While moving home after college differs depending on your particular living situation (i.e. that of your parents) and how your college experience went (i.e. whether you graduated with new friends, some knowledge, and at least a vague idea of what you want to do, versus fat, in debt, and friendless), a few things remain the same. For me, I have landed in a pretty sweet setup. My parents are divorced and my dad still lives in the town I grew up in about a stone's throw from NYC where I'm looking for employment. This is a plus. He also now lives with my step-mom about ten minutes away so technically I'm not living "with" my dad. This is also a plus. I do have to share it with my younger brother, who is a drummer (this is not a plus—which anyone who has ever lived with a drummer knows, no matter how much I love him), however, he is on tour for most of the summer so I'm really living by myself in a sweet house right outside of NYC.
I like to call it "home sweet heaven," nevermind that I don't have any friends left in this town, a car (or a license, but I'm working on that), and it's eight o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm doing…this. I love everything about being home so much that I find myself making sex eyes at the washer and dryer and caressing the refrigerator because it has been so long since I've had a fridge packed with healthy food and access to a free washer and dryer (that work) in the same dwelling as my clothes. In order to give you an even better idea of why I'm so in love with my new digs, let me tell you about my old ones.
To anyone who plays at Open Mic night at Manhattan Pizza on Wednesday nights: you are all terrible. You raped my ears mid-week, every week.I'll save tearing apart my dorm room, the house I lived in with four other girls for two years, and my sublet with three UVM jocks, one of which was so unpleasant to live with that I thought about punching him in the face the day I moved out (I settled for un-friending him on Facebook…) and instead focus on the place I moved out of before I moved back to lovely Cordial St. (my street is actually named "Cordial," if that isn't a sign I don't know what is).
The issues I had with my last apartment weren't roommate related, and while we definitely let the place go at times, there were no cockroach infestations or major issues with the interior (besides the time a leak caused the bathroom ceiling to collapse—luckily no one was injured). It was basically all about the location. My apartment was at the intersection of the two main streets in downtown Burlington. It was above a bar, next to a bar, and diagonally above the bar where I worked. While these three things sounded awesome to me when I first moved in, that belief shifted quickly once summer ended. I was in my last year of college, and I decided I didn't want to (and straight up couldn't) get wasted every night of the week.
Once I decided to limit my excursions out on the town to Friday and Saturday nights, the retardedness of what went on downtown during the weeknights began to sink in. Not to mention, if I ever chose not to go out on the weekend, getting to bed before three in the morning wasn't an option. Even though the bars close at two, I couldn't sleep until at least three, because the shrieking of drunken sluts and the yelling of assholes arguing over who was going to take which slut home could make it through my windows—past my storm windows in the cold weather, and through my air conditioner in the warm weather.
On top of that, an open note to anyone who plays at Open Mic night at Manhattan Pizza (the stage was literally underneath my bedroom) on Wednesday nights: you are all terrible. I was going to say "no offense" first, but I mean it to be offensive, and I hope you are as offended as I was when you raped my ears mid-week, every week. Dave Mathews Band covers and John Mayer riffs went out of style five years ago (that's being generous).
Hearing a 300-pound black man have sex when he got off work at four in the morning wasn't something I generally wanted to do.Not to mention that these were all noises coming from outside the building; there were plenty of noises coming from inside the building that were just as, if not more, unpleasant. The walls of my apartment building were paper-thin and the noises coming from all angles caused my imagination to run wild. Living directly across the hall from me was a straight-up schizophrenic woman. I'm not saying that to be funny, and I'm not using it as a metaphor; she was a diagnosed schizo and it showed. She would scream these crazy loud noises all hours of the day and night; they were so disturbing that I had 100% convinced myself that someone was skinning her cat in front of her. The first time I was so caught off guard and afraid that I was going to go to jail for breaking some Good Samaritan law or something that I called the police. As I was waiting for them to arrive, one of my other neighbors came outside and asked what was up. When I told them what was going on, they called the police back, simply said, "She just called about Michelle," and hung up. Apparently I was the only one not in on the fact that my neighbor was a fucking psycho, not to mention the fact that I'm the only one who thought maybe someone should do something about this.
Living next door to me were drug dealers. I feel comfortable saying this because two of them moved out right before I did and the other one went to jail, so I'm not too worried about ratting anyone out. Their kitchen wall faced my bedroom wall and I swear to god it sounded like they were cooking up heroin in some sort of lab at all hours of the night. Pots and pans banging, bubbling, coughing, yelling, slapping, guns being cocked… I heard it all, and I heard it all very clearly through walls that felt like they were just there for decoration.
Lastly, one of the bouncers at the bar where I worked lived right above me. More specifically, his bed was located right above mine. I must preface this by saying that I have more love in my heart for this guy then just about anyone. He is the sweetest man ever, and helped me out numerous times over the year that we lived together (he once found me naked, passed out on the floor in my kitchen, with my front door open, and carried me safely into my bedroom). That said, he was a 300-pound black man and hearing him have sex when he got off work at four in the morning wasn't something I generally wanted to do, or should I say, be a part of. I had to hold myself back from yelling at him to move it to the left when the girl got quiet for a minute, in between passages of whatever book I was reading that night.
So, back to my new residence, also known as paradise, maybe now you can see why I'm so appreciative to be in my new location, aside from not having to pay rent or bills. I know this love affair won't last forever; in fact I'm sure of it, because my Dad can sense my bliss and has already started getting on my case about sending out my resume on a seven times a day basis. However, for now I'm "living it up" and find myself sometimes staying up at night, just to enjoy the silence.