I read somewhere that we hate our parents' architecture, but we love our grandparents' architecture. So I guess that means that since it's 2010 now we can begin to start appreciating things built in the 1950s like
Clinton Court.
I don't like the carpet or the gas heat that probably isn't included in your rent, but not having upstairs neighbors is a definite plus. I'm normally not a big fan of large expanses of fertilized lawns, but something about the grass at Clinton Court makes me want to play lawn darts.
Sometimes when I'm scrolling through craigslist or doing my market surveys (when I have to go actually visit places like this pretending I'm looking for an apartment), I like to imagine that I
really am looking for a new place to live. I'm fresh out of grad school, say Boise State or maybe Wyoming. I'm looking for a job in teaching but my real passion is starting a biodynamic goat cheese operation. Brenda, the landlord, is talking up the new energy-efficient windows but my eyes are fixed on the girl fumbling with her keys two apartments over. Her shoulder-length dark brown hair just barely obscures the top of the tattoo on the nape of her neck that reminds me of a mid-1990s corporate logo that I can't quite place. Sega Dreamcast? As a single-serving cup of yogurt drops from her grocery bag she turns her head and I notice that her too-pale face is framed perfectly by uneven home-cut bangs. The yogurt cup has cracked on the side after impacting the concrete, but only slightly so nothing has leaked out. She picks it up and sets it on the edge of the arm of the antique-ish chair that was obviously left behind by the previous tenants: It's sun-baked to the point that the grain is beginning to crack at the edges, but it looks comfortable enough. With her free hand she works the door open and disappears for a few seconds and then pokes her head and arm back out the door to retrieve the yogurt cup. Our eyes meet briefly and I turn away pretending to admire the obviously new polished nickel lever lock that Brenda has installed after each move-out. Yes, Brenda, I would like to take an application. As a matter of fact, would you mind if I filled this out right now? Am I first in line for this place? Brenda subconsciously adjusts her frosted blond hair and glances down at her heels and says yes, this apartment is yours if you pass the crime screening.
As I'm moving in 4 days later, I realize that the only piece of actual furniture that I've managed to hold on to since moving out of the dorms in Boise or Wyoming or wherever is a handed-down aluminum-legged dining room table with a formica kidney-shaped pattern on the top of it--and three of the possible four matching chairs. My major was in agriculture, not in moving furniture, so I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the table inside. Professor Channing knew everything about goats, but all those years grading papers in grad school taught me nothing about moving furniture.
"Having trouble?" says the throaty yet feminine voice behind me. I'm immediately startled and turn around to realize it's yogurt-bangs. The first thing I notice are the wool socks. It's pushing 80 degrees and she's wearing wool socks. "You have to turn it on its side," she says. And before I can even react she snubs her cigarette out on my sidewalk. I say
my sidewalk because even though you can't get to her apartment without walking in front of her apartment, I assumed that this patch of cement was unofficially mine. It's strange with these 1950s places: I automatically assume that the sidewalk extending from the edge of my bedroom window to the opposite edge of my door is both community space and not. I reserve the right to put a folding REI chair there, and I expect no one to violate my perceived space. Yogurt-bangs simultaneously desecrates and solidifies this preconceived notion with two quick twists of her ankle. She picks up the outside end of the table, looks expectantly at me to grab my end, and then twists it 90 degrees.
"Now go left. No, your left," she says as we make the corner around the almond-colored Frigidaire and finally put it in a place that seems logical to me. I pretend to make sure that the legs of the table are in line with wall and notice that she's wearing bicycle shorts beneath her goldenrod and light purple dress. In a flash I remember my girlfriend--no, my ex-girlfriend now--back in Wyoming and unconsciously make a bare thigh comparison. Justine was tan, smooth, magazine quality. She was perfect in so many ways, and ever since we broke up two years ago I cringe with heart-broken longing whenever I smell her perfume. We had an inside joke about it and called it "Vanillaroma." To this day, I can't bake cookies without reeling back in regret.
I instantly pull myself up from under the table, embarrassed that perhaps yogurt-bangs caught me looking up her skirt. "Water pressure's pretty good here," she says. "Welcome to the neighborhood."
Woah. Sorry. Got a little carried away there. Would be a neat craigslist ad though.
