issue no. 5: on storage units
What if we were all just minimalists?
The premiere volume of Love and Other Rugs is presented by Backdrop.
unpacking boyfriends and boxes.
Just as much as I love martinis and judging grey sofas, I love getting rid of things. I have a secret goal of being a minimalist—with the small exception of blazers, gowns and art books. Can you imagine? A studio apartment that was half library, half closet—an intricate catalog system, a Clueless style digital archive? It’s a bit of a lofty goal and I’m definitely contradicting myself here, given that I do quite love things and the art of collecting them. But maybe there is a part of me that would like to believe less is more.
I think this is because, the month after my one year anniversary of living in New York, my mother died. I was almost 23. Six months later—I flew to St. Louis and filled three twenty-five foot dumpsters with her things. I worked my magazine job during the day remotely, and spent nights and weekends in my mother’s home looking at everything she had left behind. It took me a month. I reduced her life to 20 plastic storage bins, dry cleaned over 100 articles of clothing, and fell in love with my best friend. I remember the moment—sitting cross legged, hysterically crying in my grandmother’s basement. I was surrounded by stacks of my mother’s books, deciding what to save and there he was, holding an iced coffee from Starbucks in a Patagonia vest. He had just gotten off his job in real estate or finance or something that he hated and was always stressed about. It's easy when you are grieving, to turn to something you know and cling on.
But instead of staying, I left the boy and the house and the bins of things in a Missouri suburb to gather more dust. In the short year I lived in New York it had become home, work had become family and I wasn’t ready to go backwards. With one small suitcase of my mother’s clothes with me and another on its way via FedEx, I returned to my three bedroom Crown Heights apartment that I shared with two roommates.
In my nearly seven years in New York, I have lived at seven different addresses: three leases, two temporary sublets, one guest room, and now my own little studio. Before formally grounding myself with a co-op board and a mortgage, I shuffled my things in and out of a Bushwick storage unit so often that I could've filled a punch card. Everytime I hauled another load of stuff in or out, I wondered why I had kept it (her thrift store sweaters, shoes that weren’t exactly my size, books I would never read), and what it meant to hold on so ferociously.
As it turns out, I have a bad habit of returning to the past. In the just over ten years I have had the confidence to interact with the opposite sex, I have dated three men seven times. And in the same way the math doesn't quite work, neither did the relationships. In the in-betweens, I have slowly, cautiously, messily dated my way around New York; meeting people online and at industry dinners and at friends’ birthdays. One time, I even met someone through instagram—which now doesn’t feel so farfetched. He posted a photo of me unwittingly, a friend sent it my way, and we went on a date three weeks later.
It was the first date I went on after my mother had died, a year and a half earlier. I myself was coming out of storage. The friend I had fallen in love with lived back in the Midwest, and moving back to St. Louis had long been out of the question. So what else is there to do when you are nearly 25, and your mom has recently died, then put all your stuff in a storage unit and go on a date with a media personality that slides into your Instagram DMs?
After dinner we went for dessert. Unlike with present day dates, in which I lead with grief, I waited 3 hours to talk about her. When we finally broached the subject, he asked her name and made a toast to her. Gag me. I thought I was in love. On our second date, after spending 24 hours and 4 meals together, I slept with him. He didn’t call after that, he had a big schedule coming up. He’s now relatively unemployed as far as I can tell.
This fall he popped up on my Raya and I thought about storage units. Would he be less of a jerk or less busy after four years in a temperature-controlled metal box in Bushwick? Unlikely. He had faded like my hangover from all the natural wine we drank. And sadly for him, he would never change. I’ve said it before, you can not reupholster a man, new paint will not freshen his look, moving his location in your apartment will not make him less of an asshole.
In the last few years (and frankly the upcoming ones), I have participated in involuntary walks down memory lane. Weddings. Spending an entire weekend locked in a room with your past trying to maintain the perfect-balance of inebriation as to take the edge off but not say anything you’ll regret the next day. A playground for exes and people you should’ve kissed but picked someone else instead. The boy from earlier (the one in the vest) had become deeply unavoidable at weddings.
And just like I pulled my Bertoia wire chairs and art and boxes of books from storage, here he was standing in front of me real again. As sturdy as he was uneven.
It’s funny, returning to a storage unit, to open up the boxes and discover what was in them. Remembering why you put them there to begin with. What chip in the paint you thought you could fix later. All of the boys, each one I thought I loved, or did love, or thought I could love; each of them, whether I like it or not, has left unchangeable traces of themselves in my life. Resin cast, like microscope slides for a biology class, to be examined before moving on to the next chapter.
A few weeks ago, I got rid of 150+ articles of clothing, mostly my mother’s—some donated, some given to friends. Some I even made the humiliating walk to Beacon’s Closet with—in which they give you $27 in cash or $59 in store credit for everything you’ve ever loved and all the things you shouldn’t have purchased at the Zara sale.
Dear god it feels good to give it away, taking the weight off, leaving breadcrumbs not for the point of retracing but so the loaf doesn’t go bad in the fridge. Making my friends take my mom’s sweaters and pants and dresses so that a little pulse of her is somewhere else and I don’t have to be the only one that carries all the grief. Maybe that’s what writing this newsletter is—free therapy with my 1,000 closest friends.
Occasionally, I’ll pull a box of photos down and piece through the hardened memories on flimsy paper. I have this photo that the Instagram DM man took of me, standing outside a Basquiat show in the east village. I’m wearing my mothers dress (for luck, I guess) and an army jacket I had picked up on Melrose during a work trip to LA. Relics. I just threw it away, actually, the jacket. Moths got to it. Wouldn’t it be nice if moths got to the memories too? Small holes in the fabric of stories. I just want to remember the good wine and the even better art and not a text that said I’ve got a busy month ahead on May 1.
I started to dig through the things she saved, wondering but realizing I’d never know the strings that attached them to some thoughtless man decades before she had me. Or the poems she typed on a typewriter addressed to a slew of Southern-named men. Could we donate the meaning away? Did the dumpster’s worth of things release more than just the physical weight of objects? When the storyteller leaves and the ink smudges, is it just a beautiful poem or a photo in a neon-lit bar or a chair? Does it have to mean heartbreak? Or do you have to be a minimalist to be in love?
sloppy secondhand: dry january
Each week I’ll pick a favorite vintage spot & a local watering hole—maybe you’ll find a new-to-you sofa or a new-to-you man. All I can promise is perhaps some promiscuity and a little credit card debt. Adding the ones I can to an Instagram guide here and will update as we go.
I decided, or maybe it was decided for me, that I’d participate in dry January. Not the drinking one, I like wine and bar stools and marinated olives served in ceramic dishes too much to not drink for a month. For the first twelfth of 2023, I did not date. Instead, I vintage shopped and I threw away all the things I didn’t need. This past weekend I ran around town in the nine degree weather with a strong mission—the best burger in Queens and a few very important vintage stops.
Rolo’s—yes, yes. This isn’t new and I simply don’t care. But I had never been and I’m thrilled to say the burger was psychotically good. I did not have a martini because I had more shopping to do but it's perfectly nestled between two Instagram-favorite vintage spots that are worth the trip to Ridgewood.
Lichen & Tihngs—Equally cool, totally different. One is a design studio with art books and custom light wood furniture and leather sofas. The other is a cabinet of curiosities that goes part museum, part high end estate sale. Currently crushing on the above floral paintings from Tihngs and a pivot cabinet from Lichen.
5 things that I bought myself for Valentine’s Day.
At Domino, we had a column called 10 things where we asked cool people to curate beautiful things, places, inspirations.
A shoppable, not shoppable home—if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen my weekends of vintage tours around New York—it thrills me. Speaklow was a true highlight. It's run by a couple (we love, love) that welcomes you to their home and explains, they are collectors—find the thing that speaks to you, and maybe its for sale. I bought a vase. Lots of color tips here—a perfect pink living room and a blood red library.
Red leather, yellow leather—dear god, the perfect set does exist. I bought this from the team at Sincerely Tommy, it fit like a glove and I feel like a cowboy.
A night in—I’m pretty obsessed with this home decor store in South Brooklyn called Porta that has a painted ceiling and stocks both vintage and new pieces. If you want to ball out—they have sterling silver Tabasco holders for $2K. For more economical choices—terracotta dinner plates, big, giant matches, $8 spoons, and really chic candle holders.
A big magazine wall at Dear Friend Books, plus, the nudes of Suz (my mother) in an amazing vintage bodysuit. Chic porn—Dear Friend Books has an amazing collection of vintage erotica, I found a book that highlights all of Shakespeare's profanities—it's called Shakespeare’s Bawdy. Hot.
A lace bodysuit—I found this amazing photo of my mother in a lace bodysuit from the late 80s. So I went out and bought myself a matching one from The Great Eros. Remember when I said we should all be wearing sheer underwear on Tuesday? Add this to the weekday underwear drawer.
Anyways, Happiest of VDays to those who celebrate. See you in a few weeks.
X
Such a good one.