You Must Go and Win: Essays (8 page)

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Authors: Alina Simone

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“You mean for up
there
?” I asked, gesturing toward the bathroom.
“No, silly!
Here
.” Sarah waved her hands vaguely at the air around us.
I scanned the room—the kitchen table? the counter? the windowsill?—and gave Sarah an uncomprehending look.
“Duh? They’re going to
build
a room.”
“They’re going to build a room
inside
the living room? But …
where
?”
She walked over to the space right by the front door, the place where we flipped through the mail, the few feet we cut right across without even thinking on our way to go pee. Sarah whirled around.
“Right … here!” she announced.
“But that’s hardly any room!”
“Well, she’s only paying five hundred a month,” Sarah said, shrugging a little.
“She’s paying five hundred a month to live in the spot we leave our umbrellas?” I could feel the hysteria edging into my voice.
“I know, bargain, right? That girl who lived on top of the bathroom paid nine hundred. But remember, this girl has to, like, build the whole room too. And have you been to Lowe’s lately? Sheetrock’s
ex-peeeen-sive
.”
Sarah went off in search of a dustpan and I continued to stare at the scuffed piece of floor where she’d stood, not understanding how anyone could possibly envision a home for herself in a carpet-sized space whose only amenity was an electrical outlet. Or, for that matter, on top of a bathroom, where someone might very well be pooing right beneath her sweet ear. Yet who was I to judge? I, who slept on an air mattress in a ridiculously expensive room? I, who had only recently rid myself of fleas? Hope Street, I realized, was nothing more than a refugee camp, a tent city for the young, the poor, and the restless, the former residents of flyover states yearning to breathe free; for unwashed, muddled masses in search of opportunity, and dubious men in search of drummer concubines. The sunset gates of the Bedford Street L marked the beginning of our Camino Francés, our Santa Fe Trail, our Yellow Brick Road, and like the first settlers, we would stake our flags in dumpsters and basements, in closets big enough for a bedroll; we would float from room to room holding our laptops aloft like divining rods, in search of free signal. We would
squat here until our acorns took root, until our internships bloomed into production assistantships and our air mattresses filled with down.
Like it or not: I was one of them.
 
 
The holidays were upon us and while I was fairly certain that I could handle Christmas, the approach of New Year’s Eve had me considering seppuku. The day had always been an exquisite torment. I mean, was it humanly possible to have enough fun to fulfill the potential of New Year’s? There would be a man in a parka on TV reporting from Times Square. In reality, he couldn’t be colder if someone slipped a frozen can of Diet Coke between his balls, yet he would be smiling with all forty teeth. And he would be surrounded by a million people, all screaming ecstatically as though each and every one of them were giving birth to the Messiah right there at Forty-second Street and Broadway. I could never be this happy, and that is why I decided long ago to deliberately suck all the joy out of this holiday. I adopted a rigid routine. First there is the review of last year’s resolutions, the results of which are then tabulated and ranked using an exacting scoring system. This is followed by the christening of a New Year’s motto—a couplet that has to rhyme with the last digit of the forthcoming year. And finally there is the drafting of the coming year’s resolutions, that delicate dance between Benjamin Franklin moral perfectionism and snarky Simon Cowell reality check. These activities leave no time for fun and require enough concentration to rule out heavy drinking, all of which is fine by me. And normally the reassuringly bureaucratic nature of these tasks is enough to blunt my New Year’s anxieties. But this year was different. My only resolution had been to find a label to release my first full-length album, and there was no way around it: I’d failed. Not only that, but I was haunted by the failed resolutions
and unfulfilled mottos of years past. Like how 2004 had been “The Year to Score,” but I hadn’t scored. And 2005 had been “The Year to Arrive,” when clearly the only thing to arrive was 2006. In a last-ditch effort to salvage my year, I sent a note to the label in Acme, Michigan, to check on whether they’d had a chance to listen to my album yet. A man named Steve wrote back right away. Unfortunately, he said, the CD-R I’d burned for him had gotten stuck in his truck stereo, which now required an expensive repair. So no, he hadn’t gotten around to listening yet. Happy holidays.
At least there was one thing to look forward to, and that was Josh’s arrival in Brooklyn. We had been apart for only three weeks, but I had already ginned myself up to high school levels of nostalgia. And I knew Josh was anxious to see me too, mostly because my distressing little text messages (apt fell thru! i have fleas! girl 2 live in box in lvg rm!) had him concerned. Miraculously, just as he was set to arrive, we were granted a last-minute reprieve from Hope Street—our friend Eugene was going out of town with his girlfriend and offered us his cozy apartment in Park Slope. So that’s where we found ourselves on New Year’s Eve: planted on Eugene’s couch with a romantic candle, half a bottle of wine, and a spreadsheet labeled “Resolutions2006.xls” open before us.
“You go first,” I said.
“Okay. Let’s see,” said Josh. “I had ‘The Concept of Intentional Action: A Case Study in the Uses of Folk Psychology’ published in
Philosophical Studies
, and Arudra and I got ‘Intention and Intentional Action: A Cross-Cultural Study’ published in
Journal of Culture and Cognition
, and then that paper I wrote with your dad and Ken, ‘Philosophical Implications of Inflationary Cosmology,’ got accepted in the
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
. Oh, wait, do forthcoming articles count?”
“Forthcoming is okay,” I muttered.
“What about ‘revise and resubmit’?”
“Fine.”
In a way, I hoped that Josh’s list would never end, but eventually it was my turn.
“Well,” I said, in my most businesslike voice. “We all know what we know, right? I think I should just put a big double frowny face next to my New Year’s resolution. And then we should make it bold. And also highlight it in red so that it really stands out.” I was determined to be a man about this.
“Whoa, whoa,” Josh said, clearly taken aback. “Don’t you think that’s a little drastic?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I think you did a lot this year, you have plenty to be proud of … What do you say we just leave that one blank for now?”
“We can’t leave it blank. This is it. The end of double oh six. The day of reckoning.” My voice skipped up a register.
“How about this, let’s just make it … let’s make it a rollover resolution!”
“A
rollover resolution
?”
“Yeah. Like, we’ll just put it on hold for now. Revisit it next year.”
“A resolution is not like a fucking cell-phone minute, you know.”
“Hey—”
“Or some kind of
Twinkie
with a thirty-year shelf life. You know what my motto for 2007 is?”
“Remember your promise—”
“Ready? Okay, here it is: 2007—Fuck it.”
“Maybe we should take a break—”
“I don’t want to take a break! Why is it that you
always
want to take a break? Right when things are
finally
getting interesting?
Right w-wh—” But that’s when the world started spinning and I lost my train of thought.
It was the end of New Year’s Eve. The next morning I woke up, aching and feverish. Weeks of camping out on the air mattress on the floor of my drafty room had finally caught up to me. But Eugene was returning home that night, so my convalescence would have to take place back on Hope Street. When we arrived, the place was empty save for the giant plywood box that stood planted in the middle of the living room. The box had only three walls and no ceiling, which meant that any box-based activities would instantly be broadcast throughout the apartment. Out of necessity, I felt that Sarah and I would have to ban the box girl from ever having sex or talking on the phone. But this conversation could wait. She wasn’t moving in for another week and Sarah wouldn’t be back from visiting her family on Staten Island until the next day. For now we were alone. Josh swaddled me in the two sleeping bags we used to insulate ourselves from the cold air trapped in the mattress and I spent the day in bed. The next morning I woke up, stiff and cold and snot-encrusted. Josh was already awake, peering at me anxiously.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Uh, biddle bedder, I tink,” I said, standing up to stretch a little. I blew my nose. Then I sniffed. From far away, I could sense a sneeze coming. I sniffed again. The sneeze blew through me, and in that moment something very bad happened. I felt eerily numb. Something—I couldn’t say what—in my lower back had torqued and crumpled. A high-pitched whine erupted in both ears, like a hive of cicadas encircling my head, and blood pulsed loudly in my temples. Then, all at once, the world came crashing back in vivid Technicolor and a chasm of pain bigger than the entire state of North Carolina opened before me. In one instant, my resolutions for this year and every year thereafter were atomized and realigned.
Now I had only one goal, which was to return to the pain-free existence I had blissfully enjoyed not one minute ago.
I collapsed onto the air mattress and bounced horribly on the spongy surface before coming to rest. When I hadn’t moved an inch six hours later, Josh announced that he was taking me to the hospital.
“Nope.”
“What do you mean ‘nope’? You can’t even
move
.”
“I’m fine.”
“We’re going back to North Carolina.”
“I’m not going.”
“You can’t stay here. This stupid air mattress is killing you—”
“It’s nice. I like it.”
“Look, I think—”
“Do you want to know what I think?” I interrupted.
“What?”
“
You
are not being nice.”
“I just
spoon-fed you yogurt
—”
“You don’t respect my autonomy.”
“How can I respect your autonomy if you can’t get up?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
 
 
By then Sarah had returned and she had brought her dad back to Hope Street for a visit. Josh opened the door a crack so that I could wave to him from my prone position.
“Hi, Dad!” I yelled as Josh slipped out the door to go buy me a bedpan.
But the next morning, when I hadn’t moved for twenty-four hours, all resistance was gone.
“We’re going home,” Josh said.
“Okay,” I replied meekly. “But I can’t walk.”
“I’ll be back.”
When Josh returned from the hardware store twenty minutes later, he had a four-wheel dolly with him, the kind you use to move furniture. He rolled it up to the foot of the air mattress and looked at me expectantly.
“Are you ready?”
“No,” I said, holding my arms out to him.
And then, without another word, Josh hoisted me up, set me on the dolly, and wheeled me out the door.
 
 
Three weeks later I was sitting in my living room in Carrboro, on the phone with Steve from Acme, Michigan. I’d sent him another copy of my album, to replace the one that broke his car stereo. He’d written back to say he’d played it for his partner and they both liked it, but then another couple of weeks had gone by without word and, again, I’d given up hope.
“I thought it was pretty clear when we asked about your touring plans that we meant yes,” Steve said.
“I guess I was just waiting for that actual word,
yes
.”
“All apologies,” Steve said breezily. “But you know, my partner and I are really excited about everything you guys have going down there in North Carolina.”
“North Carolina?”
“Yeah, it’s a great scene. Do you know Ticonderoga? They’re one of our bands. From Raleigh.”
I could count seven deer grazing in our backyard: four grown deer and three fawn.
“And Schooner, we’re going to release their new record right before yours. A couple of those guys live in Carrboro. You’re practically neighbors.”
“Is that right?” I limped over to the window. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
“Yeah, you should get to know them. I keep telling my wife we should move down there. It’s warm, it’s cheap. And the music scene … I mean, what the hell is it about that place?”
Steve kept talking, and I kept gazing out at our withered lawn and the deer rooting through the long-abandoned vegetable garden, nosing the dead leaves for some fresh green shoot, hoping for an early spring.

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