My first apartment

Browsing craigslist this afternoon I came across the apartment building in which I rented my very first apartment. I lived on the top floor on the left side of the building there--that was one of my living room windows. The apartment had two bedrooms, a galley kitchen, a bathroom with a clawfoot tub. My bedroom was in the back. Ahhh! The memories! I was 19 and 20 years old when I lived there. After a year in the dorms I rented the place in Stevens Square with Torina...this was in 1998. We would sit in the living room, me reading, she knitting, and listen to the whistles of crack dealers and the occasional gunshot. When she went insane and moved out (her blondness did not go down well on the aggressive, masculine streets of Stevens Square, I have to admit, but she was AWOL from the Army and in retaliation I tried to poison her plants) I had more roommates...the excellent Jessica who was in the ROTC (there was a theme for a while) and would do shots with me at four in the afternoon, then my good friend Ben who disappeared one weekend and ruined our friendship, and then some creepy guy who worked at Dairy Queen (then I moved out and left for London).

Good times. I ran my webcam while there which raised money for London, and worked at the coffeeshop up the street. My hours were six am until three pm and then I'd be hopped up on coffee and bike for hours. I wrote good stuff there which performed at a midnight cabaret, smoked cigarettes, got stoned and stumbled over to the lowbrow grocery store (now gone) for cold cuts and candy. Had cute boys over...the painter, Montreal Jason...Bruce the Bus Driver...made love to a woman for the first time in the spare bedroom. Kris would visit me there and so would the other Chris. I once walked out the door in the middle of the afternoon and found a man, dead of a gunshot wound, lying in the street. The park that gives the neighborhood its name would show movies and host bands on hot summer evenings. I'd often see this guy walking his ferret around at three in the morning when I'd go down for my smoke breaks outside the backdoor. When I moved out, Bruce and I hugged hard in the back alley and someone called us 'Fags.' Once, during a torrential downpour, Chris and I sat on windowsills, drank beer, and listened to the rain forever.

My landlord lived downstairs and homebrewed and charged $445 for the entire fucking apartment. Now studios are going for $500. I miss the old place.

bitch about your horrible landlords here; skyway bike race!; kunkel reads pessoa; homophobia at uw madison; one of my favorite movies as a kid was escape to witch mountain; cute overload; what does the united states, iran, zimbabwe, china, and cameroon have in common?