Nothing fits in a Brooklyn apartment from the moment you move. Everything is out in the open. You have no storage. You begin to actually hate your sweaters- how can they take up so much space? You store weird things in the kitchen cabinets. Along with the dishes and dry goods I have in my kitchen storage, you’ll also find shoeboxes of old photographs, along with “the linen closet”, and what minimal holiday decorations we have… and when I say minimal, I mean all the decorations are stuffed into one stocking. You store things in the oven- all of the bakeware, wooden cutting boards (I know, I know…) and that planter you’re definitely going to profligate soon.
You consider getting rid of the fridge. You look at that deep, rectangular nook longingly, thinking of all the things you could slide in there, like that armchair you planned to use for reading but as it’s right beside the bed, it’s just used for the nightly tossing-of-the-clothing. You could read in that nook. You would read in that nook. You’d be a better person if the fridge was gone. You know this.
And because almost everyone in New York suffers from this same problem, the sidewalk becomes a clandestine item swap on a nearly daily basis. Nothing makes my bike brakes screech more loudly than the sighting of a cardboard box with a sign that says “Free” above it. I’ll shuffle through old books, clothing, art supplies, jewelry… even knowing I’m at capacity in my apartment. I especially love it when these free finds are themed. I once set out a sequined mini skirt, some conspicuous jewelry, a few condoms, and an airplane bottle of shitty vodka- Party-themed.
I once came across a pile of DVDs and scoured through before selecting Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces. I took it home and my boyfriend and I watched it on my laptop. I returned it to the same trashcan lid a few days later with a note attached- We loved it! Thank you! This trashcan felt like all we had left from the Blockbuster days… and trust that if it was a VHS, I would have been kind. I would have rewound.
I even once considered an open container of yogurt left on the steps of a front porch with a note that read “This yogurt is still good, I just didn’t like it very much” on it. In the end, I just walked back to my office and to the wilted salad I knew I had waiting for me as my lunch, but I felt a little lighter feeling the palpable trust that this neighborhood had between its residents. I’m sure they were fine people with no bad intentions, just the desire to share and no one present to share with. If it was something less creamy, I would have partaken. I would have eaten their crackers with zero hesitation, even if I wasn’t that hungry.
My friend has an Eames chair just sitting in the middle of the living room. She found it in the Lower East Side from a rather wealthy couple who simply didn’t have space for the $6000 leather-clad symbol of the mid-century modern design movement. It sits in the middle of her at-capacity living room, perhaps receiving the homage it deserves. No one will sit in the middle of a room. No one will intentionally put themselves in the stew pot. Somehow, she saved it from what could have been a life of asses plopped carelessly down upon it. It’s a piece of art. That chair is to be gazed upon, and respected, indefinitely…
Unless, of course, they get rid of the fridge.
This friend of mine was particularly scrappy and that’s why I liked her. We were trash pandas, she and I. We were always up to no good. We worked together in a rather chic restaurant in North Brooklyn, one that within which we shared so many simple, yet profound, happenings every single shift- the slightest eye roll when some customer blatantly treated us as “the help”, a slight eyebrow raise eavesdropping on a first-date conversation, both holding back and not holding back tears, but mostly trying to see just how far we could push the rules to have fun and make money without getting fired. We would accomplish this in a variety of ways. We perfected the art of hiding small cups of white wine in the low-boy fridge at the bar. While one of us would keep watch, the other would squat down and manage to drink the wine, head back, in one gulp. And just in case you are tempted to find this crass or overly hedonistic, you should know that we always took the time for a quick, silent cheers before the ceremonious squat out of respect for each other and the wine and the (very brief) moment.
We would give each other weird little gifts during service by quickly holding out a fist, which meant “I have something for you… quick, take.” and the other person would take it and keep moving. Sometimes it was a piece of warm focaccia bread. Sometimes it was the refined, semi-sweet chocolate bits we now knew where to find in the walk-in. Sometimes it was a saucy piece of filled pasta, a dense little meatball, half of a scallop, a small baggie of white. It was kind of a game, a challenge not to react, just to take and figure out the proper form of consumption later, but it was always with the intention to help us keep going.
As scrappy as she was, I always had a feeling that once it would be a cockroach. But we both knew if that happened, the gig would be up.
One Sunday we had a particularly rowdy group of adults celebrating a birthday. Halfway through their dinner, the one who was arguably having the most fun, dropped a pillbox out of his pocket, strewing a variety of countless pills all over the floor. His entire party couldn’t stop laughing. I went over to help him collect the pills as he tried to apologize and thank me between laughter. I came back to the bar. My friend looked at me, disappointed. “Come on dude, you didn’t grab any for us?” I held out my fist for her to take. We both laughed. The two little white square pills seemed harmless enough, but the birthday boy who I unintentionally procured them from seemed to be on another planet… and we had 4 hours left in our shift. And the owner was to appear any minute for his Sunday duties. And it was a Sunday.
We did a fair amount of Googling to see if we could figure out what we had gotten ahold of, both eyeing the pills suspiciously as we passed behind the bar. Finally, I poured us some white wine, “We’ll do it at the same time,” I told her. “Down the hatch,” she said. We did a small and hesitant little cheers and then, down the hatch they went… after which we both immediately regretted what we had just done. “You think everything is going to be ok, right?” I asked her.
“Yeah I mean, just let me know if you start feeling weird.”
“Ok, you too…” I said. And then the door opened and we both said “Ciao!” cheerily to the very Italian owner of the establishment that was our main source of income.
In the end, we think it was Adderall. And we also realized there was almost nothing we wouldn’t do together just for a little more risk, a little more excitement, a little more anything.
Sometimes, instead of white wine, it would be tequila that we would sneak, sip, gulp. And sometimes, on tequila nights, we would go out for “just one more.” And after how ever many one would become, sometimes we wouldn’t remember how we got home. On those nights, sometimes, our boyfriends got mad at us. We would text each other from “the dog house”, which in my railroad apartment, was the tiny bathroom- the only room with a door. For her, it was usually on the way back to her apartment from his. The messages would usually read some garbled version of, “I don’t think we were that bad…” “No man, we definitely weren’t.” The next day’s recollection did not include said messages or occupancy of the aforementioned dog houses.
We were that bad.
A couple came in one night who lived in the nearby luxury apartment building at the waterfront. They were both younger than we were- which is to say, in their late 20s- and were probably the most gentle and soft-spoken individuals I’d ever been around. They were the exact opposite of trash pandas. She was pregnant and showing, and he was of course not drinking out of solidarity and was also constantly concerned about the noise level, the temperature, or any slight sensitivity that might affect her and Baby. “Is there any way you can turn the music down?” and “Are you sure the heats on? Honey, you must be so cold…” They were sweet but lacked conviction. I wondered if they’d ever raised their voices, if they’d ever fucked in the kitchen, if they’d ever felt real shame or blind passion.
I had told my partner-in-crime earlier, “This couple drives me kind of crazy. They’re so gentle, I just kind of want to shake them and say, ‘raise your voice! Yell something! Let just ONE hair fall out of place!” She looked over and agreed.
“We have some news,” they told me. “We’re moving, to have more space for Baby…” I wondered just how big they thought “Baby” would be, to already outgrow their massive apartment that overlooked the Manhattan skyline. I knew that there were the kind of people who never had to consider getting rid of the fridge to make space for a piece of furniture they found on the street.
“We’re moving to the West Village,” he told me.
“Oh no! Well, we’ll miss you here.” I didn’t not mean it, I really didn’t.
“We actually move tomorrow,” she told me. “It happened so fast.”
From there, they proceeded to gently mark a two-story floor plan with a pencil to note where furniture and artwork would be placed. “Do you think that painting will be too disruptive for Baby?” he asked her.
“Do you think we should get rid of the coffee table? And those shelves in the living room? I don’t think they’ll work in the new place,” she told him. And my little trash panda ears perked up.
When it was time for another sneaky wine, I told my PIC, “Hey, so, quick update- the gentle couple is moving out tomorrow. And I know where they live. And you know they never fight, so none of their furniture will be dented.” We set a plan to go the next day to scavenge.
The next day we arrived at the site fairly early, in case any other trash pandas were hot on our heels. In the end, I took a nice rug that I rolled up and strapped to the rack on my bike, making my vehicle way too wide to fit safely in the bike lane, which was all part of the rush. My PIC was tempted by a corner shelving unit… “Remember, the Eames,” I told her.
“But maybe, the fridge?”
“The Eames…” I repeated. She left empty-handed, but the search for everything and nothing and anything continued, always.
Leave a Reply