Moving Mr. Hyde
The way things that have to happen happen is, I guess, what makes life interesting in the end. Getting from point A to point B is always interesting, of course, and the less thoroughly you plan the trip the more trippy it's bound to be. My move Thursday was certainly no exception.
I have been venturing outside of my comfort zone a lot in the past couple of years. Actually, all my adult life — all my life, period, really — I've been out of my comfort zone, to be totally honest, and I'm beginning to suspect my personal comfort zone may be coffin-shaped. I mean, this world is such a strange place. Life is like a cheap ill-fitting suit, most days. Bury me naked, please.
Truth is, you wear enough ill-fitting suits you get used to how they feel. To the point where even a fitted suit feels like it doesn't fit anymore.
I don't know that there is a Comfort Zone in this world is what I'm saying. If there is one thing's for sure: there's no exit ramp to it. It's somewhere between the Bermuda Triangle and Shangri-La. We do get our seconds of pleasure, as Neil LaBute has put it. But we pay for them with a life of pin-pricks and pangs.
So don't get too comfortable. Bodies were made to be in motion. They are chock-full of moving parts, turning and churning, and cranking until they're ground to dust. Sedentary bodies don't fair better, by the way.
The cliche of the Comfort Zone is a way of acknowledging a degree of discomfort in getting to know oneself. We are generally more forgiving of ourselves than of others, but familiarity still breeds a measure of contempt.
I mean, we carry a lot of odd notions about who we are around in our heads, don't we? We almost always think we're nicer than any of our exes would attest to (and that we're nicer than our exes, too), for example. We usually think we're better dressed and smarter than we (and they) are in fact.
Self-delusion is obviously a survival mechanism.
Moves, like any seismic disruptions in our daily routine — break-ups, illnesses, deaths, a really amazing nooner — shake up some of these notions, at least temporarily. Still, we cling to our delusions like a four year-old's wooby. For most of us it takes more than one little earthquake to let go.
This was my third move (fourth residence) in three years. (This was not due to restlessness or running from the law, by the way — for folks who don't live in a place like Boston, with such a crazy housing market and so many unique neighborhoods, it's hard to understand that it can take several moves to get where you want to be.)
So here I am, after my third self-inflicted move, and finally the eureka! moment: I am not a tidy, organized person. At all.
And never have been.
There were two ways I managed to keep the truth from myself: being around people who were even more a mess than me (and, yes, there are a few of them out there), and keeping my life so simple for so long that I had next to nothing to organize and tidy up.
But keeping things simple has become way too hard — it takes more energy and organizational skill than I can muster anymore. The only thing that motivates me to try at this point is that I don't want to die in one of those tragic, messy flats you see on Hoarders. I want the paramedics to not only take away a body, but a few interior decorating tips, too.
But even my computer desktop is a mess. At this moment I have about 150 tabs open in Windows. How did that happen? Even my virtual life has developed a life of its own.
Moves really make me wonder if there is a Mr. Hyde lurking within, and why he can't do the moving for me, since he's the one I'm convinced is making the mess.
But I have to admit, for this move Dr. Jekyll was AWOL too.
I have always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantsist, though I have always felt that really, in the perfect world, I would be a meticulous master planner.
When I first set out on my travels as a young man I took great pride in my packing skills. But this was mere mimicry on my part. Both my father and his father, career military men, had immaculate sock drawers. That's when you know it's serious. When even the socks are neatly folded. These days I don't even bother to match mine.
As things started to literally unravel, I blamed my fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantsism on lack of scratch, ignoring the fact that if I were such a hot-shit master planner I would have that covered. Oh, yes, the delusions run deep.
But this move — finally — put me face-to-face with my inner Mister Hyde.
I mean this should have been an easy move. From a studio to a one-bedroom two blocks away. How complicated could that get? As Friends of the Blog may recall, I had lined up a couple of my butchiest buddies in plenty of time, but a confluence of unfortunate factors conspired to put the kibosh on my best-laid (pun intended) plans.
For one, Moving Day fell on a Thursday, and I take great pride in the fact that most of my friends and lovers — anyone I wouldn't have to pay cash money to move me, in other words — are gainfully employed in day jobs. No one was going to take a day off to move me.
Then there was the issue that for the first time in all my time here in Boston, I was having to move from one place managed by a property management company to another. There was no flexibility in the move-out and move-in times. My lease at the old place was up at Midnight on the 31st, but I would not get keys to the new place until after noon the next day.
Which meant it would not be a simple matter, as in the past, of loading up from the one and dropping off at the other. There would be some serious lag-time in between.
Every option I considered to address this was a bigger burden on my buddies, one of whom ended up (understandably) bailing.
Which is when I — belatedly — started searching for a moving truck. Of course, by then there were none available anywhere on the Eastern seaboard. I reserved a ridiculously enormous trailer from U-Haul and a Zipcar overnight (yes, I finally passed my Massachusetts driving exam, and with flying colors, I might add).
Of course, I would not be able to hitch the trailer to a rental. The idea was to reserve something in the hope that there might be a last-minute cancellation that I could swap out.
Well, just getting to Brighton for the trailer was an ordeal. It's an 8-minute drive from my place, according to Google Maps. Wednesday night it took nearly an hour-and-a-half. On the up side, once I got there, they were still open and there were several trucks available. On the down side they all had to be returned by midnight.
On the hour-and-a-half drive back home I resigned myself to throwing everything out and starting anew, which was, momentarily at least, a very liberating thought. A bonfire out back would be even better. But the fact that my new apartment was more than double the size of my old one and would be completely empty would, I had a gnawing feeling, present other problems on down the line.
I phoned The Ex, who was planning on coming over early next morning with his SUV to load up my library and told him I was fucked.
"Oh, it'll work out somehow," he said, shruggishly. "It always does."
Of course he was right. It couldn't not work out somehow. You make it work somehow. That's the magic of Moving Day in Boston.
There was something in me that wanted to off-load all my furniture, though. And, in all honesty, I have nothing precious or irreplaceable, furniturewise. But, again, I was moving into an empty apartment, and no sugar daddy to trick it out.
Just as I was about to invite craigslist killers to come over and help themselves to my bedroom set, I remembered that earlier that day when I mentioned my U-Haul dilemma, a friend with an enormous old-school wheelchair accessible van had mentioned I could borrow it if I found myself in a bind.
And I could park anywhere. Total immunity. Talk about working out somehow.
I was so relieved I ran out to Citizen's for a celebratory draught. My new Baby Boo was just getting off work and I told him to meet me there and I would drive him home. Little did he know he would be riding in style.
The next day was a shit-show, no two ways about it. Up at 4 a.m., even with various friends popping by throughout the day to help, I still barely got out of the old place by noon. As it turned out the new place was ready earlier than expected. So it was go-go-go until well into the evening.
And then I couldn't move for two days. I felt like I'd been hit by a moving van.
But now that I'm in, I'm hoping this will be the last move for a while. And now that I have some extra space, I'm hoping to keep Mr. Hyde in the closet.
I have been venturing outside of my comfort zone a lot in the past couple of years. Actually, all my adult life — all my life, period, really — I've been out of my comfort zone, to be totally honest, and I'm beginning to suspect my personal comfort zone may be coffin-shaped. I mean, this world is such a strange place. Life is like a cheap ill-fitting suit, most days. Bury me naked, please.
Truth is, you wear enough ill-fitting suits you get used to how they feel. To the point where even a fitted suit feels like it doesn't fit anymore.
_____________________________________________
My life has taken on a life of its own.
_____________________________________________
My life has taken on a life of its own.
_____________________________________________
I don't know that there is a Comfort Zone in this world is what I'm saying. If there is one thing's for sure: there's no exit ramp to it. It's somewhere between the Bermuda Triangle and Shangri-La. We do get our seconds of pleasure, as Neil LaBute has put it. But we pay for them with a life of pin-pricks and pangs.
So don't get too comfortable. Bodies were made to be in motion. They are chock-full of moving parts, turning and churning, and cranking until they're ground to dust. Sedentary bodies don't fair better, by the way.
The cliche of the Comfort Zone is a way of acknowledging a degree of discomfort in getting to know oneself. We are generally more forgiving of ourselves than of others, but familiarity still breeds a measure of contempt.
I mean, we carry a lot of odd notions about who we are around in our heads, don't we? We almost always think we're nicer than any of our exes would attest to (and that we're nicer than our exes, too), for example. We usually think we're better dressed and smarter than we (and they) are in fact.
Self-delusion is obviously a survival mechanism.
Moves, like any seismic disruptions in our daily routine — break-ups, illnesses, deaths, a really amazing nooner — shake up some of these notions, at least temporarily. Still, we cling to our delusions like a four year-old's wooby. For most of us it takes more than one little earthquake to let go.
This was my third move (fourth residence) in three years. (This was not due to restlessness or running from the law, by the way — for folks who don't live in a place like Boston, with such a crazy housing market and so many unique neighborhoods, it's hard to understand that it can take several moves to get where you want to be.)
So here I am, after my third self-inflicted move, and finally the eureka! moment: I am not a tidy, organized person. At all.
And never have been.
There were two ways I managed to keep the truth from myself: being around people who were even more a mess than me (and, yes, there are a few of them out there), and keeping my life so simple for so long that I had next to nothing to organize and tidy up.
But keeping things simple has become way too hard — it takes more energy and organizational skill than I can muster anymore. The only thing that motivates me to try at this point is that I don't want to die in one of those tragic, messy flats you see on Hoarders. I want the paramedics to not only take away a body, but a few interior decorating tips, too.
But even my computer desktop is a mess. At this moment I have about 150 tabs open in Windows. How did that happen? Even my virtual life has developed a life of its own.
Moves really make me wonder if there is a Mr. Hyde lurking within, and why he can't do the moving for me, since he's the one I'm convinced is making the mess.
But I have to admit, for this move Dr. Jekyll was AWOL too.
I have always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantsist, though I have always felt that really, in the perfect world, I would be a meticulous master planner.
When I first set out on my travels as a young man I took great pride in my packing skills. But this was mere mimicry on my part. Both my father and his father, career military men, had immaculate sock drawers. That's when you know it's serious. When even the socks are neatly folded. These days I don't even bother to match mine.
As things started to literally unravel, I blamed my fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantsism on lack of scratch, ignoring the fact that if I were such a hot-shit master planner I would have that covered. Oh, yes, the delusions run deep.
But this move — finally — put me face-to-face with my inner Mister Hyde.
I mean this should have been an easy move. From a studio to a one-bedroom two blocks away. How complicated could that get? As Friends of the Blog may recall, I had lined up a couple of my butchiest buddies in plenty of time, but a confluence of unfortunate factors conspired to put the kibosh on my best-laid (pun intended) plans.
For one, Moving Day fell on a Thursday, and I take great pride in the fact that most of my friends and lovers — anyone I wouldn't have to pay cash money to move me, in other words — are gainfully employed in day jobs. No one was going to take a day off to move me.
Then there was the issue that for the first time in all my time here in Boston, I was having to move from one place managed by a property management company to another. There was no flexibility in the move-out and move-in times. My lease at the old place was up at Midnight on the 31st, but I would not get keys to the new place until after noon the next day.
Which meant it would not be a simple matter, as in the past, of loading up from the one and dropping off at the other. There would be some serious lag-time in between.
Every option I considered to address this was a bigger burden on my buddies, one of whom ended up (understandably) bailing.
Which is when I — belatedly — started searching for a moving truck. Of course, by then there were none available anywhere on the Eastern seaboard. I reserved a ridiculously enormous trailer from U-Haul and a Zipcar overnight (yes, I finally passed my Massachusetts driving exam, and with flying colors, I might add).
Of course, I would not be able to hitch the trailer to a rental. The idea was to reserve something in the hope that there might be a last-minute cancellation that I could swap out.
Well, just getting to Brighton for the trailer was an ordeal. It's an 8-minute drive from my place, according to Google Maps. Wednesday night it took nearly an hour-and-a-half. On the up side, once I got there, they were still open and there were several trucks available. On the down side they all had to be returned by midnight.
On the hour-and-a-half drive back home I resigned myself to throwing everything out and starting anew, which was, momentarily at least, a very liberating thought. A bonfire out back would be even better. But the fact that my new apartment was more than double the size of my old one and would be completely empty would, I had a gnawing feeling, present other problems on down the line.
I phoned The Ex, who was planning on coming over early next morning with his SUV to load up my library and told him I was fucked.
"Oh, it'll work out somehow," he said, shruggishly. "It always does."
Of course he was right. It couldn't not work out somehow. You make it work somehow. That's the magic of Moving Day in Boston.
There was something in me that wanted to off-load all my furniture, though. And, in all honesty, I have nothing precious or irreplaceable, furniturewise. But, again, I was moving into an empty apartment, and no sugar daddy to trick it out.
Just as I was about to invite craigslist killers to come over and help themselves to my bedroom set, I remembered that earlier that day when I mentioned my U-Haul dilemma, a friend with an enormous old-school wheelchair accessible van had mentioned I could borrow it if I found myself in a bind.
And I could park anywhere. Total immunity. Talk about working out somehow.
I was so relieved I ran out to Citizen's for a celebratory draught. My new Baby Boo was just getting off work and I told him to meet me there and I would drive him home. Little did he know he would be riding in style.
The next day was a shit-show, no two ways about it. Up at 4 a.m., even with various friends popping by throughout the day to help, I still barely got out of the old place by noon. As it turned out the new place was ready earlier than expected. So it was go-go-go until well into the evening.
And then I couldn't move for two days. I felt like I'd been hit by a moving van.
But now that I'm in, I'm hoping this will be the last move for a while. And now that I have some extra space, I'm hoping to keep Mr. Hyde in the closet.
Glad to hear the move went as well as could be expected, if not a little better, and like you, I am not a very tidy person. Not Hoarders messy, but let's just say our place looks "lived in." Like Quentin Crisp said: "After the first four year, the dirt doesn't get any worse."
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Be careful - it is the nature of Mr. Hydes to abhor closets and to trick their Jekylls into taking their places there. Also - mazeltov on your successful move.
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During my seven years in Boston from 2003 to 2010, I lived in 5 different apartments. Every single move was not by choice due to one reason or another. A few of those moves were on Sept. 1. Needless to say, I know a thing or two about moving from one apartment to another in Boston. It is a cultural phenomenon in itself in the city every Sept. 1. I feel your pain. But you survived and live to tell the tales. Moving is also a great way of seeing who your real friends are. I have plenty of moving stories to share, but I don't want to dig up such old memories.
This entry is so well written that I had to comment after being a ghost reader for a while. Best wishes and here is to hoping that you won't move around for a while.
V.
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Hey Mike,
I have to say this was one of my favorite blog posts to date. Sorry to laugh at someone else's misery, but I had to laugh at several points - not because I had to move, but I'm painfully familiar w/ the tragedy of 9/1 leases.
Aside from our random run-in at Banana Republic last year, we've never met. If you are inclined and would like to grab a drink at some point, let me know. I genuinely enjoy meeting people. I hope you like your new place and good luck with next year's move.
BosGuy
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