issue no. 8: on real estate
Accepting my sq. ft. fetish.
The premiere volume of Love and Other Rugs is presented by Backdrop.
brokers and brain space.
If you are new... check out the archive. I complain about ghosting and grey sofas and exes in proverbial storage units, among other things.
In 2021, I bought myself an apartment. Vibrator sales must be good, people would say. Dead mom money. I would assure them. People would nod and express their condolences. I really couldn’t afford to buy an apartment.
As I’ve settled into my space and my life as a twenty-something single woman, I have been reflecting on real estate—men (who work) in real estate, visiting men’s real estate (read: sleepovers at their apartments), and the real estate men take up in my mind. StreetEasy is a numbers game, so are dating apps. Everything exists between the lines of filters—size, shape, location. A city of goldilocks just looking for a place to sleep (or a person to sleep with). We are plagued by criteria and criticisms—not big enough, too big, too far, too close by, taken by a better offer, not ready to commit. Couch hopping until one finds something that’s right. Buying a house is the ultimate commitment, so is love.
This wasn’t what I had envisioned for myself when I moved to New York nearly 7 years ago—owning anything, a semblance of independence, having my own small slice of New York. This was, of course, because my mother wasn’t supposed to die; at least not when I was 22 years old working as an assistant at a design magazine. In the years leading up to a mortgage, I would move from Brooklyn apartment to Brooklyn apartment spending over 50% of my salary on rent and the other half on vintage. Years later, I would wake up from grief (again), 1 year into a global pandemic and put a stake in the ground.
I got connected with my agent, a gorgeous former professional squash player, via the internet—seemingly where all relationships, professional or otherwise begin these days. We made lists first by neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Then by age—I wanted to avoid new buildings (no character) or outdated older units (too much character). It was dating all over again, except I was alone and there was a large price tag. While apartments seemed wildly out of scope, I could, as it turned out, afford to date men—giving various hours of my evenings to first dates or dinners, my money to splitting checks or cabs home, my energy to practicing new material. I for the most part liked the motions of dating. And this practice of dating in New York felt reasonable, expected almost. But apartment buying felt uncharted.
I saw just five apartments and picked the third—it would need no immediate work, it was a great size for one person and one cat, and the bathroom tile looked like it belonged in a Greek restaurant. On my zoom interview with the co-op board, a woman teared up when I talked about my mother, she said I was resilient. I wasn't all that sure. I was in escrow for five months. The day I moved in, I drank wine on the floor with the same people who were there when I got the call that my mother was dead. It all comes full circle.
Later that year, I’d get in touch with the NY Times about “The Hunt” column they run weekly. I spoke to the writer 3 times on the phone. The first time she had to jump off early because her vegetables had overcooked. She had been writing the column for decades. I have some time for this one, she said, they just started writing an LA column once a month, all these New Yorkers moving West. It was true. She sounded a little miffed about how the exodus from LA affected her work flow.
I told her that I bought the apartment because my mother died. How’d she go? She asked. Suicide, I said. Short lived, a quick struggle. She launched into a 15 minute conversation about mental health and her friends son who’d recently died by suicide. In the nearly six years of talking about my mother’s death, I’ve found some people choose silence and others choose to inject their own narratives. Everyone says sorry.
The story ran the same weekend as the ‘Super Mega’ crossword—that felt lucky. Immediately after, a few men I did not know slid into my DMs asking to take me out. They had read the story. I then felt a little exposed. A week after publication it would be tweeted by the NYT to 10 million people. Very exposed. I made my cousin read the comments first. He told me to never look. People are mean.
There was something interesting about sharing your home with the internet—what knowledge others, strangers often, were afforded about you. It's because of this that I’ve stopped offering up that I own an apartment so quickly while on dates. Plus, it’s a fast path to talking about grief. I’m trying to course correct. And honestly, I’d rather talk about my dates’ homes than mine. I think it’s my kink—walking around a man’s apartment and telling him what he should change. Receiving links and layouts and photos of walls recently penetrated with new floating shelves. A square foot fetish, if you will.
My mother never owned real estate, not for a lack of attachment to things and places. She was an academic and a self-trained artist—she owned books and thrifted art supplies. And frankly, her single motherhood and her PhD student loans kept her from being able to buy a home. The only real thing she ever owned was the car she bought from her parents for $1. A 1986 gray Oldsmobile, unknowingly the top car for gangs in LA. We were pulled over until she added a Free Tibet sticker to the back bumper.
She sent the car to a junkyard when we moved from LA to STL for me to go to high school and ‘be closer to family’. Code for: I’m a poor professor and need financial help. We drove a house full of life in a 17ft uHaul along Route 66 landing at my grandmother’s house in the summer of 2006. It was the same house that 10 years later I would sit in, cross legged on the floor, one dead mom, as I tried to recall the meaning of her things. I have her eyes and I also have her inability to let things go—the things and the people attached to them. In losing her, I craved something to hold onto.
An invite at 11am CST on Sundays: Call Lily, from the boy (there’s always a boy) from St. Louis. It was after he went to church—recurring weekly in his calendar. It was my church. Every seven days for the years after graduating college, we’d catch up as we slow-burned into dating. When it finally happened, it would last 5 months. I wonder if he still has the notification in his calendar. I’ll never ask. I spent the years following our short-lived relationship, trying to sell the shares he held in my head. He worked in real estate (like every other 6 foot something vanilla wafer on Hinge) so when we broke up he was better at the closing process than me. As he carried on with his life, I was left (metaphorically) in a yard full of dry grasses crying over sign that read “for sale by owner”.
Could I ever get over the fact that it was in the wrong zip code? That it would never actually check the boxes of the home I needed to own? That it simply and not so simply would never be right like I wanted it to? That in all my friends' assurances, I’d find better—he was not in fact the house for me.
I saw him recently at, you guessed it, another wedding. I was the officiant and he was the asshole. I was dressed as a sexy priest. He hooked up with someone in front of me. A friend (and this newsletter’s editor) said, if you could do it over, you’d always pick being the girl who officiated the wedding. She was right.
I then caught the bouquet. Figures.
I had too tightly connected him to my mothers passing. Now, I always tell people never to date while grieving—ultimately, you mourn two people. When she died, I had marked my days like it was a valley where time lived. Maybe that’s what they mean by valley of death—a steep, quick plummet to death, a slow, sharp climb out of grief. A reverse bell curve.
But as I further wrote about how her passing was just a moment in her life, it got easier to untether him, to forget his significance. He would live close to the surface of that time, never making it before the before or after the after—a forgettable patina that would get washed away. He faded to black.
It was a ceremonious end to spring. Two weddings, three bachelorette parties and (in the context of me and the boy) a funeral.
The next weekend, I drew a floor plan for a man I had recently kissed, telling him where all his art should go, and confirming the shade of his next couch (white, for the record). The sex was good, the art was better. He faded to black, too. At the very least it means one less man in New York owns a grey sofa.
In years of dating, I’ve imagined making myself a semi-permanent resident in someone else’s brainspace. In the same way men have come in and out of my life, I was passing through with a measuring tape and opinions—only to return to my stuff-filled bachelor pad having forged the ultimate relationship with a bank called Chase. As they say, nothing screams commitment quite like a 30-year fixed mortgage.
sloppy secondhand: west coast
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.
I went to LA for nearly a week to vintage shop and avoid New York’s week of rain plus, as I said on instagram—I kissed too many boys and had to leave town. This is true. Some people date for sport, I date for content. LA is dear to my heart, I spent 10 years of my youth in Silverlake, before the Warby and the Sweetgreen moved in.
Merchant Modern—I don’t need to tell anyone who lives in LA that Atwater Village has become a bit of an interior design haven. My first day in LA I walked up and down Glendale Boulevard, the very strip where I grew up going to Out of the Closet with my mother. There are appointment only showrooms tucked in the neighborhoods—Blockshop Textiles, Estudio Persona, Waka Waka, Kalon Studios plus my friend Aza’s brand Calle Del Mar which has created my favorite staple of the summer. At the top of the strip is Merchant Modern East, I’ve know Sara & her mother’s collection since we pulled goods from their Venice location for the Garance Dore cover of Domino in 2018. I bought a chic runner made of recycled shirts and looked at a LOT of vintage moroccan rugs.
Found Oyster—when I go to California (north or south), I text fellow Leo Lilli Sherman. Found has been at the top of her LA suggestion list for sometime. Dave Franco was there and I got a yummy cold orange wine and the most beautiful plates of crudo and oysters and salmon belly. Some honorable mentions: Capri Club is worth going for the branding and interiors alone + Bar Stella where the martinis are cold and the bartenders are hot.
5 things on my mind or in my cart.
At Domino, we had a column called 10 things where we asked cool people to curate beautiful things, places, inspirations. I’m giving you 5.
Bar at Big Night WV—Former-editor, current-entrepreneur Katherine Lewin just opened the second location of her store Big Night—a haven for hosts and partiers alike. We were so obviously destined to be friends. Her new space is designed to feel like a home and this bar is so so sexy. A maroon called Self-Portrait for the win.
Vintage Gowns from The Highline—I tried on the most insane dresses and suits in LA from my friends at The Highline Vintage. I certainly don't need more gowns but this handmade number felt like Gucci.
Moroccan Taureg Mat—I toured the latest Future Perfect House in Hollywood a few weeks ago. God these were inspiring, in the sea of plain jutes and low pile, I found these to be really remarkable. They can run you up to $40K?? on 1stdibs but John Derian has a lovely selection that is a touch more affordable.
Tiny Tops—As previously mentioned, I plan to live in this bra top from Calle Del Mar this summer. It's a tiny top summer—suns out, buns out etc.
Candles at P&W—Designers Pierce and Ward opened an LA outpost earlier this year, I’m obsessed with these painted candles along with everything else in their store.
Need someone to send me layouts and links for my apartment. Just binged all your essays in the bath last night - a perfect pairing. Ty for writing and sharing.