Read Online How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley - Free Book Online
Authors: Sloane Crosley
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beliefs, like their thighs and knowledge of global politics, are nothing. Because the ghosts believe in them.
According to my Internet research, the apartment was one of only a handful of units. Two were occupied by a feminist activist known for her work, ironically, about sex and prostitution. The one I’d be visiting was under the ownership of a Canadian artist who, for reasons unknown, sublet the space for far less than it was worth. Occasionally, it seemed someone would get married or go back to grad school and then the apartment would be unhooked like a rare fish, released back into the Craigslist stream of otherwise untenable listings. A golden ticket with gills.
For these reasons, I began to think the apartment was calling to me. Even at the time, I knew that this sort of backstory was providing me with a false sense of destiny. Lots of people live in apartments with history in the floorboards. Usually it’s obscure history having to do with famous people. Marilyn Monroe ate a hamburger in your lobby. Edgar Allan Poe once bought a pot of ink in your basement. But McGurk’s Suicide Hall was the reverse—it was the anonymity, the relative uncommemoration of these women, that I found irresistible. No one knew their names, but everyone knew their profession. I also thought of what I’d be leaving. For all their paid promiscuity and suicidal tendencies, at least the ghosts of McGurk’s disappeared the old-fashioned way. Whereas my current roommate was doing it by shedding body mass. The former seemed less gruesome somehow.
MY NEW ROOMMATE WAS A TALL KOREAN HIPSTER who answered the door in a man’s flannel shirt. She had misjudged the button-to-hole alignment, leaving one swath of cloth farther below her belt than the other. But she couldn’t be bothered to start over. She wore black jeans and no shoes. It was as if she knew the beer-bottle shards and cigarette butts and centuries of grime would bow in deference to the filth of her feet. And filthy they were, striking some shade between the matted nest of her hair and the oxidized toe ring that clung unhappily to her pinkie toe. When she seemed surprised to see me, I knew instantly not to take it personally.
“Hey, I’m Sang,” she said, looking into some middle distance between my face and hers. I wiped my nose. She cocked her head at me, and I cocked my head in the same direction.
“I’m Sloane. Mac’s friend.”
“Yeah. Come up,” she added, as if I were the one holding us back.
As I followed her up the stairs, I thought of how strange it is to follow anyone up the stairs. Your face is so close to their butt. It’s one of the unsung pleasures of riding in cabs—I have seen very little cabbie ass in my life. Whereas my fellow subway riders’ cheeks are thrust, shifting back and forth, in front of me every day, countless as stars. Sang’s ass was not so much an ass but a continuation of leg and bone, covered by pockets because society demanded it be covered by pockets. They came with the jeans. But much like the rest of Sang, her ass seemed inconvenienced to exist at all. I wondered about the build of the women who first ascended this staircase. People from one hundred years ago looked different. Rounder and smaller at the same time. More forehead, less chin. I am often curious about the texture of their hair. This is why period films are so unconvincing. Because actresses use conditioner and have been plucking their eyebrows for years, and you can’t hire the dead.
A few beat-up sepia photos of the women from the last century hung, warped, in cracked frames drilled into the brick. They wore boots and feathers and stared with purpose into a bulky wooden box to have their portrait taken. I imagined them lifting their skirts as they marched up these same steps, a red-faced drunk in my position—bob, shift, bob, shift, mustache, mustache, bowler hat. Of course, the kind of women walking up these steps would not likely be wearing
According to my Internet research, the apartment was one of only a handful of units. Two were occupied by a feminist activist known for her work, ironically, about sex and prostitution. The one I’d be visiting was under the ownership of a Canadian artist who, for reasons unknown, sublet the space for far less than it was worth. Occasionally, it seemed someone would get married or go back to grad school and then the apartment would be unhooked like a rare fish, released back into the Craigslist stream of otherwise untenable listings. A golden ticket with gills.
For these reasons, I began to think the apartment was calling to me. Even at the time, I knew that this sort of backstory was providing me with a false sense of destiny. Lots of people live in apartments with history in the floorboards. Usually it’s obscure history having to do with famous people. Marilyn Monroe ate a hamburger in your lobby. Edgar Allan Poe once bought a pot of ink in your basement. But McGurk’s Suicide Hall was the reverse—it was the anonymity, the relative uncommemoration of these women, that I found irresistible. No one knew their names, but everyone knew their profession. I also thought of what I’d be leaving. For all their paid promiscuity and suicidal tendencies, at least the ghosts of McGurk’s disappeared the old-fashioned way. Whereas my current roommate was doing it by shedding body mass. The former seemed less gruesome somehow.
MY NEW ROOMMATE WAS A TALL KOREAN HIPSTER who answered the door in a man’s flannel shirt. She had misjudged the button-to-hole alignment, leaving one swath of cloth farther below her belt than the other. But she couldn’t be bothered to start over. She wore black jeans and no shoes. It was as if she knew the beer-bottle shards and cigarette butts and centuries of grime would bow in deference to the filth of her feet. And filthy they were, striking some shade between the matted nest of her hair and the oxidized toe ring that clung unhappily to her pinkie toe. When she seemed surprised to see me, I knew instantly not to take it personally.
“Hey, I’m Sang,” she said, looking into some middle distance between my face and hers. I wiped my nose. She cocked her head at me, and I cocked my head in the same direction.
“I’m Sloane. Mac’s friend.”
“Yeah. Come up,” she added, as if I were the one holding us back.
As I followed her up the stairs, I thought of how strange it is to follow anyone up the stairs. Your face is so close to their butt. It’s one of the unsung pleasures of riding in cabs—I have seen very little cabbie ass in my life. Whereas my fellow subway riders’ cheeks are thrust, shifting back and forth, in front of me every day, countless as stars. Sang’s ass was not so much an ass but a continuation of leg and bone, covered by pockets because society demanded it be covered by pockets. They came with the jeans. But much like the rest of Sang, her ass seemed inconvenienced to exist at all. I wondered about the build of the women who first ascended this staircase. People from one hundred years ago looked different. Rounder and smaller at the same time. More forehead, less chin. I am often curious about the texture of their hair. This is why period films are so unconvincing. Because actresses use conditioner and have been plucking their eyebrows for years, and you can’t hire the dead.
A few beat-up sepia photos of the women from the last century hung, warped, in cracked frames drilled into the brick. They wore boots and feathers and stared with purpose into a bulky wooden box to have their portrait taken. I imagined them lifting their skirts as they marched up these same steps, a red-faced drunk in my position—bob, shift, bob, shift, mustache, mustache, bowler hat. Of course, the kind of women walking up these steps would not likely be wearing
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