Tuesday, June 2, 1998
Apartment life can be a drag
if you always have to move
MOVING: Purchasing home with white picket fence not nearly as
corny as it sounds
By Kevin Powell
No question, moving sucks big time. I calculate that I have,
over the past eight or nine years since leaving college, moved on
at least 20 different occasions. The list includes an awful
post-college experience on my mother’s sofa, until she told me,
after less than a month, "You know, I think I have done enough for
you already." Then she tossed me out.
Besides mom, there have been two filthy YMCA rooms (one in New
York City, the other in Newark, N.J.), two boarder houses, a
bathtub in a rat-infested apartment, the sofa of a local drug
dealer, and one friend’s attic floor, where his cat routinely
clawed me while I was sleeping.
Just when you think the madness is over, it starts again. You
see, this time last year I was living in a beautiful two-bedroom
garden apartment in the oh-so-trendy Fort Greene section of
Brooklyn. But, during my many travels out of town, I noticed that
certain things in my apartment – like papers on the floor, like my
TV, like the window shades – were not quite the way I had left
them. Alarmed, I surmised it had to be my landlord who lived
upstairs.
I prayed that I was imagining things and that homeboy would not
fall for the booby-trap I set for him. He did. And when I returned
home a few days later, he confronted me, telling me that I
obviously did not trust him, and that I had to move.
Mind you, the landlord and I had been having disagreements off
and on for two years and this, for me (and apparently for him), was
the tip of the iceberg.
Thus began my latest odyssey in the world of moving. Being
ill-prepared financially, I was forced to stick my stuff in
storage, sell or give away all that cheap K-Mart furniture, and
crash with my girlfriend in her tiny studio apartment.
What was supposed to have lasted a month or two turned into
five, and would have been longer had her landlord not said,
testily, "He has to go or both of you have to go. This is
illegal."
So there I went again, this time to a rooming house on St.
Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, because my battered pride would not
allow me to seek a temporary space in Fort Greene.
I think if I were not a writer, none of this would be remotely
amusing to me. It is a pain in the ass to uproot oneself over and
over again, and the last 10 months have given me horrific college
flashbacks. Rutgers University, where I attended school, insisted
that students move ourselves and our most valuable valuables out at
the end of each semester. That means I moved approximately 20 times
during my college career alone. Added to post-college life, that is
40 moves!
And it is not simply moving that sucks. It is the chore of
finding boxes, of breaking or losing stuff, of locating friends who
are friendly enough to help you move all that crap you’ve
accumulated. A lot of my friends, who have partied hard at my
living spaces through the years, always seem to have something to
do when I need help moving.
Or, as one of the wiser ones put it: "Man, you just got so much
stuff. All those books and things are heavy."
Duh, a writer is suppose to have books, right? Or I am suppose
to chuck ’em and start all over with each move?
Forget the friends, then. This move, I called a moving company
that had no name. I found the company in the Daily News. Or was it
the Village Voice? No name, but a guy named Shorty answers the
phone:
"Where you at, guy?"
"Harlem."
"Where you movin’ to?"
"Brooklyn."
"Brooklyn? Jeez, that’ll be like $500 bucks, alright?"
"$500 bucks! But -"
"Look guy, that is the price, take it or leave it."
"Well -"
"And you gotta pay sales tax too."
Yup. Sales tax. I swallowed hard ‘cuz this was like the 10th or
11th company I had called, and my man Shorty was the cheapest.
All tolled, this move is costing me a few thousand dollars. I
had to pay the overdue storage bill. I had to buy a new living room
set to entertain my party-hungry friends. I had to buy a new bed
because my girlfriend insisted I get rid of the last one because my
ex-girlfriend and I had "contaminated that one."
Once I am done, I will be broke, eating a TV dinner, maybe.
The big lesson from all of this: Save your loot for the future,
and know who your real friends are.
Hell, buying a house no longer seems like a bad idea. Come to
think of it, a house with a white picket fence isn’t that corny
after all. Beats moving from apartment to apartment …