This is the closest I will ever get to MTV Cribs, and I am fine with that. I want to tell you about my trip east last month, but first, I must tell you about the refrigerator.
I needed a new one for a while. Nothing could stay in my freezer for more than a few days without tasting like it. The fridge was somehow both so cold that it froze my oat milk, and it was continuously leaking. I have rent control and the resultant cheap landlord, so I waited until I felt like I’d built a solid case to say something. That’s when I discovered a refrigerator clause in my lease. If I had known I had to pay for it myself, I would have bought one a long time ago instead of waiting until one of my favorite astrologers said it was the right time to attend to leaks, literal and otherwise. Mine was literal.
In one of those late-night impulse buy spirals that I know you can relate to based on the number of predawn last-minute inquiries I wake up to every day, I bought a new fridge. This is fine, good, even healthy, except that I scheduled it for the day before I left for my tour.
And then there was the tour itself–something I built around a bachelor party I’d planned and was no longer attending, but didn’t cancel. I didn’t want to let down my two Eastern CT regulars, and I wanted to see friends and eat East Coast Chinese food.
The morning before I was supposed to leave, I paid junk removal people to take the refrigerator away and spent the rest of the morning cleaning up six years of spills and cat toys. The leakage had gone under a cabinet and merged with the pee that leeches from my dog’s potty pads; it was revolting, and made me reflect upon the fact that my only incall regular this year was a former cokehead. I am proud to announce that my apartment is now safe for people who still have a complete sense of smell, but let us continue the tale.
Everything I didn’t throw out, I organized in coolers on the kitchen table. I had a terrible feeling, and called Home Depot a few times to make sure the delivery was coming today.
It did arrive… at the very end of the delivery window. However, the delivery driver refused to bring it up the 12 steps to my apartment (this is not an AA joke, but a fact) and generally acted surprised that second-floor apartments without elevators exist. Beyond frustrated, I canceled the entire order, totally fucking myself out of any “let us make it right” perks. There were only so many times I could stand to hear someone tell me they didn’t understand why it was such an issue for them to redeliver it tomorrow. Well, first of all, I don’t trust you now, and second of all, I’ll be on a plane, Cheryl.
This, and I had just begun to pick proofs from my latest Dean Capture photo shoot, and was afraid to abandon the project. I was too upset to go to bed at a reasonable time, and I also felt like I couldn’t leave without buying another refrigerator.
It occurred to me that the hotel money that first night was already lost. That losing it, along with work, wasn’t worth destabilizing myself. That whatever weird money thing I was coming up against in my head wasn’t real, it was some boomer bullshit from my parents, the old, “You made your bed and now you have to lie in it.” No I fucking don’t, Gerald. So I rescheduled. I shortened the trip.
I stayed up without worrying about losing sleep. I picked out all my photos, and I bought a beautiful refrigerator.
I scheduled it to arrive the Sunday after I returned. It did, beautifully and completely unceremoniously, as if my Mars isn’t even in Leo, as if it wasn’t also my Mars return.
I tipped those delivery drivers like they were shaking their boobs in my face.
The door has SO much storage for the ungodly amount of seltzer I require, for the condiments I’m more likely to wipe down and scan for expiration dates than finish, and for my supplements, which, if they weren’t in the door of my fridge, I would forget exist and never take.
And my popsicles? Immaculate.
