Natalie. She was surprised to see us and our stuff moved in,
but we were more surprised to see how the apartment looked exactly the same as
it did when we toured, mildew-covered walls and all.
I’d called my mom to help with the move and she was
a big help with cleaning too. In the midst of our cleaning, we found out one of
the reasons the apartment was so dark inside—aside from all the side windows being
overcast by the neighboring building.
My brother and I were scrubbing the walls when we
noticed a brownish liquid streaming towards the floor like wet paint. In each
room, this liquid would inevitably streak to the floor if we weren’t quick with
the sponge. Connecting the brown sludge to the previous tenant we learned Curry
Monster loves his hookah almost as much as he loves his curry. We also learned
tobacco stains can darken wall paint considerably and, when concentrated in a
bucket after a good wall scrubbing, closely resembles dip spit. Keep that in
mind, interior designers, when trying to get a nice dungeon-like brown film on
your walls.
Homeschool’s mom also came down to help us move and
clean. Being the friendly lady she is, she had active conversations with
Natalie while we avoided her. During this interaction she learned how Natalie’s
face became so mangled:
“Oh thank the lord I am alive every day. It is a
miracle, you know. My whole house burned down and my husband died, but I
survive and am only left with my scars. Terrible accident. So thankful to god.”
“Oh my gosh, Natalie, that is incredible. You are so
strong,” Homeschool’s mom said.
“No, the lord makes me strong, but thank-you. And
now my daughter is away to college, she does so well. I am so lucky, and you
too! Your son, so handsome. What does he study?”
“He studies biology. I’m not sure what he plans to
do though. I don’t know if he knows either.”
“Amazing! He is going to be a doctor. Doctor
Handsome.”
And that is when Homeschool became “Dr. Handsome” to
Jimi and me.
Though there were some roadblocks to moving in,
things finally seemed to settle. I’d heard from an old Albany friend he was in
Binghamton now, and we made plans to hang out. I’d also seen an old friend from
high school and she said she’d found a job in Binghamton. Things weren’t
turning out as bad as Jimi anticipated…
