My website is 10 years old this month. I started it on an AOL server when I was 16. Holy crap! I lost a ton of my archives when my parents canceled AOL, but some remain and are better left unread.
I was – is this the best way to put it? – a handful in high school. I was little and redheaded, a drama kid, a crier, shy as hell and horribly in love with my flamboyant boyfriend (who is now gay, working in fashion in New York and, if the sixteen MySpace photos of his ass are any indication, slowly losing his mind). I switched over to my own domain in 2001, but there’s no need to do a quick run-down of now and then. I’ve done that and done that. I can’t even think of anything cute or commemorative to do for this anniversary, so here’s a picture of me when I was 16:
I tried to find a comparable photo taken from this year, but I’ll just settle for a recent picture where I’m sitting on a stone fountain, looking surly:
I guess I don’t look all that different, but here’s what I see: fifteen more pounds, wrinkles between my eyes and on the corners of my nose, bigger pores, a harder mouth, more freckles. Did 16-year-old me anticipate this website still rolling, ten years later? Of course. I was a futurist. No matter how little I write lately, this site has been a constant. It’s been my thing, the one consistent and persistent part of my project-life.
Here’s an entry from nine years ago, which ends with the sentence: “I REALLY hope my life works out the way I want it to, because as of now, I have no backup plan. It’s either what I want or the streets, I tell ya.” I guess by “streets,” I meant married in Minnesota with two cats, working in financial aid. Teenage me would’ve equated that with living on the streets, anyway.
Happy birthday, website! Nice endurance, you.
Part One: The Rest, October 2001 – May 2003
419 House
Duluth, MN
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Part five
Several months later, I fell in love with Chris, and Erik and I broke up for good. No one in the house was happy this, and the easiness from the summer dissipated. My last year at 419 has been well-documented. During a particularly dramatic argument, Erik ripped our bed from the frame and threw it in the basement, where he slept for the next year. I spent most of my time at Chris’s place on the west side, a cozy top duplex next to a Catholic church and a hospital. We fell asleep to bells and helicopters.
I slipped out of my house at 4 AM on weekdays and drove the snowy three miles to the duplex. Chris left the door unlocked for me, and I would pad into his dark room, where he would be asleep with the covers pulled back on my side of the bed. The church bells rang in the distance on the hour. It was the only time I slept. In the mornings, he would pack his schoolbag and guitar, and kiss me goodbye.
I only went to 419 when I had to. Erik and I lived together a year after the break-up, and anything beautiful about the house was gone when we were finished with each other. In my memories, the house that year was orange and overheated. Itchy. I didn’t buy groceries or go in the common areas. I sat in my room with the door closed, listening to music top volume. No one spoke to me. I entered our ratty living room – rattier by the day – and a silence would drop. Dishes piled up in the sink, caked with old food. The bathroom trash overflowed into the hallway. Corina and Jason dropped out of school, and moved out in March, the black cloud too much, even for them. Erik spent nights with his new girlfriend. When we were home together, his studio door was closed, and I didn’t knock.
Sometimes I knocked. It was only then the creeping quiet was broken. We fought loud and ugly, one night so desperate we ended bloody, my blue bedroom trashed. The next evening we met in the hallway between our rooms, and pretended nothing happened. Everything was schizophrenic. I still drank tea and watched the teenage boy across the street. He was big and awkward and spent his nights on his front porch, picking at a guitar. Some nights a group of kids his age raced by on bikes, without looking at him. The boy tried to wave, but they were always too fast.
I moved out in May. I waited until everyone was gone to clean my part. I went to sweep my bedroom and found Erik standing in his coat in the shower, scrubbing the tile. But that’s been documented, too.
I cried that night, but I didn’t linger. I loved that house like a person, despite what happened inside it. I loved the wide landing and the dark wood and my bedroom nook and the way the snow fell at an angle on the hill. I loved the small liquor store next door and our neighbor’s white dog who barked happily when I left those late nights. I loved the light in Erik’s studio, and I loved him – and all of them – for a long time, longer than I should have.
Five years later, I would rent a house in St. Paul because there was something familiar about it. At our housewarming party last night, my old roommates commented on the stairs and the living room and the mud room. They were uncomfortable, but I wasn’t. Here was 419 again, revisited. But this time it was mine, and they were the ones leaving in the dead of night.