Ten Apartments, Two Years

Dumbo, 2007

Today is Monday, October 26th 2009. I am sitting in “my” apartment, listening to David Grey, in hopes of calming myself, in order to lower my blood pressure. As I look around at this room full of Barclay and Brian’s belongings, I notice that the only thing I own is this computer, and the small amount of maternity clothes that are hanging in my closet. I think back to when I first moved here, when I was living in Dumbo with my uncle. My mind was so innocent, I had no idea what the road ahead of me looked like, I had no idea that this is how it would end, or begin I should say. I remember when I first moved out of Uncle D’s place, into my first New York apartment. I lived there alone for about a month and it was during the winter, which is nothing like the winters in Texas (if that even exists). I was alone, but I remember thinking, this is how you’re supposed to feel, this is what New Yorker’s feel like, people live alone Houston, you have to just suck it up and go along with it. So I did. The neighborhood I lived in was not like the one I had moved from, (Dumbo-a modern and chic hood in Brooklyn) this place was deserted, and like I said before I was the minority. I got threats daily from locals telling me that if I looked at them one more time, that they would “push my white ass into the f***ing train” I covered my body head to toe in clothes, layers upon layers, including my face, so that no one would notice that I was a blonde white girl. It was terrifying, I ran, literally ran from the train to my apartment door when I got home from work. Soon after, Lindsey, Kieran and Jayson all moved in, and then it was double trouble. I made them walk with me if I had to go to the corner store to get milk, the four of us would walk arm in arm down to the store, KierJay had no shame, they let their white blonde hair shine, they both rocked a full face of make up, and their walk? Forget it, they’d strut up and down Prospect Ave like it was nobody’s business. I always feared that if we drew too much attention to ourselves, we’d be shot, seriously. The amount of anxiety and fear that I felt during those cold winter months was un explainable. I cried myself to sleep every night, asking myself why and how I got where I was.

Finally, Lindsey and I decided that we couldn’t take it anymore, and got the hell out of there. That is when we moved to an apartment on East 60th street and 1st Avenue. We thought we were big timers then, we were walking distances to our jobs, we had access to all of the great restaurants on 2nd Ave, life was good for us. The apartment we moved into was furnished, but had only one closet, we didn’t care, we were living in the city and at that time, that was all that mattered. We both had to wear black everyday to work, and have the exact same taste in clothes, this made things difficult when getting ready in the morning. The one closet deal was not working out, so I came up with the brilliant idea of putting two rows of nails along the wall, and hanging clothes there. Linds thought it was great, but it still wasn’t enough, so we went out and bought a rolling rack, keep in mind we were sharing a tiny studio apartment, our beds touched, the kitchen was in reaching distance from Lindsey’s bed. It was incredibly crowded, and after a while things pilled up, the apartment was a total disaster, we somehow managed.


Once spring came around, Lindsey had to move back to Georgia to graduate, since she was just in New York doing her internships. I was freaking out because this meant that I was going to have to find a new place to live, and I had one month to figure it out. I told the girls I worked with at Domino about my situation, and together we tried searching for roommates and apartments, but had no luck. One of the girls I interned with lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a super funky hipster neighborhood right outside of the city, and she was going to be traveling in Europe for the summer with her best friend, she told me that I could live in her room for the month that she was gone, until I figured something else out. I jumped right on that offer.

When Lindsey and I were moving out of our 60th Street apt, we had so much crap that we just wanted to get rid of, and I had an old raggedy suitcase that I was planning on throwing away, but instead we decided to put everything we didn’t have room for, into it. We threw in the most random things, tampons, canned soup, an insane amount of beauty products that I had collected from the magazine, old sweaters we didn’t wear anymore, shoes, hangers, we hooked the homeless up that day. Attached to the side of the suitcase we had written a note on a paper towel that read, “To the people of New York, here is a suitcase full of treasures, we are two girls moving out, and don’t have room for any of these things, please enjoy!”

Linds and I hailed a cab, threw all of my bags into the trunk, and headed back to Brooklyn. She helped me unpack my things, and get my room organized. The apartment was a loft on the top floor of the building, I had the corner room that overlooked Williamsburg. Lindsey left, and there I was all alone again, this time sans computer and TV. I was sad, but had done it before, so I knew I could do it again, and it was only for a month, and hopefully Lindsey would want to move back and we could find a place together. I was working at Domino during that time, and it was when I was the full time Fashion and Beauty Assistant, much different from interning. My days and nights were spent at 4 Times Sq at the Conde’ Nast building. I literally took a blanket and pillow with me sometimes. I was lonely, but I had my job to keep my busy, I barely had time for my friends or family, and my social life was spent attending PR events for the magazine. Needless to say that month flew by, and I had no where to go. From there on I pretty much jumped from couch to couch, I lived in Murray Hill for a week with a girl that worked at the magazine, she kindly lent me her couch and once my time was up there, I decided I wanted to go to Texas for a while to relax, find an apartment that was steady, and then come back to the city. I had been interviewing for the full time position with Bobbi in Soho, and after eight interviews and the letter from Bobbi, I landed the job, but wouldn’t start for a month, so going to Texas was perfect. I had met two girls from Austin that summer, Kim and Amber, they had a cute place in the West Village on Jane Street, and I one day called Kim to see if I could stay on her floor for a week before I went to Texas. She agreed, and there I was again, lugging all of my crap to another apartment that wasn’t mine, what are we on now number six? This was the sixth place I had lived in in less than a year. I placed my two suitcases in the corner and blew up the air mattress, and stayed there until I went home. While I was in Texas I had been searching the internet for apartments and roommates to live with, Lindsey hadn’t made any promises to me that she’d be coming back to the city, so I had to find someone else.


One day I was looking and I came across an ad for a cute apartment in the East Village, on 2nd Ave and St. Marks Place. It was a red brick building with an iron gate fence at the entrance, on the 2nd floor elevator included, all hardwoods, for a reasonable price, if I found a roommate. I found a girl who was oddly enough from a small town in Texas, but had been living in Austin for the past year, and she was looking to move to NYC. We talked over the phone, but never met in person, I was desperate and agreed to live with her. We’d be sharing a bedroom, but I didn’t care, I had an amazing job waiting on me in the city, and I just wanted to get back to it. So, we moved in together, I started working for Bobbi, and she was an un employed 19 year old jewelry designer. She was nice, and we became friends fast mostly because we had no choice. However, I still wanted Lindsey back, we knew how to make it work with each other, not to mention, we were great friends. So, I compiled a list of contacts that I had from Domino, for Lindsey to send her resume to, she got a few interviews and decided to fly up and give it another go. She didn’t have much luck on the interviews but did manage to score a babysitting job with a wealthy family on the Upper East Side. Her mind was set, she moved back to the city, and lived with us in the East Village.

The three of us did not get along at all, it was pure chaos living there, the girl went out every night until 5 in the morning and would come home and cook gourmet meals in our “bedroom”, which was the kitchen/living room because she kicked Lindsey and I out of her “room”, after numerous arguments, mostly having to do with the fact that she was always ridiculously wasted. She had a very strange group of friends who were inconsiderate and obnoxious, including her boyfriend, who thought it was appropriate to walk around the apartment naked. We got into screaming fights, and were completely miserable. Lindsey and I again deiced to move. We were looking to settle down into our dream neighborhood, the Upper East Side, and were determined to find the perfect apartment. We stumbled across an adorable one bedroom on 77th and 3rd Ave, accompanied with a tree lined street, and as an added bonus, our favorite bar sat right on the corner, nonetheless we were sold. This was now my ninth apartment to live in.

The only flaw(s) with the 77th St apartment was that it was on the 6th floor of a walk up building, the bathroom was tiny, only one of us could fit in there at a time, and in the shower, you had to open the door and sit on the floor in order to shave your legs. We were living with Lucifer in the EV so we didn’t mind at all, and we said the stairs would make our legs stronger and our buts tighter. So, being the poor/cheap/starving-trying to survive New Yorker’s that we were, we had no choice but to move our things up those 6th flights of stairs by our selves. In any normal city, you would have your dad or your uncle, or your boyfriend, or just a few of your guy friends bring their muscles and trucks over, and move it for you. In New York? Never. We first of all both have strong dads that would gladly help us, but they live halfway across the country, and having a boyfriend in this city is well, just a complete joke. The guy friends that we’ve acquired here are either gay, or too busy to help. So, we did it ourselves! One day we found a beautiful chocolate brown sofa sleeper for sale, we bought it, and hired movers to bring it to our apartment. Once they lugged it up the 6 flights of stairs, they realized it wouldn’t fit through our 25 inch doorway. Great. The couch was non refundable, so we were then stuck with this giant sofa sleeper, and no where to put it. We had dinner on the floor for the following three weeks, until we found a new couch that miraculously fit through the doorway. Lindsey’s dad flew up and helped us build a closet, but this was not your average closet ladies and gentlemen, this was a single cabinet hanging on the wall, with two poles going across to hang clothes on. It was all we could fit in the bedroom, since the queen size bed that we were sharing, took up the entire space of the room. It was truly a “bedroom”. You could stand on the bed, and pick out your clothes for work, or if you wanted to, you could reach your hand out and open the window, or even open the door! Lindsey’s mom sent us two super cute chairs and a huge rug for the living room, we hadn’t ever felt this “at home” in an apartment. We finally felt stable. The memories we made in that apartment are never to be forgotten. We lived there for about eight months, and then once I found out I was pregnant, I said to myself, there is absolutely no way I can climb those stairs after working an eight hour day on my feet, hell I could barely do it non-pregs. Things got a little crazy when I first found out, Linds was worried because I was going to be leaving shortly, and she had to quickly find a job, and a place to live, in less than seven months, (I was two months pregnant when I fond out). We had both been dreaming of moving back to The South, and so Lindsey started interviewing back in Atlanta, I had no plan and no idea what I was doing, but knew that there was no way I could raise a child in New York alone. One day I came home from work, it was about six o clock, and I was getting ready for bed, (first trimester exhaustion stage). Linds sat me down and told me that she had gotten a job in Georgia and she would be moving back in one month. I was extremely happy for her, because this is exactly what she wanted, but this meant another move for me.

That is how Barclay and Brian came into the picture, they had an open room and offered it up to us. We found a girl to take over the lease of the 77th St apartment, and had one day to be moved out. Fortunately Brain said he would help us, and there we were packing our things up, moving to yet another apartment. Which is where I currently reside, at 111th St between 5th Ave and Lenox Ave. I tell people that I live on the Upper West Side, in actuality it is the very beginning of Harlem. Linds stayed here for three weeks, until she flew back to Atlanta to start her new fabulous life. I was so sad to watch her go, it was the end of Houston and Lindsey, our chapter was over, and new chapter had begun. As I sit in my bed I think to myself how lucky I am to have her as a friend, she was there for me through thick and thin, she was there when I found out I was having you, and she stayed positive through my craziness, and helped me get through it all. Lindsey is still one of my very best friends, and I am so happy to have all of the memories that we made together. I have less than a month left in the city, and I am finally at peace knowing that the only move I have to make is back to Texas, via airplane.

111th St. Apt.