Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,62
the heat-fused tender skin off the backs of my thighs when I got up. I would watch Cubs games on WGN and suck on Fla-Vor-Ice popsicles that I was too impatient to let get fully cold, counting the days until I could go back to my school lunch and air-conditioned classroom.
does the air conditioner have to be cleaned, and if so, who does that
do people clean their roofs or does the rain just take care of it
is a storm window just the regular window or is it some special kind of extra window
what is that steam coming out of the side of the house that smells like laundry detergent
do you actually have to clean out cupboards or is that just a thing that happens in magazines
who washes walls
how organized is the deck supposed to be
is it better to flush, or just toss that runny leftover pasta from three nights ago
am I supposed to do something with the heat thing (??) when it’s not winter
no really what is a crawl space for and do I have to go in it
is one fire extinguisher enough for a whole house or is there like a square-footage requirement
what is a grounded outlet
must I really learn things about grass
I lived in a high-rise dormitory for one year after I got out of high school, and maybe that experience was useful for learning about how to deal with unrepentantly loud neighbors you’re not in charge of, which seems to be a running theme of adulthood. The geeky senior in the double room next door to ours was basically a hall monitor in pajama pants, and not an actual authority figure to whom we paid even a scrap of respect, so. I learned nothing about running a grown-up home, especially since there were no courses offered titled Intro to Property Taxes or Wait, How Do I Fix This Mailbox? in Northern Illinois University’s catalog.
After I expelled myself from college, I was homeless for a hot minute and lived out of my car, which meant that the only home maintenance I needed to stay on top of was remembering that if the gas needle dropped to half a tank, that meant that at any moment my car would grind to a halt in the middle of the street and I’d be forced to lug a red plastic jug to the nearest Citgo. I eventually moved into my friend Jon’s childhood bedroom in his stepdad Mel’s house while Jon was away at college, like a good kid, and it was the first and only time I have ever lived in a rich person’s Really Nice House. In rich people’s houses, you know that things will absolutely be taken care of. Work has been and will be done. But it’s done by a contractor who doesn’t really talk to you and seemingly shows up whenever he feels like it. At the end of it all—voilà!—there’s a second bedroom and the banisters and chandeliers have all been replaced!
Jon had his own wing that I was allowed to take over, a bedroom suite with a full bathroom (and a kitchen!!) above the garage, connected to the building that housed Mel’s graphic design and photography studio. This meant that I spent a lot of my time there listening to Jon’s old A Tribe Called Quest mixtapes and imagining how different my life would have been if I’d grown up with my own bathroom. I don’t think it occurred to me in high school, when I was smoking bowls and playing Aphex Twin in that very room, what a coup it was that this kid had his own separate outside entrance. In high school! Seriously, what is a curfew when you have a key to your own door? I am still the exact same person I was in 1995, so I’m sure I was mystified by how close his bed was to the ice cream in his very own personal kitchen. But wow. What a fucking flex. Anyway, I got to live in one room of a multimillion-dollar house with Italian marble bathroom floors I