It’s autumn when I move into a Brooklyn apartment with two dudes from California who wear tight pants and smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes. They ask if I’ve ever had French press coffee — I reckon they think people from the Ozarks drink Folgers and McDonald’s coffee exclusively; I will gladly drink both, and I walk around the apartment barefoot and I listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd and sometimes I can’t keep the Missouri out of my mouth, so I don’t fuss over their ignorance.
It’s winter when we’re sitting in the living room and I raise a shot of whiskey in the air as I’m chewing the cheesy bean and rice burrito I always grab on my way home from the gym; my gesture makes them giggle, and in between giggles one of them says something about Chipotle, and after I swallow the whiskey I hit them with: “Taco Bell is Chipotle for poor people,” and I’m not kidding but they laugh anyway, so I laugh too, and then the one who didn’t say something about Chipotle asks me if I ever make cocktails, and when I shake my head, “no,” he grins a little.
It’s later that winter when he comes home to a candle-lit living room and thinks I’m trying to seduce him. “It’s not what it looks like,” he tells the other Californian when he walks in a little bit later; but I’m not trying to seduce anyone — I just dig low lighting, and as a kid I pretended acres of cotton bolls were acres of snowflakes, so after sunset I turn off all the lights, spark some wicks, and watch flurries fall.
It’s spring when I hear the Californians’ friend making fun of me, and they know I can hear their friend making fun of me so they stand up for me. It’s later that spring when I decide to go home for a couple weeks and the roommate who thought I was trying to seduce him is disappointed: “I was hoping we could all get pizza on my birthday,” he texts me. It’s even later that spring when I start going up to the rooftop every afternoon to get high — the Californians know a guy — and I realize New York City is depressing if you love nature but you can’t afford to live near greenery.
It’s years later when I realize getting drunk and high to read The Bell Jar in Central Park is something a depressed person does, and that living with strangers in one of the biggest cities in the world after leaving an abusive boyfriend probably heightened my PTSD symptoms; but I didn’t know I was dealing with PTSD back then, and giving NYC a shot is something I’ll never regret.
It’s nearly a decade later now, and even though I lived with the Californians for only six months and I haven’t seen them since I moved out, occasionally I imagine them all dressed up and drinking cocktails or really expensive wine at some swanky dinner party. I see them enjoying a night of cocaine and carousing with Ivy-educated millennials who’ve never changed their own oil or seriously considered stripping as a side hustle or comforted a dying animal; I hear them entertaining with colorful tales of the hillbilly they rented a room to when they first moved to New York.
Sometimes, I wonder how the Californians might react if I told them it took me a while to suss out the nature of their relationship — they didn’t dress like any heterosexual men I’d ever known, and one of them didn’t eat meat and both of them would only fry cage-free eggs; they didn’t try to have sex with me either, and all I knew of men then was sex and violence. Straight or not, though, they had something special to move across the country together.
I wish we could sit down for a long chat — perhaps over a steaming mug of French press coffee — and share all we’ve learned since parting ways. Or, in lieu of that, I hope they read this someday; but I’m guessing guys with Lord of the Flies tattoos don’t read many women writers.
Elizabeth “Liz” Enochs is a queer writer from southeast Missouri. She’s also the author of the nonfiction prose chapbook, Leaving the House Unlocked. More often than not, you’ll find her in the woods. To read more of Liz’s writing, visit her website: elizabethenochs.com.