Home - What It's Really Like To Live Here

(Again, thanks to Stacey for helping with ideas.)

What comes to mind first are that it's crowded, polluted and noisy. That's for both inside my house and in New York City, although it's less polluted outside.

Our house always smells like smoke. Except for when Aunt Elaine was in the hospital - then we washed everything and aired out the apartment. It's always noisy because the television is always on. Sometimes I stay up later than Aunt Elaine, and then I'll go turn it off, but I guess she wakes up in the middle of the night because when I get up for school it's always been turned back on. On top of the tv noise there's also the hallway noise. People who do drugs don't sleep normal hours, and a lot of people do a lot of drugs here, so somebody is always having a big fight with someone else in the middle of the night. Then somebody else calls the police or an ambulance and so we fall asleep listening to sirens.

It's not that a two-bedroom apartment is too small for four people, because it's not. It's that one bedroom is not enough space for three people to store all their stuff. One closet for three people is not enough space. So that's why it's crowded. We get in trouble for having anything outside of our bedroom. Dani, Al and I each have a little basket with our bathroom stuff that we take in and out each morning and night. The first time Craig came over and saw that he said none of us will have any trouble adjusting to dorm life in college.