The Wastepaper Basket

A year ago I lived in a house that kept it’s windows open in the winter. I’m in New Jersey now, in a house that keeps the air shut off in the summer. It’s a wet 74 degrees outside, and at least the air moves freely around. I’ve been in the house for under 48 hours. My room includes a tired old box air conditioner, which helps to create a sense of flow. The room is pink, mulberry mauve pink- it reeks of cat pee. It comes with a private bathroom.

After living in three homes as an au pair (and one bus) I’ve become sharper at seeing what’s a good fit and what’s not. My last home was such a bad fit that it made me swear to never, ever EVER take a gig like this again. Yet here I am, in Jersey of all places, scrubbing away dog feces, organizing cabinets, and locked into a schedule of walking the dog every two hours. Five minutes, that’s all, but every two hours on the dot. This is supposed to prevent him from crapping on the floor, which he does anyway. It’s 11:00 am now. I got here yesterday, at noon sharp. This is how long it’s taken me to realize it’s not going to work out.

It’s funny how so far, Jersey has lived up to my expectations. Edison is a small place, but somehow congested with traffic. It’s threatening to rain, a lethargic summer rain, but refusing to fall, just filling up the atmosphere with damp. We’re in suburbia here, but take the car a couple blocks and its cracked sidewalks, slow walking pedestrians, yellowing takeout restaurants, faded dry cleaners, and ancient hookah bars, everything humming with a chatter of overworked cars. This is a grim depiction of a place I’ve only been in for a day, probably an unfair one. But I put all my eggs in this basket, and I’m tired. Jersey is exactly what the nagging little backrooms of my brain had feared and predicted. 

I do a lot of complaining on this blog, an amount that I find disturbing. This is what I’ll look back on to remember this time of my life, and it’s going to be a heap of griping. There have, of course, been little beautiful moments. Even scrubbing out the sticky fridge this morning, wrestling steam train of a dog on the walk, it was nice to be sure of something. I’m meant for more than this- if I stay here too long I’ll worse than before. It’s good to know I’m worth something.

Here are the beauties-

• My nine year old cousin, who I rarely see, cannot wait for my next visit. I stayed at the house for five days, and four of those days were spent coloring, giving piggyback rides, and hacking our way through the backwoods of rural New York. My cousin is an expert at driving four-wheelers; I am not. 
• I’ve been asked to write a recommendation from a friend, a recent friend that I couldn’t respect higher if I tried. She’s looking to work with kids, a recent job direction for her, and asked me to write something up. I’m procrastinating this project now, so you probably wouldn’t know that the request made me melt. It was rare that the two of us, one kitchen management, one the camp lifeguard, got to work one on one. I like to think that my efforts to make her feel seen worked. It feels like validation that I am, as I try so hard to be, a noticer. I hope she gets this job.
• Around the corner, there’s a house with a full garden of raised beds, on display through a green netting that they use as fencing. Most of the homes are cookie cutter, with the same flat yards, winding front walks, butter yellow plastic siding, and two car garages. It gives me hope to see a little wildness. 
• It is exactly two weeks until I see Mariah. The last time we were in the same state was in May, almost six months ago. She’s turning 20, the age that I still feel. Her hair is new- mine, after many dramatic stages, is the same. She has the same boyfriend. I have the same amount of partners, which is zero. When I visited my aunt I hid my pride pin in my bag, and have forgotten to put it back. I’ll have to take it off when I see my mother, anyway. I’ve promised Mariah, as a birthday gift, that I will avoid digging into any issues the whole two weeks. I’m going to be a neutral, vaguely conservative, smiling daughter. Mariah is going to make me her tiramisu. I’m trying to convince her to watch all three Godfather movies while we eat it.
• I have finally reached the 75 movie mark on my list of new watches this year. I hope to get to one hundred before January. Because the Jersey house prevents me from doing anything longer than two hours, I have a feeling I’ll knock out quite a few more on this trip.

• Marc Maron is putting out a documentary, or that is, a documentary about him is being released. There are no theatres near me to see it, it’s one of those one-day-showing-indie-wonders. I expect nothing else. I’m seething and jealous, but it feels right.
• Autumn has begun to appear in the little corners of the everyday.
• I have a new box of pens.
• I am 22 and have yet to be kissed ever, which means at 22 I have NEVER had a bad kiss. In the same logic I’ve never had a bad partner. 
• The other day I ate an entire bag of airhead minis while laying in bed. My gums are only a little worse for wear. I think I might be invincible.
• I have just added a FOURTH vague male relationship to the roster. I say roster, which makes it sound like I’m clever enough to be doing this on purpose. I would be lying if I said I did nothing to cultivate these vague relationships. Can they be situationships if you barely talk? Probably. Would most of them laugh if I called them a situationship? Most likely. Would I be very sad if we weren’t to talk anymore? Definitely. I told a friend recently that the biggest reason I’d like to have a boyfriend, and not just commit to women entirely, is because I know deep down that there’s a part of me that wants to show myself I’m valuable to a man. She laughed at me. She laughed at me with an understanding half-cry, as a fellow woman who is magnetized to other women, and trying to work through the mortifying ordeal of being attracted to men. Is this a beautiful thing? I can’t say yes. I am living in a wonderful twilight of being loved. I say loved– that’s where the twilight comes in. In the twilight, everything is possible all at once. In the twilight people who are merely talking to you out of vague noncommittal interested care deeply. Possibility is probability here, and in the twilight I am loved.
• I’m going to dress up as Hawkeye from MASH for Halloween. This is not only a comfortable outfit, but sustainable, because I’ll use the red bathrobe for the rest of the year.

I think, despite evidence to the contrary, I’m going to have a very good year.