My apartment has a chandelier

My apartment has a chandelier. Since I moved into the sublet last July, whenever someone asks me how I like my apartment or the building or the neighborhood, my first instinct is to tell them I’ve got a chandelier. My friends have said, independent of one another, that the chandelier is an "architectural anomaly." I live in what could be considered, based off some details, a grand apartment: long hallways, inexplicable French doors, beautiful wood flooring, a chandelier. 

It’s also crummy. Weeks after I moved in, my brother came to visit. My kitchen walls immediately began seeping an odorless, rusty sludge. It seemed harmless enough, but I was embarrassed that it happened while I had my first guest. There was some sort of construction upstairs that was leaking through the walls and ceiling. At one point my downstairs neighbor knocked on my door to find out if the problem was me, and when it wasn’t, I loaned him a trashcan to use as a bucket. My sludge was confined to the walls but his was seeping through the ceiling. When I say "crummy," what I mean is casual sludge.

The apartment came with faux-crystal doorknobs, but now it only has faux-crystal doorknob. When I moved in, there were two. However, because they were never properly installed, and not exactly right for the doors, they had a tendency to fall off. And, eventually, one of the ill-fitting doorknobs fell out of the door and, being faux crystal, shattered into a dozen pieces. Now, there is one doorknob in the whole apartment, which I keep in the bathroom door. When it falls apart, I am stuck inside the bathroom until someone with a screwdriver takes pity and lets me out. I live alone, so I keep one screwdriver under the bathroom sink, and another immediately outside the bathroom door.

The apartment reminds me of myself. Technically it’s a two-bedroom. The woman I sublet from keeps all her things in the big bedroom off the hallway, the one with the French doors that are painted opaque white. I recognize this is an aesthetic crime, but I like it. I like the not-quite-maroon and not-quite-chartreuse walls in the living room. I like the round wicker coffee table and the chaise lounge with books instead of legs. I like my apartment, which is even less mine than a rental often is, but feels like I invented it. 

My bedroom furniture is entirely mine. I planned my bedroom furniture around the muted navy walls, the narrow windows that face a narrow park (and an auto body shop). The wall behind the radiator is not exactly painted. My clothes fill the closet and take up a long rack on the southern wall. There's an overhead light, but I also bought two lamps off Amazon, threw a tarp on the ground, and painted them bright yellow. My yellow curtains are hung up on skinny tension rods that the cat pulls down whenever it suits her. 

When I first had the idea for this blog post, I was naked, except for rubber gloves, and plunging the bathtub. The bathtub, too, is one of those crummy features of my apartment. It’s corroded and old, but it works fine, except when my hair becomes too much for it. Because I didn't know the drain was clogged until I turned on the shower, I was naked; because I'm squeamish and hate unclogging drains, I was wearing rubber gloves. While I was plunging my shower drain and blaring ABBA, while my cat watched me from the hallway, I was thinking about how it all must look from overhead. 

The word madcap came to mind. That's the catch-all word I think of anytime I do something I know a Single New York City Gal would do in a movie. Years ago, I read this very August 2000 column in the New York Times by author Caitlin Macy, also a SNYCG, which concluded with a list of things every woman should posess, titled La Vie du Chapeau Fou: Macy's Madcap Must-Haves. It's unhinged. I think about it twice a week. Entries include "an oven full of shoes," "a little, white cotton wraparound beach skirt," "ballet slippers," "a pale peach camisole" and "Sally Bowles's prairie oyster hangover recipe." While I was naked, plunging the bathtub, I thought of "a head scarf and a gingham housedress (i.e., what the madcap wear to clean)." By her standard, I wasn't dressed "appropriately." I still felt pretty madcap.

The SNYCG is just a regional variation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That's absolutely madcap. It all started with Eloise at the Plaza, for me, and now there's a long roster of influences. Parker Posey in Party Girl, Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha. Even though most of the book is set in France, Sally Jay Gorce in The Dud Avocado. I mean, come on: Holly effing Golightly. 

Whoever she is, this madcap woman, she is probably broke or otherwise missing some sense of agency. If she doesn't live in a hotel, she crashes with friends or in an illegal sublet with a mysterious landlord. If she's glamorous, it's borrowed, or inappropriate. Sally Jay walks onto the first pages of The Dud Avocado in a limp evening dress, and it's the middle of the afternoon. Holly Golightly is really Lula Mae, and the only reason anybody comes to her parties is because they don't know that. Her apartment, of course, isn't really glamorous at all. It's cat food and throw pillows.

I think I take such deep pleasure in my apartment because it is unique and pretty and not at all sophisticated. The chandelier performs glamour, but the apartment is not glamorous. When I first moved to New York, and I worked in magazines, I performed glamour, too. I went to press events. I ate passed hors d'oeuvres, a food group so sophisticated, the plates can only be carried near you, then swept away. I met Vera Wang and Michael Stratham and Malin Akerman, and once, Ralph Lauren gently touched my hand, and told me he likes Swedish Fish more than gummy bears. 

I only really liked that life when I was half-inhabiting it, and when I left magazines, I was surprised at how little I missed rushing to PR parties during and after work every week. A few days ago, after years of not attending any press events, I joined my close friend at a rooftop restaurant in Brooklyn for free espresso martinis. We were the oldest guests there by at least five years, and the only ones who ate anything.

"You're just in time for golden hour," said the host, a spokesperson for the company sponsoring the event. The sunset really was beautiful, and the view of Manhattan, so I took a dozen pictures of my friend. Then, I posed for my own, and promptly spilled my espresso martini all over my nice spring dress. After that, I felt at home again.

I feel more at home in my crummy, beautiful apartment than I did in the completely-refurbished two-bedroom or homey triplex I lived in during my time in Queens. I'm old enough to know I'm not a manic pixie dream girl, but self-assured enough that I still have bangs. I like putting on makeup to go out with friends, but I hate posing on a rooftop with a drink in hand. I feel most myself in fur, heels and pantyhose,nutritionally-derelict food in hand, pickles careening down every vertical surface. When I wear jeans and a t-shirt, I feel like a girl trying too hard to seem easygoing. But when I wear a thrift store gown and spend an hour curling my hair, and put on my wool coat that only has one good button, I feel like I've made exactly the right amount of effort to be the person I am. Of course many of these things are total affectations. If I like an affectation enough, I'm entitled to make it a part of my personality.

It's just too much to explain, in the moment, when I'm asked. But it is nice, when I'm out in the world and looking for an excuse, to say I need to go home and change out the lightbulbs in my chandelier.