…like a fish needs a bicycle. —Gloria Steinem
When I moved to New York nine months ago, I was most excited about having my own apartment. My parents and I spent a day in Astoria looking for just the right one, and when I found this one, I knew. I knew the way you know about a good melon. It was perfect. One bedroom (with a closet!), one living room, one small kitchen, and one small bathroom. One. One. One. Perfect for the single girl who couldn’t wait to get to the one place in the whole world she had always wanted to live. I had lots of friends who already lived here, but this apartment was to be my own little place in this big city. I decorated it just the way I wanted it, and my books, the books that had spent two years in boxes in my parents’ basement because I didn’t want to unpack and repack them, were finally on shelves in my living room. And on my night stand. And on the television stand. And on the dining table.
Once I had my books in my apartment, I went about filling it with food. I still have the receipt from my first trip to the grocery store. Chicken parmesan is one of my favorite meals, and since all of the sauces were on sale, I grabbed a few jars. Later in the week I got home from work and started making the meal. Everything was going fine – I didn’t burn down the kitchen when I turned on the stove, and I wasn’t making that big of a mess. But then it came time to open up the jar of sauce. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t do it. Suddenly being single in the city didn’t seem so hot. I couldn’t just call my boyfriend and ask him if he could stop by and open the jar with the promise of good food for his efforts. I didn’t have a roommate, either, so there was no one to keep working at the jar when my hand got tired. I tried every trick I knew. I even tried this thing where you put the jar in a door hinge. I saw my parents do it when I was little, but forgot to ask them how it’s actually done, since my effort proved fruitless. I tried that thing where you hit the bottom of the jar. I hit it a little too hard and bruised the heel of my hand. Panic began to set in. All I wanted was chicken parm. Was that really too much to ask? Twenty five minutes later, I finally got the thing open. Twenty five minutes after that, I enjoyed chicken parm and a big glass of wine.
Then there was the time I thought I left my oven on. I was heating up some chicken to put in a salad, and the next day at work, I remembered turning down the oven, but not turning it off. I turned pale and felt sick when I realized I could have left my oven on all day. In all reality, I should have known I didn’t. My apartment isn’t huge, and I would have smelled the gas the next morning. The worry was there, though, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. My boss was cool about it and sent me home. I had no roommate to call to say, “Hey, do you think I left the oven on? No, you don’t? Okay thanks. I feel better.” Nor did I have a boyfriend to call to ask him to use his set of keys (because obviously I had given my hypothetical boyfriend a set of keys to my apartment), and ask him to check the oven for me.
I stayed for about another hour and grabbed some work I knew I could do at home, and then I booked it to Queens. I set a new record for going between the office and my apartment, and had visions on the subway of my building burning down. And of course I hadn’t gotten renters’ insurance yet. That was on this week’s to-do list and hadn’t been crossed off yet. By the time I got to 35th Street, I had gone from speed walking to a full-out run. I almost wanted to close my eyes when I turned the corner onto 31st Avenue in case that when I opened them, I would see a charred hole where my apartment used to be. Obviously, I didn’t, since I’m sitting in my apartment right now as I write this. I sprinted into my kitchen, only to find every knob turned to Off, just as I had left it the night before. And then I turned it back on to make myself a very much needed cup of tea.
My most recent single adventure came because my neighbors are redoing the inside of their apartment. It sounds like they’ve stripped it bare and are starting from scratch. Add to that the fact that their daughter cries at the loud noises from the machines and it’s just fabulous around here during the day. Anyway, I arrived back at my apartment yesterday after a night out in Long Beach to find that the water in my toilet bowl had drained all the way to the bottom. My mom had come to visit, and she and I soon realized that the toilet was clogged. We bought Drano, drained it with hot water, and tried to use the rinky-dink plunger I keep in my bathroom, but to no avail. There is something down there that is blocking the water from going down, and I’d be willing to bet it has something to do with the work they’re doing on the apartment next door.
Thank God my mom was here, because the last time this happened when I first moved into the apartment, I borrowed a plunger, but soon realized I wasn’t strong enough to actually push the stupid thing down. Again, no boyfriend and no roommate to help. Mom and I worked on it until we went to bed last night and made some progress. Today I called my landlord to find out who the Super is and how I could contact him. It’s just my luck that my landlord is on vacation. His daughter called me back to tell me that she’d find out and that she’d get back to me tomorrow.
So for now, it’s just me and the plunger and my patience as I wait for the water to slowly drain. Tomorrow I’m going shopping for a bicycle. Maybe.