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Authors: Sloane Crosley
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skirts long enough to lift.
“So, how long have you lived here?” I said to the ass.
“Don’t know,” the ass threw its voice. “A while now, I guess.”
I wondered what it must be like for the lucky gent who dated Sang. It’s never good to fall in love with someone whom you’d have to stab in the eyeballs to elicit a response. Sang pushed the metal door with a callused heel, and it swung inward with surprising ease.
There are fulcrum moments in life when you can feel your world pivot in a new direction. Everything that mattered doesn’t. There is no adjustment period between the old and the new. Slice open the plastic bag and pour the goldfish straight into the bowl. Here is how your life will go from now on. My moment came while looking at the dining room table in Sang’s loft. I would make as many toothbrushes out of hair as the situation required if I could do it at that dining room table.
Crafted in the “picnic” school of tables, complete with benches, it had been rescued from a flea market in Norway, painted white, and then intentionally stripped so that swirling knots of wood overpowered the paint. It was oversized and smooth. Above it hung a chandelier with every other bulb covered by a plastic doll’s head. Brunettes and blondes and a redhead glowed from their eye sockets. There’s no way to convince someone that a doll-head chandelier is tasteful. But this one was. As I strolled around the place, I kept alert for signs of crafts or splatter paint or batiking of any kind. But all I found were beautiful touches that put the creative solutions necessitated by my small space to shame. Like the refrigerator sunk into the wall and then painted to match the wallpaper. Or the slab of jagged marble on the back of the toilet to replace the porcelain cover. It was a beautifully disheveled mess. A warmer, more cared-for version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. There was even a potted tree of some kind, and it was more or less alive. This, despite Sang’s repeated attempts to kill it.
“I never water that thing,” said Sang, “but it just keeps on living.”
We sat on one of the artfully mismatched sofas surrounding a freestanding fireplace. I sank into the cushion until it touched the floor.
“Also, there’s no air-conditioning,” she said, looking down with superhuman vision to remove one of her hairs from her black jeans. “I mean, obviously. It’s a loft.”
Did I look like the kind of girl who was going to storm in, demanding Freon? I was; I just didn’t want to look like it.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said, picturing my practically medieval collection of hair-torturing devices. On hot days, I had been known to stick my freshly burned scalp in the freezer. I was willing to eschew it all if I lived here. I would be the kind of girl who doesn’t blow-dry her hair, who has transcended the brush.
“And,” she continued, “there’s no hot water. There is, but it’s two seconds and then it turns freezing cold.”
“Good!” I clapped my hands. “Must offset the humidity!”
She could have told me that the mattresses were full of bedbugs and I was going to have to sleep on plastic sheets, and I would have clapped like a trained seal.
We sat in silence. I listened to the traffic on Houston, trying to determine if it would be worse or better at night as I fell asleep in my envy-inducing bedroom.
“How is it that this place is available?”
Sang explained her situation—a bad boyfriend whom she had kicked out. She described him as “one of those non-talkative types.”
“Some people are just so blase about everything.” Sang sighed.
I said that yes, I had heard of such a person.
Then I explained my situation—a bad roommate I described as one of those “non-eating types.” When I mentioned the casual kleptomania, Sang perked up for the first time. Stealing was something to which she could relate. You could really picture her hanging out with open thieves, tiring of people she
“So, how long have you lived here?” I said to the ass.
“Don’t know,” the ass threw its voice. “A while now, I guess.”
I wondered what it must be like for the lucky gent who dated Sang. It’s never good to fall in love with someone whom you’d have to stab in the eyeballs to elicit a response. Sang pushed the metal door with a callused heel, and it swung inward with surprising ease.
There are fulcrum moments in life when you can feel your world pivot in a new direction. Everything that mattered doesn’t. There is no adjustment period between the old and the new. Slice open the plastic bag and pour the goldfish straight into the bowl. Here is how your life will go from now on. My moment came while looking at the dining room table in Sang’s loft. I would make as many toothbrushes out of hair as the situation required if I could do it at that dining room table.
Crafted in the “picnic” school of tables, complete with benches, it had been rescued from a flea market in Norway, painted white, and then intentionally stripped so that swirling knots of wood overpowered the paint. It was oversized and smooth. Above it hung a chandelier with every other bulb covered by a plastic doll’s head. Brunettes and blondes and a redhead glowed from their eye sockets. There’s no way to convince someone that a doll-head chandelier is tasteful. But this one was. As I strolled around the place, I kept alert for signs of crafts or splatter paint or batiking of any kind. But all I found were beautiful touches that put the creative solutions necessitated by my small space to shame. Like the refrigerator sunk into the wall and then painted to match the wallpaper. Or the slab of jagged marble on the back of the toilet to replace the porcelain cover. It was a beautifully disheveled mess. A warmer, more cared-for version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. There was even a potted tree of some kind, and it was more or less alive. This, despite Sang’s repeated attempts to kill it.
“I never water that thing,” said Sang, “but it just keeps on living.”
We sat on one of the artfully mismatched sofas surrounding a freestanding fireplace. I sank into the cushion until it touched the floor.
“Also, there’s no air-conditioning,” she said, looking down with superhuman vision to remove one of her hairs from her black jeans. “I mean, obviously. It’s a loft.”
Did I look like the kind of girl who was going to storm in, demanding Freon? I was; I just didn’t want to look like it.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said, picturing my practically medieval collection of hair-torturing devices. On hot days, I had been known to stick my freshly burned scalp in the freezer. I was willing to eschew it all if I lived here. I would be the kind of girl who doesn’t blow-dry her hair, who has transcended the brush.
“And,” she continued, “there’s no hot water. There is, but it’s two seconds and then it turns freezing cold.”
“Good!” I clapped my hands. “Must offset the humidity!”
She could have told me that the mattresses were full of bedbugs and I was going to have to sleep on plastic sheets, and I would have clapped like a trained seal.
We sat in silence. I listened to the traffic on Houston, trying to determine if it would be worse or better at night as I fell asleep in my envy-inducing bedroom.
“How is it that this place is available?”
Sang explained her situation—a bad boyfriend whom she had kicked out. She described him as “one of those non-talkative types.”
“Some people are just so blase about everything.” Sang sighed.
I said that yes, I had heard of such a person.
Then I explained my situation—a bad roommate I described as one of those “non-eating types.” When I mentioned the casual kleptomania, Sang perked up for the first time. Stealing was something to which she could relate. You could really picture her hanging out with open thieves, tiring of people she
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