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I walked by your old house today.
The last time I saw it five years ago, you were in prison and I was selling your car for you. It was dark and the buyer was looking at it with a flashlight. Your former roommate was standing around trying to help with the details.
Your house was white then. The paint was peeling and the front stoop was covered in cigarette butts and empty packs… lighters… beer cans… a stray Jameson bottle in the yard.
If you could call it a yard. It was more like a dirt lot that had been attacked by dog crap and crab grass. The front gate was broken, the fence rotten. If you dared to go into the back yard, you were greeted with more dog crap and very tall grass, trees that had fallen but were tangling into each other. A person could get lost out there easily.
The front door didn’t work from the outside so it was open most of the time or everyone used the kitchen door. If all else failed or everyone was too hammered to bring their keys, you could always jimmy a window open and send someone though to the inside.
When I used to hang out at your house I’d help sometimes by loading the dishwasher or making your bed, monitoring the laundry… I never knew who was living there, who was supposed to be there, the cast of characters that floated through that house was colorful to say the least.
Your bedroom floor was a trophy closet. So many strange articles of women’s clothing, their owners either coming back to leave more or running to exile so no one would ever know they had been there and walked through the evidence of your many crimes.
I never left anything there, aside from my sense of right and wrong. That was outside on the porch with a rusted lawn chair we were all convinced would kill us one day.
The bathroom that you had to take your cell phone to if you wanted out, as the doorknob would come off from the inside all of the time… the tub that would never stay hot…
It was the house that nothing ever worked in, including us.
Walking by today on my way from an appointment on the same street, I see the house now. Perfect white picket fence. Perfect yard, the yard is so perfect it looks like astro turf. The house is this beautiful blue gray now with white trim. The driveway is no longer cluttered with your dead cars and parts of various former roommates trashed vehicles. Just a nice older pick up truck sitting there looking totally in place.
Your house survived the damage you did.
So did I.
