It doesn’t smell like my apartment when I come home in the evening. It doesn’t ever smell like somewhere I live. I can’t identify that smell specifically, it’s certainly not me, but here somehow lacks anything personal in non-specific ways.
I struggle with the keys every time I come back, for at least five minutes each time. I still can’t remember which side of me the toilet paper is on. I haven’t unpacked because with each new box comes something I remember I shouldn’t have held on to. I turn the taps the wrong way, and still have no idea which is cold or hot in the bathroom. I have no salt or pots or remote for my DVD player. I lack a bath mat, blinds for a single window in the apartment, or a mop, and the overwhelming smell in the bathroom, the mixture of cigarettes and cleaning products, makes me light-headed.
There was a mix-up at the hardware store and somehow my off-white wall paint for my kitchen became a pink and now I live in Barbie’s Dream Kitchen. More pictures to follow.
Tonight gave way to a two hundred dollar drink and dinner and desert bill at one of those astoundingly fancy restaurants in the old port which I couldn’t afford, didn’t pay a dime for, and barely left enough for the custom designed drinks (at $15 a piece) as a tip. They all tasted like washing-up liquid anyway.
Insects in the city are so very different than those in the suburbs I used to haunt.
