A letter from a young woman we know:
When I decided that the place I was living in was too small for me, I told everyone that I was moving. I would just say, “I am moving.” I didn’t know where I would move to, but I would say it anyway. I said it to my landlord. In a note to him, I said, “Dear Herb”—I can call him by his first name like that because he is a likable man and we are on good terms—“I am moving. The place here is too small.” Weeks later, he called, and when he found out that I didn’t have a place to move to after all, he rented me some space—much bigger and cheaper than what I had before. Only, it is in a funny part of town. I am now living in the spice district.
Two things women I know say are hard to find: a nice place to live and a nice man. Two things men and women I know say are hard to find: a good job and a good place to live. Two things a lot of people I know say they hate to do most, of all the things they hate to do: look for a place to live and then move into it.
My friend Rudy said that I should go to the liquor store at the end of the day and ask the people there for some of the boxes they keep in the back until the rubbish man comes. He was perfectly sure about it. He said that’s how it always is at liquor stores—at the end of every day they have a lot of empty boxes waiting for the rubbish man. Then he gave me these instructions: Take four boxes and stack them up one on top of another and tie them together with a thick piece of string. Repeat with four more boxes. Pick them up and go home. Four boxes in each hand, eight boxes at a time. He said, “It will make you look like an old-time coolie.” I went to the liquor store twice and brought back, altogether, sixteen boxes. Rudy went to the liquor store six times and brought back forty-eight. That added up to sixty-four: it took sixty-four boxes to hold all the things I own. Most of the things I own should be thrown away, but I can never throw away anything unless I am drunk.
It took Rudy three Monday nights, three Thursday nights, and two Saturday nights to put all my things in the sixty-four boxes. At the end of it, he said, “There. I hope you feel better now.” Rudy works at a movie theatre where it costs a dollar to see a show. I used to go see films there, but that was before he told me in quite alarming detail about the mice who live there and what a racket they make during the shows. I think that if I go to the theatre the mice will turn out to be as big as people, and will want to sit next to me.
How miserable everything seemed. So it must be true what they say about moving, after all. I hated the woman who
would be moving in after I moved out. I hated her even though I knew nothing about her to hate. She would call up and ask if she could come over to measure for curtains, bookshelves, space for pieces of furniture—this, that. Then I found out that she was a cellist, and out of work, too, so I softened. “How nice,” I said. “A cellist.” But still. The woman who lived there before me lived there for forty years. She moved out when she died. When I was getting ready to move out, I hated so many things. I hated the way some of the women I knew dressed up as if they were old men, in men’s clothes that were baggy on them. I hated the way some of the women I knew dressed up as if they were little girls, in ankle socks and wearing their hair in little plaits, with schoolgirl ribbons at the ends. I hated everything around me.
As for the day I moved, everyone said what a cheery, sunny day it was, and what good, sound, careful, cheap movers I had. I didn’t see it that way. I hated what I was doing, but here I was, doing it.
—September 11, 1978