Vacation to Before.
My friend and I scheduled to meet up last night for drinks in my old neighborhood. Having had a series of rain checks every time we try to get together, I hopped on the #2 bus and headed over. Hoping, of course, that the smell of homeless-back-of-the-bus-urination didn’t seep into my clothes on the way.
For this reason alone, I miss my car.
“You smell like the inside of my mom’s purse.”
Check. Homeless urination smell thwarted. Though I had to clarify that the inside of his mom’s purse smelled good, and not the typical Retired-in-Miaimi-Smells-Like-Daily-Vitamin Supplements-and-Used-Tissues kind of mom’s purse.
No, I just smelled like home.
Not the strangest compliment I’ve ever heard, but definitely one worth remembering.
I had plans to head to my favorite bar after, but one thing led to another and before I knew it, I missed the last bus, he was drunk and we were watching News Radio at his place and he burned his hand on the yummy margarita pizza he baked.
Here’s the thing.
I used to care about decorating. All the time. I was always reconstructing some corner of my apartment, rescuing furniture from alleys, reconverting, repainting, repairing. I gave that up when I moved into my new place, since aside from my bedroom, it’s all fully furnished… in a decorating style that is so awful the only thing I can think to do is burn it all and start over.
Not my stuff, can’t burn it, it belongs to one of my roommates.
But my friend’s studio… holy shit. I walked in and my jaw dropped. I mean…. Holy shit. It looked like he hired my mom to design the place (the highest of compliments I can give, actually). I wanted to snap photos and send them to her for inspiration. I was in some kind of weird alternate universe. A straight man? Can do this? With that? And… and… This was what MY studio would look like. MINE. Not his. MINE. If I had a higher budget, anyway.
Oh, thank god we weren’t hanging out in my neighborhood.
If we’d gone back to my place, I would have died of embarrassment. With my yellowed nicotine walls, and all my furniture left over from the eight rooms I used to have- now all thrown into one with twelve different color schemes.
His bathroom even smelled like a hotel. A fancy paid-too-much-money-for-one-night hotel. MY old bathroom used to be like that.
He and I shop at the same beat up architectural salvage place. I did not tell him about my secret flea market- that’s mine, and mine alone.
Not even my mother knows about it.
