[Personal] [Writing] Twenty

It occurred to me earlier today that this month marks twenty years since I moved into my own shoebox apartment in the Back Bay neighborhood in Boston. I was well aware quite some months ago that it was my twentieth reunion year for college (which I did not attend, due to various mundane reasons), and I often thought of 1993 as a sort of a dark period for me so it's probably for the best that I didn't think about it for some time. Let's just say I had a lot of personal issues to work out.  Nonetheless, I think of this apartment as the first chapter in a hell of a long personal story about where I was then versus where I am now, both physically and mentally.

Off to the side there, that's 211-213 Beacon Street in Back Bay. In September of 1993 I moved in to the top rear apartment looking out over the alley way at 213 (the door on the right).  Mind you, that's a five-story brownstone that's been there for decades, has no elevator, and pretty high ceilings.  Shlepping up and down those stairs in the heat of summer and the freezing winter could kick your ass pretty quick if you weren't in shape.

I grabbed this apartment through my then friend Jon Alex, a guy I'd known since sophomore year in college when we lived across the hall from each other. I'd spent the summer at a four-bedroom apartment sublet on Symphony Drive with my senior year roommate Pete, but as he was heading elsewhere and I was staying in town, I had to find a new place right quick. JA suggested I rent out a place in his building and got me hooked up. The place was tiny--about 200 square feet with a hint of a kitchen, and a prefab loft built to be used as a crawlspace/sleeping area. It was a laughable $500 a month, but it was in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Boston and close to downtown. This picture isn't the apartment in question, but one two floors down, and it kinda gives you the idea of how much room I didn't have:



That's about half the apartment.  Yeah, I learned to live Spartan pretty damn quick there. [JA on the other hand had a slightly larger apartment and, given his upbringing and his style, had it decked out with movie posters and other toys that he may or may not have been able to afford.] I also had to do some heavy-duty job searching around that time as well...I'd just gotten fired from my job at DeLuca's on Charles Street (for the record, I played hooky one day after not missing any days or being late--the manager was just a short-tempered jackass that fired workers at the drop of a hat), so I had to find another job right quick. I soon found one at the Longwood Ave branch of the Harvard Coop Bookstore, where I stayed for about six months. After a few dead end temp positions, I landed a pathetic but bill-paying job at Brigham's Ice Cream on Cambridge Street. Hey--it wasn't as if I was too lazy to look for jobs at least somewhat related to my degree...it was just that they weren't there. The 1993-1994 job outlook in the US was dead flat--I couldn't find jack shit. That's exactly why I took these jobs.

I got into a few relationships then as well. One brief one that I probably should have taken a hell of a lot more seriously, and one I probably shouldn't have had at all. And there was my friendship with JA that had its high points and its low points. It wasn't until a few years later that I made a lot of stupid decisions at the time, most likely out of desperation. Life goes on, though.

At the same time, I looked on the bright side. That's also about the time I started renting out all sorts of anime--not just for entertainment but because I was fascinated by the differences between American and Japanese storytelling. I also started going for a hell of a lot of walks. I'd have five bucks and a pack of cigarettes to my name until next paycheck, so I got a LOT of late night walking in. I'd mostly hang out on Boylston and Newbury Streets, maybe venture over to Kenmore or Harvard Square now and again, but for the most part I'd just walk. Walk walk walk. And think. I did a lot of thinking then. Figuring shit out in my head, getting over emotional crap I'd dealt with over the last few years...and plotting. I did a lot of story plotting then.

I knew then that I was a writer. A fucking shitty one at that point, but I was willing to learn. I had the Infamous War Book and its countless attempts at revision/rewrite. I had the makings of Two Thousand, an unfinished coming-of-age novel that probably hit too close to home at the time for me to be able to finish it. Plus the seeds of a budding SF universe had been sown and would MUCH later become my trilogy. I had a lot of other half-baked ideas, a bunch of poetry, my old typewriter (I was too broke for a $1000 PC at that point), my radio and my music collection. Twenty years ago, I was consistently broke, constantly frustrated, totally directionless. I was at the ground floor, but I was willing to forge ahead.

* * *

Twenty years later, and I'm currently sitting at my computer listening to KSCU online while I write this. I'm in a much better frame of mind. I'm happily married, and living in San Francisco within view of Golden Gate Bridge. I'm in Spare Oom, our back bedroom I've claimed as my office as well as our library, a room that's actually larger than that shoebox apartment I moved into twenty years ago.  And I still have my music.

I'd like to think I'm happy where I am now. There's still a lot of room for improvement on a personal level, but for the most part, I think I'm pretty damned lucky that it ended up this way.

And I still write.