Movin' A Little Up

So I'm all moved in and Koreatown is a room in my head with a closed and quiet door.

I haven't lived anywhere socially desirable since my parents paid what I was too young to know was an ungodly sum to cram me into a small apartment in the East Village during college. We'd drink in one of the local bars who didn't ask how old we were or didn't give a shit and then stumble the couple of blocks back to our apartment where the doin' it up large would continue until it needed to stop. The place was tiny - my room was what was sliced out of an already small living room, and our kitchen area was technically a kitchenette, or female kitchen, but it was close to everything and convenient as hell and friends never need much convincing to come and detach with us. Because the rent was being paid I didn't have to grasp that it kinda takes a lot of money to maintain in the East Village and that once that thing with the planes and the buildings was over, I was soon going to be an L train and 30 minutes of frustration away from everything.

And this trend continued on and on deep in the Puerto Rico area of Brooklyn for four years until I decided that leaving was the best plan and I packed what I could into a car and left.

Arriving in Los Angeles I accepted a quick sublet with a friend of a friend whose parents bought her a condo they clearly wanted for themselves in a comically planned-out housing complex in Culver City, hardly a place anyone without a handicap either golf or physical would want to be in. It had machine-controlled brooks that would stop their babbling promptly at eight, which was surreal.

The sublet didn't work out very well, and after a dispute where she informed me that I wasn't allowed to have girls over because "That's like my mom's bed and that's just graosss", so I bit my tounge, hopped on Craigslist, and called the first place I saw. An out-of-it guy picked up and seemed just stoned enough that I knew I could live with him. Half an hour later I was in the living room of 136 N. Edgemont Street and only because I had cash and could move in immediately he stopped strumming his guitar long enough to say "Uh then yeah."

And it was right back to the outskirts of the ethnic neighborhood for me. The place was good-enough, but the bathroom was anemic and for whatever reason had a tub with a separate shower area and while this would have been fine for a bath-loved the boiler was too weak to heat an appropriate amount of water and at about your balls it began to get very cold.

I stuck it out though, and when my cousin Jesse moved down from Seattle God love him he stuck it through too - and with the smaller room. We didn't have any options, the lease I had signed expired in June which meant at least another half a year of the sno-cone man and screaming Mexican children playing all day and night right outside my bedroom window, an actuality that always made me extra guilty when masturbating.

And when it was time to look for a place Jesse and I decided to only target the areas we actually wanted to live in - basically the Hollywood / Loz Feliz area. After a suitable amount of searching we settled on the place we currently live - a great 2 bedroom 2 bathroom a couple of blocks away from lounges, Thai Food, and places people actually want to be rather than having relegated themselves to.

We got briefly sidetracked by a chance Saturday look at an apartment in a building called The Chateau, which my cousin still calls Le Chateau, a complex that looked like it housed the casts of this years NBC pilots. The landlord was young and strict and every window in the apartment opened on to a granite hallway but I'd be lying if my cousin and I weren't ready to sign on the dotted line when we saw the sheer number of Little Girles walking around. Vagina, or the false promise of Vagina, will make a man make some real hasty decisions. Our application was denied though as the party looking at it after us was able to get money orders into the landlord five minutes before Jesse and I and thats only becuase Rockin' Ralph's money order machine was under the weather.

And so it was with a proud amazement that last night, the first night spent in my new apartment, I walked outside I was almost hit by an attractive female hipster who was riding her bicycle for enjoyment and not because someone was pursuing her. And around the corner people were having drinks at a hip lounge and not the pool room in the back of the questionable bodega. I had finally situated myself in a place I'd be happy to talk about without an addendum of disclaimers explaining why I didn't really mind the constant screaming and Gay Guy and his loud motorcycle. This is where I am, and here, is where I want to be. It feels odd, like life is shaking me saying "Seriously man, try being an adult? Just try it." And maybe the adult in me is going, "I can live with a dishwasher... I can uh yeah that's just fine."

I'd like to continue this trend of upgrading the components in my life-computer. And in my real computer, but lets not get ahead of myself. I think situation plays a large role in definition and now my definition includes a cold jacuzzi and lots of Armenian people. Which is just fine with semi-adult me... who is letting a machine wash his dishes as he posts this.

-Ben