Tenements and Konstantin
I’ve just finished my first day of nonstop apartment hunting, and amidst lots of apartments that had their advantages and disadvantages, I found two that I think would really work. One of them may very well be perfect, which is always a good feeling!
After my last trip that featured much driving around town to various [unaffordable] condos, this time, me, my car Olivia, and the Rhode Island road atlas that I may have stolen from Bob Mahoney the real estate agent from June, or possibly may have been given by him, well, the three of us seem to be learning the lay of the land in record time considering it seems to have been laid out by following an errant cow or sheep and laying road where they felt like walking sometime in the early 1700’s.
But who am I kidding!? You all know that I am actually totally in love with all these crazy old buildings. Someone about a hundred years ago seems to have sketched out a three story building with a bay window running up the entire front façade and two doors in the front porch and then sold this ingenious “three-family house” plan to every builder in the city because everywhere you go in the neighborhoods called East Side, Oak Hill, Federal Hill, Smith Hill, Armory District, College and so on you see this house. They are always hyphenated street numbers like “46-48 Carrington”; weird, since they contain three residences, not one or two. Some have been fixed up and repainted, some appear to be mere moments away from a spectacular collapse, but no matter since clones of this one house crop up, block after block, and the inside layout is recognizable too. I’ve been in two or three of them with their memorable “double-parlour”-two rooms joined by a large archway or column detailing, and seen countless more on ads I didn’t answer. “Double parlour” seems to be the shorthand code for “one of those weird tenements that are all over the place.” At that point, it just becomes a question of upkeep and location.
Anyway, renting continues apace. I have a lead or two. Meanwhile, there was also a half-cross-country trip to tell you about. Two and a half days by yourself in a car with an iPod for company gives rise to all kinds of thoughts. Here are a very few of them, typed out:
{this was written 45 minutes after I first arrived in Providence as I waited at a coffeeshop for the person who would hand over the key to Elise and Paige’s apartment, where I am staying until I find that elusive room of my own… hence the now-slightly-wrong dates.}
I feel like a fairly cosmopolitan person who can speak a few words in Beijing, Tokyo, or Berlin, I can get around in Paris or London, but I kid you not, the Poconos and Catskills in Pennsylvania and New York last night, the long drive through Connecticut, my few minutes in West Virginia-- all inflicted some serious culture shock on me.
I can’t explain it. The people sound and behave roughly the same (save for accents and terrible driving habits), but somehow the set just feels so different as to make the whole performance seem surreal. I felt like such a country bumpkin last night when I was shocked to find that the first motel I stopped at in northeastern Pennsylvania (I now recognize-too dangerously close to New York City) was $105. The next one-a Best Western of all middlebrow things-was $160. The shock and resignation that I would be driving through the night or sleeping in a rest stop aroused some pity in the desk clerk and she called ahead to Middletown, New York to a rival Howard Johnson to see whether the rates were any better. They were. Still more than twice as much as the previous night in Indiana cost me, but half the price of the edge of Penn’s Woods.
It’s tighter here. Not because of a higher population density or the age of the area, but the mere landscape causes a certain amount of claustrophobia-or whatever is the feeling of cramped-ness without the actual phobia. Lots of trees. Tons of trees. Hills that keep you hugged close to the earth. In Kansas just hurtling across the plain makes you a giant. Since Ohio, those plains are gone and the hills and trees have taken over. In Pennsylvania, I felt like the trees were holding the highway and traffic aloft, on the ridges of ocean like billows of land that must sink to impossible depths in the shade. In Connecticut, the road came lower, like skimming through the shallows that occasionally opened onto a history-pickled village. The place names corresponded easily and constantly to the book about Shakespeare that played to completion in my car. New London. Middlesex, Essex, Stratford, New Britain, Warwick…
I don’t know why the East Coast is a source of such disbelief to me, but it continues to amaze. Today one of the landlords showing me a flooded apartment (I was to “use my imagination” about how it would look soon), then asked me to go for coffee. This is the man that I thought hated me yesterday because I couldn’t understand him on the phone for the life of me. Every single thing he said I had to ask him to repeat, and again. And again. Until he was speaking sooooo sloooowly and had cut out soooo many words that you’d think *I* was the novice English speaker. So, apparently Konstantin didn’t hate me when he met me today. In fact, I can pinpont the moment: he says, “you’re studying at RISD?” I say, no, PhD in Theatre at Brown and boom. He is a different man.
He’s a salt-and-pepper headed, greybeard with a belly tucked into ironed blue jeans and loafers that click along the sidewalk in a distinctly un-American manner. He was interesting, so I climbed into his brand new Mercedes and went to coffee with him. He asked me do I drink. I say, sometimes. He say, “You smoke!? You do! I know you do!” I said, “Festroeker”…party smoker. He says, “you smoke pot?!” I say, “Mmm, not very often.” He likes my honesty. He doesn’t like Bill Clinton’s dishonesty. I ask where he’s from. He asks me to guess, so I guess Greece, which is apparently the popular guess. I’m stuck for the next guess. Finally he says “Georgia! …Not American Georgia.” To which I laugh and laugh.
We have to go to the gas station for Parliaments, then to Coffee Exchange where he buys me “anything I want.” Which turns out to be an iced latte. He asks if I think he’s doing all this to make me rent. He insists he is not. He says he’s not picking me up… at least I think he says this. He’s much easier to understand in person, but not everything comes through.
He makes a face about tattooed girls. Another girl is revealing a remarkable amount of rear end skin sitting in her chair and he says, “Female but not feminine.” I run a hand through the short hair of my semi-mohawk (it’s flattish today) and say I’m maybe not feminine either. He makes some distinction I don’t quite understand.
There’s a wedding ring on his left hand. I try out the three Russian phrases that I learned from a “Speak Russian” audio course on him. I recite the Russian I learned from my grandmother who has an MA in Slavic Language. An entire MA and she remembers only the beginning of a nursery rhyme (I will approximate my own poor pronunciation):
Pif, poof, oi yoi yoi.
Umarai-itz, zeitz kamoy.
Bang bang. Oh my.
The rabbit is dead.
Mimi recites this with gusto and an unmistakable tone of self-satisfaction at the drop of a hat. It’s obvious that she excelled at recitations as a schoolgirl and still longs for the approval it must have brought her.
Konstantin recognizes it instantly and laughs and laughs. He corrects my translation: the rabbit is dying, it’s not dead. I say it’s a strange poem. He says, no no, it’s for children at bedtime. I say that’s a scary thing to tell a child at night. Konstantin does not agree.
When it’s rather too close to my next appointment, we hop back in the car and he drops me off by Olivia. He wants to have dinner. I say I’m busy. [Lie.] He says lunch tomorrow. I say I have appointments. [mostly not a lie]. He says to plan around them. No no, I say. Then, stupid girl, I say “Tuesday.” He says do I call you or you call me? I say I call him. He tries to get me to promise.
Half an hour later I’m in the really good apartment. The one I think I’m going to go for. My phone rings; “private call.” In response to my hello, there is a sentence of Russian or possibly Georgian that I don’t understand. I immediately tell him I’m at a flat and I can’t talk. There is a big hurry. [this is true.] He apologizes and hangs up. As I think about this call later, I feel like I’ve deflated him. In my memory, Konstantin sounds deeply humiliated. I don’t know if this is true. I don’t know how to call him or not call him.
And that my friends, was today’s adventure. I hope you’re having adventures too. I’d love to hear about them.
After my last trip that featured much driving around town to various [unaffordable] condos, this time, me, my car Olivia, and the Rhode Island road atlas that I may have stolen from Bob Mahoney the real estate agent from June, or possibly may have been given by him, well, the three of us seem to be learning the lay of the land in record time considering it seems to have been laid out by following an errant cow or sheep and laying road where they felt like walking sometime in the early 1700’s.
But who am I kidding!? You all know that I am actually totally in love with all these crazy old buildings. Someone about a hundred years ago seems to have sketched out a three story building with a bay window running up the entire front façade and two doors in the front porch and then sold this ingenious “three-family house” plan to every builder in the city because everywhere you go in the neighborhoods called East Side, Oak Hill, Federal Hill, Smith Hill, Armory District, College and so on you see this house. They are always hyphenated street numbers like “46-48 Carrington”; weird, since they contain three residences, not one or two. Some have been fixed up and repainted, some appear to be mere moments away from a spectacular collapse, but no matter since clones of this one house crop up, block after block, and the inside layout is recognizable too. I’ve been in two or three of them with their memorable “double-parlour”-two rooms joined by a large archway or column detailing, and seen countless more on ads I didn’t answer. “Double parlour” seems to be the shorthand code for “one of those weird tenements that are all over the place.” At that point, it just becomes a question of upkeep and location.
Anyway, renting continues apace. I have a lead or two. Meanwhile, there was also a half-cross-country trip to tell you about. Two and a half days by yourself in a car with an iPod for company gives rise to all kinds of thoughts. Here are a very few of them, typed out:
{this was written 45 minutes after I first arrived in Providence as I waited at a coffeeshop for the person who would hand over the key to Elise and Paige’s apartment, where I am staying until I find that elusive room of my own… hence the now-slightly-wrong dates.}
I feel like a fairly cosmopolitan person who can speak a few words in Beijing, Tokyo, or Berlin, I can get around in Paris or London, but I kid you not, the Poconos and Catskills in Pennsylvania and New York last night, the long drive through Connecticut, my few minutes in West Virginia-- all inflicted some serious culture shock on me.
I can’t explain it. The people sound and behave roughly the same (save for accents and terrible driving habits), but somehow the set just feels so different as to make the whole performance seem surreal. I felt like such a country bumpkin last night when I was shocked to find that the first motel I stopped at in northeastern Pennsylvania (I now recognize-too dangerously close to New York City) was $105. The next one-a Best Western of all middlebrow things-was $160. The shock and resignation that I would be driving through the night or sleeping in a rest stop aroused some pity in the desk clerk and she called ahead to Middletown, New York to a rival Howard Johnson to see whether the rates were any better. They were. Still more than twice as much as the previous night in Indiana cost me, but half the price of the edge of Penn’s Woods.
It’s tighter here. Not because of a higher population density or the age of the area, but the mere landscape causes a certain amount of claustrophobia-or whatever is the feeling of cramped-ness without the actual phobia. Lots of trees. Tons of trees. Hills that keep you hugged close to the earth. In Kansas just hurtling across the plain makes you a giant. Since Ohio, those plains are gone and the hills and trees have taken over. In Pennsylvania, I felt like the trees were holding the highway and traffic aloft, on the ridges of ocean like billows of land that must sink to impossible depths in the shade. In Connecticut, the road came lower, like skimming through the shallows that occasionally opened onto a history-pickled village. The place names corresponded easily and constantly to the book about Shakespeare that played to completion in my car. New London. Middlesex, Essex, Stratford, New Britain, Warwick…
I don’t know why the East Coast is a source of such disbelief to me, but it continues to amaze. Today one of the landlords showing me a flooded apartment (I was to “use my imagination” about how it would look soon), then asked me to go for coffee. This is the man that I thought hated me yesterday because I couldn’t understand him on the phone for the life of me. Every single thing he said I had to ask him to repeat, and again. And again. Until he was speaking sooooo sloooowly and had cut out soooo many words that you’d think *I* was the novice English speaker. So, apparently Konstantin didn’t hate me when he met me today. In fact, I can pinpont the moment: he says, “you’re studying at RISD?” I say, no, PhD in Theatre at Brown and boom. He is a different man.
He’s a salt-and-pepper headed, greybeard with a belly tucked into ironed blue jeans and loafers that click along the sidewalk in a distinctly un-American manner. He was interesting, so I climbed into his brand new Mercedes and went to coffee with him. He asked me do I drink. I say, sometimes. He say, “You smoke!? You do! I know you do!” I said, “Festroeker”…party smoker. He says, “you smoke pot?!” I say, “Mmm, not very often.” He likes my honesty. He doesn’t like Bill Clinton’s dishonesty. I ask where he’s from. He asks me to guess, so I guess Greece, which is apparently the popular guess. I’m stuck for the next guess. Finally he says “Georgia! …Not American Georgia.” To which I laugh and laugh.
We have to go to the gas station for Parliaments, then to Coffee Exchange where he buys me “anything I want.” Which turns out to be an iced latte. He asks if I think he’s doing all this to make me rent. He insists he is not. He says he’s not picking me up… at least I think he says this. He’s much easier to understand in person, but not everything comes through.
He makes a face about tattooed girls. Another girl is revealing a remarkable amount of rear end skin sitting in her chair and he says, “Female but not feminine.” I run a hand through the short hair of my semi-mohawk (it’s flattish today) and say I’m maybe not feminine either. He makes some distinction I don’t quite understand.
There’s a wedding ring on his left hand. I try out the three Russian phrases that I learned from a “Speak Russian” audio course on him. I recite the Russian I learned from my grandmother who has an MA in Slavic Language. An entire MA and she remembers only the beginning of a nursery rhyme (I will approximate my own poor pronunciation):
Pif, poof, oi yoi yoi.
Umarai-itz, zeitz kamoy.
Bang bang. Oh my.
The rabbit is dead.
Mimi recites this with gusto and an unmistakable tone of self-satisfaction at the drop of a hat. It’s obvious that she excelled at recitations as a schoolgirl and still longs for the approval it must have brought her.
Konstantin recognizes it instantly and laughs and laughs. He corrects my translation: the rabbit is dying, it’s not dead. I say it’s a strange poem. He says, no no, it’s for children at bedtime. I say that’s a scary thing to tell a child at night. Konstantin does not agree.
When it’s rather too close to my next appointment, we hop back in the car and he drops me off by Olivia. He wants to have dinner. I say I’m busy. [Lie.] He says lunch tomorrow. I say I have appointments. [mostly not a lie]. He says to plan around them. No no, I say. Then, stupid girl, I say “Tuesday.” He says do I call you or you call me? I say I call him. He tries to get me to promise.
Half an hour later I’m in the really good apartment. The one I think I’m going to go for. My phone rings; “private call.” In response to my hello, there is a sentence of Russian or possibly Georgian that I don’t understand. I immediately tell him I’m at a flat and I can’t talk. There is a big hurry. [this is true.] He apologizes and hangs up. As I think about this call later, I feel like I’ve deflated him. In my memory, Konstantin sounds deeply humiliated. I don’t know if this is true. I don’t know how to call him or not call him.
And that my friends, was today’s adventure. I hope you’re having adventures too. I’d love to hear about them.