Urban, Part 1: September, 2006

Simone and I moved downtown a month ago. After some very intense wrangling with US Bank, I was finally able to cut loose from the Big Blue House and find a place in downtown Denver.

It was probably my most traumatic move ever.

We went from a 5-bedroom, 3.5 bath, 2,500 square-foot house to a 2-bedroom, 2-bath 1,048 square-foot apartment. I got rid of a ton of stuff before I even started packing boxes, and still the move took four very painful days.

What made it worse was how my best married friend, the guy who’s always been there for me, went totally AWOL, and I’m still not sure what to do about it. It makes me wonder if our friendship has finally played itself out. A teacher on summer break, he knew I was neck-deep in packing when I called to see if he had the key to my old Honda scooter I had in the garage (long story, not worth discussing). But that didn’t stop him from insisting that I drive the 20 miles to his new house on the eastern edge of metro Denver to pick it up. No offer to bring the key, no offer to help with packing or moving.

So, down to just a day before the movers would come, I told him I’d drive out east on my way west, to Boulder for a meeting. The trip would be a 40-mile detour, but worse, it would burn an hour of sorting and packing. He thought that was great and gave me the instructions to get to his new demi-McMansion on the Eastern Plains. Already harried and frustrated, I navigated the curvy new roads of a brand-new suburban development, and was sickened by the dirt and sod and lack of trees (and coffee shops and bookstores and personality). I pulled up to the house, and my best friend met me at the door, bursting with pride.

He gave me the keys, then gave me the tour. His wife is doing very well for them, so the house was rife with displays of their budding wealth: a high-def TV the size of a football field, the new furniture, the fixtures. He showed me everything, even his new workshop, situated in the second garage. I could see how happy his new home made him. But I was irritated and harried, so I said all of the nice things, then got into the car and took off. 

There was a time in my life when a place like that, with all of its domestic suburban luxuries, was what I dreamed of — a yard with a garden, my own studio, a sprawling home with all of the latest modern miracles. But as I hit the highway and started driving west, I realized how very different my outlook had become. My best friend’s chosen way of life no longer appealed to me at all.

The movers came the next day, and packed the truck full. I packed my car, and we sped to the new apartment. It’s a cute place, in an amazing part of the city — downtown, with all of its restaurants and bars and culture, is a short walk over a bridge, through a park, and over another bridge. But right on our street is one of the best sushi places in the city, several good watering holes, and a half-dozen places to grab a bite. The aquarium and the amusement park are right down the street.

The next day, my friend Alison and I met at the house, and packed up a car’s worth each. She looked at me and said, “There’s no way you can do this yourself. You need to ask for help.” So I sent a text to my best suburban friend and to my best urban friend (and creative partner), Nate, that went something like this:

“I need your help. Please come to the house at 1pm on Saturday. All I ask is one load each to the new place. Please.”

I never ask for help. It’s an issue. If Alison hadn’t insisted on spending hours helping me pack, I would have said something about being able to do it all myself, and would have suffered for it. Nate responded with, “I’m in.” I didn’t hear from my suburban friend until that Saturday, when Alison and Nate and I were packing boxes like fiends, trying to make headway. He called at 1:15 to ask me how things were going. I said, “It’s a lot of work. Did you get my text?” He responded that he had, but he was on his way home from a conference, and had to go the grocery store because they were having guests over that evening. I curtly told him I couldn’t talk, and hung up the phone.

I was so angry and so disappointed. And between his total lack of consideration (not even offering to help on Sunday if I needed it), and my sense of detachment when visiting his new house, I began to seriously consider that our friendship had run its course. But I didn’t have time to be hurt; there was still so much left to be done.

It took us all day Saturday to move, and I still had to rent a truck on Sunday, which Nate and I filled completely, to get just about everything out of that house. The apartment was all boxes and plastic trash bags and Rubbermaid tubs by Sunday afternoon, when I headed back, alone, for a final trip to the house.

It was almost sunset by the time I’d dragged the rest of the trash from the Blue House. The curb looked like a yard sale on crack. I was vacuuming when the new owner of the house, a charming grandmother who’d bought the place for herself and her son and his twin boys, showed up to see how things were going. She told me not to bother with the carpets, helped me gather the last of my stuff, and waved as I got into my car. 

It was one of those dusks that are so crystal clear because the summer breeze and afternoon storm clouds have removed all of the haze. The sky was dark and roiling as I pulled away from the Blue House, and I had to stop the car across the street and look back. The trees were a vibrant green, their leaves whipping around in the emerging thunderstorm. The Blue House had never looked more beautiful, more vivid, there, in the moments before the tempest hit. This wasn’t how I was supposed to leave her. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. I was abandoning a lost cause in ignominy, not triumph. I felt more than a little twinge of regret as I took a last look at my big Blue House, and drove away.

Then the skies opened up and unleashed a torrent of summer rain—sheets of water enveloped the car as I left the suburbs to begin a new chapter of my wacky, wonderful, silly, stressful, always-evolving life.