Zum Schneider on Ave C in the East Village had great beer. They also had sausages, red cabbage sauerkraut, schnitzel, and potato pancakes. But really, it's all about the great beer. P got a beer so big, I had to use both hands to pick up the mug when I took a sip. It was as big as my shorts folded in half. Perfect for a sweltering NYC summer night.
It was a great day; P and I made amends. Not in any explicit way, just in that non-verbal way when two people spend a pleasant time together and give history a pass. Sometimes, after spending years with a person, you begin to sense that the end of shared time is coming soon and that urges you both towards grace. You might want to say something sentimental or pithy, but it would be awkward unless you both have been drinking too much hard liquor. We had broken up an average of four times a year for 7 years, and the past 4 years we were just friends who dipped in and out of memory like a brush that just wants to stay moist. That's a respectable number of years. And P is a beautiful, terse, melancholy soul.
In other news, I am packing boxes again. Despite generous packages by both Columbia and MIT, I've decided to pursue my Master's at Berkeley. I can't say that nostalgia did not play a part in my decision. I wanted to go back to where the bigger feelings of POSSIBILITY began.
I finally sat down and COUNTED how many times I have packed up and moved in the past fifteen years. Going abroad to Paris for eight months counts. Moving into a hotel for 3 months also counts. Moving all my stuff into a friend's patio/ sister's storage closet/ friend's basement also counts. The parents moving to Saipan from Korea at age one does not count, only moves where I wrestled with boxes or suitcases myself count. The grand total is only... 23 times. I was disappointed. I thought it was more like twice every year. For a couple of years, it WAS twice every year. But I guess I stayed put for a couple years here and there. Most likely, those years flew by due to good company.
Then, I was curious and thought about how many different people I have lived with- sort of like in the Australian movie, "He Died with a Falafel in His Hand" (which, in my opinion, aside from a few funny moments- and featuring the great hit by the Stranglers, "Golden Brown"- just an O-K movie). I lived with Mir. and her brother for the first year I moved to the US in a low-income suburb of shingled 1-story townhouses and long driveways. When that became too depressing, my older sister, who had recently graduated high school in Japan came out to keep an eye on me. The two of us moved in with Pastor K's family- including two kids under three, their culture-shocked Chinese nanny who spoke no English, and their senile grandmother who repeatedly broke into our closet to try on our clothes during the day- for a couple months. He was the pastor of the church that I had attended in the low-income Sacramento suburb, and he had seem so hip for a pastor... But the pastor and his wife would fight constantly and vociferously. He was definitely NOT HIP when we caught a glimpse, thru the open doorway while watching TV one night, of him dragging her by the hair down the hall while she was kicking and screaming expletives and clawing his arm. My sister, Sy was 18, I was 14. We just looked at each other with big eyes, not knowing what to do. I lived with Sy till I was 15 when we moved to Berkeley away from the crazy pastor's family. If living in someone's converted garage counts, then I lived with Sim and Ki-ki (the cross-country runner from the Midwest who was a Chinese major, which I thought was strange at the time but now I realize was very prescient) when Sy moved to New York to attend NYU. I lived with my best friend, Sho (although it really felt like I lived with a cadre of drunk teenagers) until we were about to graduate high school- I was 16. Sho was working part-time jobs at Starbucks, Baskin Robbins AND at a vet's office. We were living a pretty chaotic existence: no heat, no money for furniture, 16 year olds wanting to drop acid in our apartment. But it felt GREAT to get up at four-thirty in the morning, drink the Irish Breakfast tea that she hooked me on, and drive her to Starbucks for the opening shift. After she left, I lived with Spanky who kept trying to teach me how to "drive men wild," which of course did not really interest me at all. Then, there were the crashers: L came and crashed for ten days while kicking her habit, dreadlocked and meekly sweet ToJo became homeless and brought scabies into through the door and onto the couch, and C lived with me while running away from her mom one tumultuous summer. That was a crazy year: 19. It felt like I had basically an open door policy to anyone who was lonely, had troubles with their parents or was running away from a bad situation. A handsome heroine addict who was crying on the street followed me home after I promised a shower and a hot meal, then asked my permission to shoot up in my bathroom. Apologetically, racked with guilt, I had to take him back to the street. His older boyfriend and dealer, he said, had punished him by sprinkling him with glass dust. I was *like*, 'Who DOES that? And what kinds of people are there out in the world that I really have no idea about???' A few years later, after living alone again, then with Sho again, then with Sy once she returned from Korea, I started art school. And Sy, A and I moved into an amazing flat in the Castro district of San Francisco, right in the heart of action on 18th Street next to what was Cala Foods (and is now, I believe, a Molly Stones). I also lived with A, Sweetly, and B (briefly) in the Oakland house after dropping out of art school while working as a metal fabricator/welder in San Francisco when I was almost 21. I moved into a baby-blue rented room in a cramped three bedroom apartment in Santa Monica let by a crazy Russian couple in order to get my life back on track at age 24. The Russian couple were always fighting, and once the husband threw a big snowglobe at her. Thankfully, he missed, but there was a huge dent in the stucco where the snowglobe had embedded itself into the wall just before it fell. The very pretty Spanish woman renting the third room named O and I moved out together not long after that. Then, I lived with Teeza and Ace in a full-service hotel in a DC suburb for a summer for a fellowship with the National Institute of Science and Technology. The thunderstorms and fireflies of summer were truly magical. I was surrounded by really smart people, people who probably had NEVER had heroine addicts and homeless people in their livingrooms. In Champaign-Urbana, I lived with Sunny. Then, my final semester there, I lived with a group of four from Spain, Wisconsin and Argentina who taught me about drinking Yerba Mate and how strong and gorgeous Basque women are. We ate bountiful organic meals, discussing all kinds of wonderful questions until the wee hours of morning around the fire pit out back. And now I live in Harlem, New York with Viti, a gay Brazilian graphic design student who had to make away a TV set when the repo guys were chasing after his dad. I've been working in New York City on rehabilitating long span bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge. So that makes a grand total of: 28 different roommates. A lot of different scenes and a lot of different stories.
I guess that overall, I've been really lucky to have met some great people. And, if they weren't great, then they were terrible- which made them interesting until snowglobes flying or screaming required that I extract myself immediately from situation.
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