As of June 1st, 2006, I had been living in New York City for one year. I have spent $6,804 on rent alone. I moved all my crap into my apartment completely by myself except that I realized I didn’t really have any crap and enlisted the help of my two brothers to take me to IKEA. After stuffing ourselves with Astoria gyros and after Paul and Jem took tedious measurements of my tiny tiny front bedroom in Astoria, we headed out to IKEA, which is also known as the Overcrowded, Inexpensive, Swedish, Where-The-Hell-Can-We-Find-Parking!? and Ooooo Meatballs! Store.

While I may have bought a bed frame, mattress, nightstand and dresser for under $400, I had little to no part in moving or assembling any of it. While my brothers pushed around a huge cart full of various wooden pieces, I looked around at the pre-made bedrooms and debated getting under a beautiful maroon comforter and never leaving the store. At the cash register, I absentmindedly handed over my Visa card to a young teenage girl, who snapped her gum and I tried not to think about the fact that I had just moved to New York City with no job in sight.

While Paul and Jeremy loaded up my mother’s Toyota RAV4, I licked my 99 cent ice cream cone and watched the Spanish family next to us struggle to load up a minivan with the entire contents of the “Living Room” section. And then later, I went to park the car while my siblings walked my furniture up two flights of stairs and into my new apartment. They screwed together planks of wood and matched piece Flooeyhousen up with piece Damitscheapya and I think I just sat on the carpet in Queens and marvelled over the exquisite cheap pine smell that was now my bedroom. They were setting up my new life and battling with dresser drawers that wouldn’t shut goddamnit and I kind of just sat there and blinked, feeling kind of tired from all the commotion.

I highly suggest you get yourself some brothers if you can. They can be super useful. Especially to me. I believe that one of my many talents is passing off work to other people. I never do it maliciously. It just sort of happens, kind of like how you say you’ll hold your college boyfriend’s gin and tonic while he plays softball and you take, say, one sip of it and then wind up horribly hungover the next morning wondering how could that be, as vague memories collect of your boyfriend joking, “You drank that whole thing? I told you to HOLD it for me, not DOWN it for me!”

Yeah. It kind of happens like that, without warning, without planning. Maybe it’s because I think I’m better than most people and shouldn’t lower myself to the task at hand. Or maybe it’s just because I do what my body feels like doing 99.9% of the time and my body rarely ever feels like lugging 800 pounds of furniture up two flights of stairs in June. It feels like dancing. It feels like crying at Meg Ryan movies. It feels like eating pudding. It does not feel like vacuuming the kitchen floor mom, no, it doesn’t.

Growing up, my mother was routinely up in arms over my entire family’s seemingly lack of interest in housework. Saturday mornings would erupt in the “You All Are So Lazy” speech (Family Lecture #485), where she would rant about cooking and cleaning and slaving and the least we could do was THINK about doing the dishes or NOTICING that the counter we’re eating off is covered in crumbs and grape jelly so help her baby Jesus, how did she raise such ignorant unhelpful children!?

And in the spirit of helping others, while my mother stormed around the house spewing unrecognizable wrath, I would leisurely wipe the grape jelly off the counter and my brother, Paul, would make me an omelet. Mom would eventually make her way in and around all two stories of the house, slamming objects and doors, throwing our dirty clothes and bedsheets down to us until it landed in a forgotten, twisted heap at the bottom of the stairs in the foyer. We knew it was useless to try and interrupt her. Once she went off, she was off. And so, we would sit at the kitchen table, two partners in crime, reading the comics and eating eggs.

I believe, in the end, that my brother Paul got more Laziness Lectures than I ever did because unlike him, sometimes my body actually DID feel like doing housework. The problem is that it came and went in HUGE waves and still does. I will clean the entire house, top to bottom, reorganize my shoes, give away my out-of-date-and-too-small-clothes, read over my third grade essays, dust the computer and clean the toilet all in a few hours. And then I will do nothing for a month. This is cleaning, to me. This is, as my mother would yell, “staying on top of it”. Sure, I would do dishes and laundry on a regular basis. But that’s about it. Until I entered the real world AKA Living With Clueless Gay Men.

How far I’ve come in a year! Life is no longer pretty IKEA furniture and 99 cent ice cream cones. Now I am my mother, begging my roommates to please do the damn dishes, is that so hard to ask?! They will pile up and pile up and no one will think to wash them. If they DO, they won’t ever put them away and they will just stack higher and higher on the dish drain until I think to remove them. I want to know what’s so hard about any of this. To keep something neat OTHER than your own personal tie collection. To pick up your water glasses off the arms of the chairs in the living room? To straighten the bathroom sink, to replace the toilet paper for baby Jesus’ sake am I the ONLY ONE WHO NOTICES THESE THINGS?!?!?! Whether or not my body FEELS like it, I’m doing things because I have to. And ohhhh do I hate it.

A year in New York City and I’m out $7,000 and way bitter because of it. I have switched roommates 80 million times. I have exactly a 1 out of 3 callback rate at any given audition according to my track record for the year. People that were my friends took “space” from me and I’m still not sure why. And now I’m cleaning my apartment on a daily basis and not just my crap, but EVERYONE’S CRAP. This is not something I wanted to do. Ever. (Mental note: Never have children.)

Paul knows a lot about doing things you don’t want to do because he is married. His 3rd wedding anniversary is on Monday and his 25th birthday just passed. Three years ago, I wrote him this. I didn’t think he would see it before the wedding, but it turns out he was up late that evening and clicked the link to my blog. I saw him before the ceremony and he enveloped me in a hug and confessed that he read it and thought it was beautiful and that he cried. And then I started crying. And then he married a Jewish girl outside on a misty July afternoon.

And due to many many reasons, only one being the fact that my roommate uses the toilet paper up and doesn’t replace it, I have made plans to vacate my apartment come September 1st. I just want my brother to know that I really really appreciated the help a year ago. And that I love him. And Happy Birthday. And Happy Anniversary. And will you be available in the fall, preferably with a huge moving van? And one more thing, when the hell can we go back to IKEA!? because one of my dresser drawers won’t shut goddamnit and it’s pissing me off.

Peace.