We would visit on weekends, admire the space that was lacking in our townhouse, and began furnishing the place. Leather couches, two big screen TVs – the pride of Japan – and a billiard table for drunken egotism to shine. But then we forgot about it. About it all. And five, six, seven years later, it remained “the new house.” A joke, I suppose, though we rarely laughed anymore. Any of us.
I began hating the place. Every layer of dust was a sign of neglect, to the house, to common sense, and to me. Ex-boyfriends of the former sleazy Russian inhabitants left violent, threatening voicemails, and once someone with half a thought noticed the lack of occupancy, the two televisions were stolen. The new house lost its charm and became a hassle, an annoyance, and a hollow reminder of failure.
Six years in, and six months into my friendship with Dennis, he caught mention of the place, “You’ve got a totally empty house?”
I hated even talking about the place, “Well, it’s furnished, but we just haven’t moved in yet.”
He was obviously struck by the concept, as a change in topic of conversation became impossible, “Let’s fucking go there, man! Party mansion!”
Exactly what I worked to avoid – word spreading that I had a deserted house, clearly a ticket to suburban underage drinking.
“Absolutely not,” I proclaimed, not looking up from rolling a Bugler cigarette, “I don’t need drunk bastards wrecking the place.” This was especially a concern as Dennis had a history of learning of his yesterdays tomorrow. “Find your own intoxicant palace.”
He was stubborn, “I did. Now let’s go.”
Max and Jake, brothers with whom I spent all my time, were on board with the plan immediately. The anti-Semitic Albanians I worked with bought me the beer and vodka.
And so began the culture, tradition, and romance of the new house. Alcohol, cigarettes, brotherhood, marijuana, teenage nihilism, LSD, amphetamine, and a strange understanding of the oasis that we lived in.
Sometimes we talked about love:
“I think, I think love is like some sort of massive…respect,” I’d say.
“Exactly. I’ll go with you on that. When me and Tina were together it was this naïve symbiotic…” Max would say, his mouth gnawing on itself, speed in his blood and in his eyes.
Jake and Dennis would dissect hip-hop for hours, both too drunk to admit it.
When Marcus from school would come by, we’d discuss politics, culture, and human nature:
“…And since it developed the way it did, isn’t that exactly how it had to be?” he would ask, eyes wide with anticipation of an answer.
I would follow, “But think of all the tiny trivial events, God knows which ones, that made it that way. Isn’t that just fucked up?”
And Max played the devil’s advocate sometimes, pondering impossible ideas, “But who says any of that happened? If we’re perceiving a certain event differently from our fucking history textbooks, then isn’t that reality, to me at least?”
Hours upon hours of conversation, lost to the walls of the house, thrown out in cigarette butts over the fence.
Silence carried its own beauty too. Waking up on the fifth morning of a five night drinking binge before anyone else, there would be that silent, grossly bright-sky cigarette on the deck, accepting the hangover I deserved. Lamentations of the past few days, all chemically fused into one, and pure bliss at the beauty of the nothingness of it all.
This continued for a summer. And then weekends of the new school year. Faces changed, came, stayed, went. It was all the same.
The new house is hardly new anymore, but despite all, I still can barely stand the place. I still remember the neglect, the house that was the punch-line to some cosmic joke. But these people here with me, restless brothers and sisters within these walls, laugh together.
I guess I’ve found the right light for this picture of mine.
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