Where I've lived

I think I love this apartment, but I can't help wondering, is it a good deal compared to the new-cheap renovations from Craigslist? Am I sleeping better than I have in decades despite or because of being in a room so tiny if I rolled out of bed I'd be in the yard or in my dresser? Should I care that anyone walking by can look right in since I keep the blinds all the way up?

I've never lived in a mainstream apartment. In LA, from my teens to my early 20s, I lived in the following:

A pimp-infested building off Hollywood Blvd with my girlfriend Denise that a roadie for the band Rufus let us stay in while he was on the road. This was perhaps the most mainstream of apartment layouts with a new-cheap renovation.

A room in an enormous pink stucco house on Fountain Blvd in Hollywood, owned by born-again Christians with strict rules about who resided there and who played the organ or watched tv in the main room with tenants. Also in the house was a lesbian that I tried to have a crush on because it was so convenient but she was bland and doughy and made the same stir-fried vegetables with brown rice every night and then smoked a cigarette on the back steps.

A studio apartment over a garage on N. Hayworth in Hollywood with a huge eat-in kitchen that I never once used and built-ins in the short hall from the main room to the bathroom. I had a twin bed and a desk without a chair, lots of clothes and shoes, collections of license plates and snowflake shakeups, and not much else. I spent most of my time in a Beverly Hills swinger mansion owned by Bernie Cornfeld, formerly owned by George Hamilton, where the man I worshipped, Howard Sackler, a playwright almost 25 years my senior, who is now dead, lived in a room over the garage. I once entertained a jockey in my studio apartment and he left his wingtips before heading to the race track. They were the tiniest men's shoes I ever saw.

A terrific one-bedroom apartment on Horn Ave in Hollywood on a steep street above Tower Records and the Sunset Strip. I lived there, in the front apartment above the garage, with my older boyfriend, a skinny British man, also named Robin, who was a wannabe movie producer but really a petty thief who stole credit cards. Later in life he became a born-again Christian and a saxophone player. The apartment had a view of the Hollywood Hills. Next door were gorgeous and trendy Italian lesbians who were moving back to Europe and sold me many things from their apartment including the beautifully framed botanical drawing of calla lillies by Thalia Lincoln, 1973, that I'm looking at right now hanging in my kitchen.

The top floor of a duplex house on La Jolla in West Hollywood facing what was then and continues to be a well known and active gay male cruising alley immortalized in an awful 80s film called Making Love featuring Harry Hamlin. The very weird, overly made-up, slutty old landlady and her German psychiatrist sometimes-boyfriend didn't mention that come sundown, the alley lit up with rowdy, horny, drunk gay men; cops with bullhorns, and blaring car radios. I don't think I slept for 2 years.

In 1984 I moved to NYC and lived in an apartment on Mott St. with my boyfriend. It was a four-floor walkup with a view of the lovely, tree-shaded old cemetery at Old St. Patrick's cathedral, a homey little church. I found the apartment by asking in Little Italy delis and bodegas and was approved by a jury of old Italian women in sidewalk lawn chairs after convincing them that I was Italian and married to my Italian boyfriend.

After meeting Russell a couple years later, we lived in his Soho loft that has never stopped morphing to make room for me, then our kids, then his wife Diana, and always his studio. There was the house in Bellport, a 1930s cape, walking distance from the bay. In Northampton I lived in an oddly shaped 1890s tiny Victorian that I never really liked except for my sunny office -- my first "room of her own" that was no ones but mine, though it was pilaged by exes who looked for clues to who I am.

Now I'm in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The neighborhood is pristine and out my door, to the left, down the street, is one of the most beautiful parks I've ever see; a Frederick Law Olmsted classic, Prospect Park. Mine is a garden apartment in a row of brownstones. I, and the other garden apartment dwellers, live beneath our wealthy brownstone landlords. In a sense, I am living in the garage.

waiting/found

What I'm waiting for:
1. Cherry wood bedframe that's too big for my bedroom; purchased by ex-ex as guilt gift on her way out. Sell this on Craigslist. Stand to get less than it's worth.
2. Park Avenue woman who Craigslisted table of my dreams to get her antique from the "Nantucket ferry" so she'll sell me the table already. Wants way less than it's worth if I ever really get it.
3. The three big suitcases of clothes and bedding to unpack themselves.
4. A drill to make holes in concrete and plaster so I could hang pictures and feel like this is home.
5. The dogs and I need a routine.
6. Moving-in to be finished so I could really focus on getting work.

What I found:
1. NYers are as nice and chatty as ever.
2. I can sleep really well in a teeny space.
3. Weetzie has two destinations: the dog boutique where she was given a treat 10 days ago; the dog beach n Prospect Park. Roxy is still perplexed by everything.
4. Having a bike would make life easier.

kindness of strangers

It's time for me to write again. I've turned a corner. I live here; not only in the NYC I'm Home weepy-eyed nirvana, that I've been writing about on Facebook, but also in the Where Am I, What Am I Doing, Did I Make The Right Decision, I'm Alone way.

I live on a beautiful street. My side of the block is mostly brownstones, single family with a garden apartment like mine. Small apartment buildings and condos are on the other side. At the end of the street is Prospect Park, my refuge.

Retirees and young couples with kids live in the brownstones. A couple with a country home own this house. I live beneath them in my garden pied-a-terre and some days the class difference gets to me. I should be in the main house. But that is not who I am. I'm too unconventional, too unemployable, too queer.

These are the things that have happened since I've been here:

I moved my things in an open-air truck with a flea market/scrap metal couple who came to my tag sale in Northampton. The truck got stuck in traffic in a torrential downpour on I95 and everything I own was drenched, ruined or salvagable, but marked by water in some way. I had to throw out many books, photos, clothes. I've thought about this watery start. Why.

My neighbor across the street, John, came over and helped Theo and the movers. I asked him about four times who he was because I was catatonic from the disaster of my things. A few days later he invited me to dinner. I love his family. Jewish wife, glasses-wearing brainy Brooklyn kids, a family. The food was good and I belonged. He gave me the keys to his apartment building and told me to use the laundry facilities in the basement to dry all my clothes. This is what gives me my unwavering faith that humans are at their core, good.

Since I took over this apartment from a friend who bought a place with a June 8 closing, who would not put her things in storage, I had to live with my things crammed amongst her things for one week.

So really, I started living here 6 days ago.

the recent and regrettable past

Writing about what I just went through to get out of Northampton makes me freeze, so I haven't been writing. This is the wrong tactic altogether since writing puts experience into another dimension and helps dissolve it's power to wound. I'm going to pound it out right now so it will stop troubling me.

First there was the issue of the car. I leased a car for the ex, ignoring her history of deception and lies. I blame myself for my persistent, naive belief that everyone is potentially good. She didn't make the payments, damaged my credit, crashed the car, lied to my insurance company, did not repair the car. It cost me $5500 to fix the car and get out of the lease. Even to the last day in Northampton I thought she would try to pay me back. I can't shake this naive side of me.

Then there were my home buyers. Two greedy, unattractive lesbian bullies bankrolled by dad with drummed up syndromes and allergies. From the start they were preposterous: they'd offered far less that the house was worth and wanted me to clean up my neighbor's yard. I declined. They came back; I didn't have to clean the yard. I countered with a higher figure. We met towards the middle. They had three inspections all of which meant I had to take the dogs and leave the house for 2-3 hours. Post inspections, they wanted me to fix the roof, remove a tree because of the bees (allergy, you know), and pay for a bunch of other things. I finally settled on a figure that was so low and not much more than what they originally wanted.

Money is unfortunately a source of power. Not the only source. My attitude in life, the pleasure I get from meeting people, my close friends and children, my ability to love deeply, and creativity -- these make me feel fortunate, and that makes me feel powerful. But I am not covetous, nor greedy, nor a person who is motivated by money, so I get run over easily. I have both a finely tuned bullshit meter and an override button. In Northampton I have been trusting of the absolutely wrong people. And they were all lesbians.

So the buyers exhausted me with demands and threats -- they'd walk if I didn't let them in my house a total of six more times with contractors. They snuck in while I was gone for the weekend. They wanted the closing to be hours before I could actually leave the house. I didn't allow that and as revenge, they charged me an extra $1000 as I was driving with my son to Brooklyn because of a few things I left in the house. I caved. My lawyer said that in 34 years of practice, he never came across buyers so awful, so spiteful. I don't have the ability to stand up to bullying. I'm the type who hands my purse to the thugs.

Now I'm here. I'm in Brooklyn, on a beautiful street, near a beautiful park, with kind and helpful neighbors. I am so lucky. Those awful people in Northampton can't touch me now and they didn't damage me. They took a lot of money from me and I don't have much, but I am rich in other ways.

As my friend, Em said, this is chapter one.