Revisiting an Old Friend

Last week, before leaving for Seattle for ten days, I did what all people dread doing. I had to go back to my old apartment, which has callously gone on existing without me. In fact, I had to pick up some of my mail that the U.S. postal service somehow forgot to forward. Friends had told me “it’s so simple to forward mail online now,” but I was skeptical. When I moved into my place, I took over the lease from my sister who had lived happily in the Sedgewick Apartments for 7 years or so. When she moved out, she had her mail forwarded. Although, as most sisters do, we have different first names, all of my mail was still forwarded along to her new address. Luckily, she moved only 6 blocks away and we worked together so I wasn’t really inconvenienced.

In this case though, I really had no desire to go back and see how everything had changed. My rent-controlled family heirloom wasn’t mine anymore.

I waited outside my old building for someone to let me in and then sardined myself into the elevator with 2 other people and pressed the 5th floor button. In true form, between the 3rd and 4th floors, the elevator stopped.

“Omigod! Omigod!” A 20-something girl and (clearly) a new resident started to squeal to her dumbfounded boyfriend. Since she was standing right in front of the buttons, I scooted her out of the way, flipped a switch down and up (which momentarily rang the alarm and freaked the girl out more), pressed the 4 button and manually pulled the door open.

“Does that happen a lot?” She was wide-eyed and walking toward the stairwell to hike the remaining 4 floors.

When I got to my apartment I had to knock on the door. Everything in the kitchen and living room were the same. My roommate Harriet decided to move into my room (since it was slightly larger with eastern light) when I left so I was masochistically drawn down the hall to see the changes.

To say that Harriet and I have different styles would be a gross underestimation. My room had modular furniture, colorful paintings by Johanna and a giant green metal wall-hanging representing a bird holding the word LOVE. The O was, as you might expect, replaced with a flower. What wasn’t from Ikea was from ebay. Harriet’s room had a matching set of dark-wooded furniture. The headboard had an ornate flower and vine design and her floral, mauve Laura Ashley bedspread matched her dust ruffle, which matched her curtains. When we had our housewarming, my painfully hip, Icelandic-born friend walked into Harriet’s room and with a smirk said, “this is your room, right?”

I had taken great pains when decorating my room and went so far as to have a Feng Shui specialist give me some pointers. Well, that last part is a little misleading. The truth of the matter is that at my old job I had a crazy boss who had crazy side jobs. She was not only a part-time clown named Rose, but also a Feng Shui Specialist. At work, she insisted that we all put 7 dimes in the left-hand corner of our desks to help with sales: “it’s very important to have positive energy in your wealth and prosperity quadrant!” Boss usually worked from about 10:30 until 3:30, because before and after work she would be on calls, or getting a manicure or even at times a colonic. And if you’re wondering, I didn’t want to know about that last part either, but she told me anyway. On the rare occasion that she would stay later than I did, I would show up to work the next day and strange things would have transpired.

One time a little red elephant figurine appeared on my desk. Occasionally, I would return to my desk to find the elephant had moved or was facing a different direction than he had been. When I showed Boss letters that I planned to mail to potential advertisers, she would take out a crystal, close her eyes and move the gem back and forth over the freshly-printed pages. My friend Peapod used to work with me and he and Boss had an especially volatile relationship. He would turn to me around 11 some days and say, “I think Boss must have just stepped off the elevator. I can smell the patchouli from here.” Boss once told us about the power of seejuls (your guess on the spelling is as good as mine, but I’ve googled every variant and come up with nothing, so they may not even exist). During the seejul, you write what you want on a piece of paper and then burn it.

Peapod immediately burned a seejul for a new job. When he didn’t get so much as an interview within a couple of weeks, he was convinced that Boss knew about his aspirations and was burning anti-seejuls.

One day in August, Boss offered to come to Peapod’s and my apartment to make our rooms Feng Shui-friendly. It was a work day, so naturally Peapod and I agreed if only to get out of making cold calls or staring vacantly at our computer screens. Peapod’s apartment was first and I took the metro to Arlington at 10 to witness the freak show. Peapod has a reputation for being quite messy and so he had been tidying up for an hour or 2, but the place still looked recently tornadoed. Boss came, drew Peapod a diagram, told him to hang 6 crystals and then peeked under his bed.

“PEAPOD!” She was aghast. “It’s one thing that you don’t have a headboard, but how can you function with all of that junk under your bed?” She knelt down and started to pull things out.

“Oh I was looking for that,” he said, casually picking up a single brown shoe. Then a look of horror crept across his face. “Stop! Stop! You don’t have to do it! Now that I know, I’ll just do it later.”

It was evident to any normal person why Peapod wanted her to stop: he had something under his bed that he didn’t want her to find. Like most 24-year-old males that could really only be one very obvious thing. Boss didn’t notice the desperation in his voice however and went on, undaunted by the mess. Peapod managed to talk her down just in time. When we left, his floor was a mess from all of the junk under his bed and I could already envision him kicking everything back under the moment Boss left.

Afterwards, the three of us went to my apartment. Boss took one look at my roommate’s bedroom and stood horrified in front of her bed. Harriet had a famous poster above her headboard of workmen eating lunch on a half-built skyscraper. Ten or so men sit on a thin beam overlooking Manhattan, munching on sandwiches.

“She has men dangling over her while she sleeps! She must really get around!” Boss said. I told Boss that in fact the weekend before, Harriet had drunkenly invited a guy she knew home with her. He had taken one look at her bedspread and said, “hey! This looks like something my grandma has!” Harriet was not amused.

I took the appointment slightly more seriously than Peapod and actually listened to some of Boss’ suggestions. She informed me that my love and marriage quadrant was in my closet. This came as no surprise to me given my pathetic lack of indiscretions. She recommended hanging a few crystals and putting “pairs” of things near my love and marriage quadrant.

A week after boss Feng Shui-ed my sister’s room (in the very same apartment), Johanna met John. They were married a couple years later. So, I hopped on ebay, bought a tiny retro sculpture of a pair of owls and my coveted green LOVE sign. A week later I had a date with a Mexican lawyer, which thankfully didn’t pan out since his work visa had run out. The week after that the Scooby Snacks revealed his fondness for redheads and, more specifically, me. I guess you could say that Boss is better at Feng Shui than she was at being a boss.

After my meticulous hanging of ebay purchases, I wondered if it would be hard to look at a recently Harriet-ized room. It turns out that she had bought a pretty new bedspread with some funky curtains to match. Her furniture was smaller than mine, which made the room look huge. It looked so different, that it became just another D.C. apartment with hardwood floors, crown moldings and high ceilings.

It’s easy to forget about all of the things I hated about the place when I was so busy missing it. There was always dust everywhere; it was way too hot in the summer even with my noisy A/C unit; there was no disposal, no dishwasher. When I left with my mail in hand, I felt comforted. I remembered moments, mid-swiffer, when I wanted to move into a newer, nicer place. All in all though, I loved my endearing roommate, the hip location, the great view of heat lightning from my bedroom window. And now, when I pass the Sedgewick I look at it fondly and decisively like some people might reminisce about an ex-boyfriend: “I loved you once, despite all of your faults.”























So long old friend.