See Ya

I gave back our apartment keys today. This is the first time I've moved for no reason.

I mean, I moved to go to college, and then again when they were gonna tear down Cheverton, and then to L.A. to make my place in the world. And sure, it's not a bad thing; the new place is bigger, and nicer, and has more fun places for the cats to explore.

But it's weird, you know, to suddenly pull up roots and change addresses and enlist people with pickups and sign leases and paint the walls and everything. To go to all this effort, just out of the blue. If I was moving cross-country I'm sure I'd have pared down my possessions. But across town? Hell, just throw everything in the trunk!

TCF tells the story of moving across campus at college -- he'd just throw stuff in his car, thinking "it's not even a block away, I'll just make as many trips as I need." He didn't bother to Tetris all his stuff together efficiently. So then he's trying to unpack, running up and down stairs like a sucker, you know, with handfuls of pens or whatever, and it still took forever.

But I digress.

There's something about spackling. About covering up all the holes I've made in the walls over the last couple of years. About purposefully trying to erase any evidence of my having been there. About rendering the last few years moot. About covering my tracks. About erasing my history. About starting fresh.

But not quite, because when I pull the screws from the wall, a little plaster buckles outwards ... and even when I sand down the spackle, a little mosquito bite bump remains in the wall.

If I scratch it, my fingers are dusted with plaster. Dust flies as I sand down the wall. Unconsciously, I scratch my nose. Had I been pulled over, I'd look like a cokehead. A cokehead with a trunk full of guns, no less.

That little mosquito bite, or that stain that barely still shows through a new layer of paint, that will last a day and then vanish when they repaint again -- that's my legacy there. The fuzzy corners I put into the cabinets so the doors don't slam. The screws I put into the refrigerator shelf. The wire I used to fix the chain in the toilet tank. I was here. And damn it, I made this place better.

There's something about leaving a place changed.

About looking at the impressions in the carpet where the couch was, or the table, or the bookshelf, and knowing that the impressions won't come out.

About knowing that if I come back next week, the walls will be repainted, the carpet replaced, but maybe, someone soon will check their mail and find something addressed to me ... and briefly, perhaps, they'll wonder:

Who lived here?