Here we are, old friend. Time to say goodbye. Not a big move. Just a few miles up the road to share an apartment with my brother for a while. You remember him. He stayed with us for a couple months when he was moving here from Illinois.
In all likelihood, tonight is the last night I will spend here. It didn’t seem like a big deal. Just a different spot in the same city to save a few bucks. But as the belongings I’ve gathered here make their way into boxes and the rooms become bare, I realize I am going to miss you.
Five and a half years we’ve spent together. Five and a half years of grumbling at you over the annoying shadows cast by your the ceiling fan. Five and a half years of not scrubbing your shower floor as often as I should. Five and a half years of loudspeaker announcements creeping through the windows from the football stadium across the street as I pace your floors and practice my jokes, wearing out your carpet more than a single occupant should have.
I have moved many times. I think I was six when I left California for Idaho, and 10 when my parents separated. Over the decade that followed, Mom lived in three different houses and Dad lived in five, and I divided my time between them until I left home at 20. Then, in the span of 13 years, I went to Texas, Florida, Mexico, China, back to Texas, Illinois, California, Canada, and finally back to Idaho, sometimes swapping out living arrangements along the way.
I’ve been trying to count, and at 38 years old, I believe you are the 22nd street address of my life. There were many before you and there may be many yet to come. However, it occurs to me that I have probably spent more nights within your walls than at any other address since I was that little boy leaving California for Idaho.
Five and a half years. I hope I used them well.
I confess, I only planned on being here a minute. When COVID thwarted my plans to move to California, I just needed a place to tread water until the world reopened. I was nervous about your price tag, but there was enthusiasm in Hollywood for a screenplay I’d written and I thought the sale was imminent. I thought I’d move in here, turn your master bedroom into a writing office, sleep in your guest room, and scrape by with rideshare money for three or four months until the script sold, at which point I could buckle down on writing. When the 12-month lease expired, I’d thank you for the relaxing interval on my way to stardom and bid you goodbye.
The script never sold though. Oh, it still might. There is still enthusiasm. There are phone calls and Zoom meetings and updates and setbacks. Time ticks on.
But all these years later, I still can’t really afford you. You’ve always been a little beyond my means.
It’s been a productive five years, all things considered. You gave me my first real writing space—a desk with a typewriter and an hourglass, a ritual of one hour a day with no technological distractions. And in that office we churned out three feature screenplays, a novel, a short story collection, and God knows how many rideshare stories.
Alternatively, you gave me a patio where I could write outside with my morning coffee. We really only did that my first summer here. But now that I’m leaving, I wish we’d done it more.
I also leave as a standup comic, which I wasn’t when I came in. How did that happen? I don’t think I planned it. I went to a few open mics because I was starved for human connection at the end of a pandemic, and because I thought exposure therapy might be good for my shyness, then all of a sudden I was getting paid. Hosting gigs turned to feature gigs, then offers came in to headline, and all of a sudden I was planning a special. Funny what five years can do. I came to you as a screenwriter and I leave as a comic. I’m not sure I ever thought I’d be one. I’m not even sure I think I’ll stay one. But somehow, at least for a while, I became one here. And we churned out my first hour and even edited my special in that office you provided me.
I do wish we’d had more personal memories together. I only had one serious girlfriend while I lived here, and she had a daughter and a dog, so I spent a lot more time there than she did here. In five years, I would have hoped there’d be more romance, more laugher with friends, more planning and celebrating in your living room. But I guess in the last five years, those moments have mostly taken place at other people’s homes, at comedy venues, and, sadly too often, over the phone. You have mostly been a fortress of solitude for me. But we accomplished a lot.
It’s a paradox, I suppose. I’m proud of how much I got done here, but I wish I hadn’t been so busy.
Maybe your next tenant will go the other way. Maybe in a few weeks you’ll be bursting with life—children screaming and playing, a cocker spaniel barking at the window, a book club trading gossip between fits of shrieking laughter. Maybe two people will fall in love in this living room, and conceive a child in the master bedroom where I conceived my screenplays.
Might as well. Nobody’s going to conceive a screenplay better than mine in there.
And hopefully the money I save will allow me to be a little less busy in the coming months. But I’ll miss sitting in that office where so many jokes and stories were dreamed up. I’ll miss that patch of the jogging trail just outside your door where I trained for my first marathon. I might even miss the loudspeaker from the stadium. It never bothered me that much.
Someone said you can always make new friends but you can’t make old ones. And even though places aren’t as important as people, I think it’s the same with them. It is nice to have a history. In the restaurant where you had your first kiss as a teenager, even today, the food tastes better. So with places or people, it’s always bittersweet to say goodbye. But we must.
Goodbye, Apartment 201. You’ve been good to me. I’m glad we had this time together.
Excellent piece Greg, I kind of got nostalgic for the old place even though I've never been there. You brought it to life.