Bare Naked Ladies
Another Story From the Jukebox
Bare Naked Ladies holds a place for me. Not this song - “Brian Wilson” - never really liked it. But another of their songs has been on my Spotify list forever. “The Old Apartment”.
I don’t go back to the old apartment in any way that involves a key. I go back the way a bruise goes back when you press it. Same logic, different intent. Just enough pressure to prove something is still there.
The old apartment ran on four registers at once. Bitter, ironic, tender, defiant. You could hear them if you stood still for a minute. Most days I didn’t. Most days I mistook the noise for living.
The kitchen light blinked twice before it came on. Always twice. A stutter, as if the room didn’t trust itself to be there when the light appeared. I would stand there and wait, patient, as if patience mattered. Blink. Blink. Then light. I told myself it was wiring, that everything had a reason. But time walks out without explanation. Leaves you with a habit instead.
There was a nail in the wall, out of proportion, like a spike driven by someone else. A decision we didn’t make. We crowned it anyway. Hung the first poster we bought from the High Museum on it, as if it were a real Picasso. Like the nail had been waiting for it. That’s the irony. You inherit a rusty nail and call it intention. You build a world around whatever sticks out far enough to hold it.
I killed the spider daily. Tissue, shoe, a book I liked less afterward. Same corner, always there in the morning. Some things are simply a condition of the space. You can rage at them if you need the exercise. They’ll still be there, patient as a black widow.
The jade plant went feral in the humidity, green stacking on green like it had somewhere to be. We forgot it. It forgave us, grew anyway. There’s a message in that kind of determination. The room does life better than you do.
The cat had three colors and zero concerns. Sat in the window purring like a small engine. It watched the street the way a kid watches a parade. Everything passed. Everything performed. Except the cat. Why would it? The world came to the glass. The cat lotto, won. Tuna in a tidy can.
We painted the living room a non-negotiable yellow. The bedroom we cooled down to seagreen, like we owned the ocean. Curtains made from a sheet printed with clouds. A fake blue sky to block the real blue sky. Go figure. 42 steps from the street.
There’s a version of me that wants to go back in righteous anger. Kick the door in. Break stuff. Make the past answer for itself. Give the anger a job and a uniform.
But if I’m honest, if I went back, if the door opened, I’d walk into the kitchen and wait. I’d count the blinks. I’d touch the wall where the nail was and feel how precise an absence can be. I’d check the corner for the spider, hoping to find it, hoping not to, understanding both outcomes say the same thing. I’d look for the jade plant like it might still be there, still busy. I’d stand behind the cloud-curtains, test whether I ever believed in them.
You don’t lose a place. It moves in. Rearranges how you see every room after. Nails get promoted to undeserved meaning. You don’t realize the size of the moment until long after it has faded.
The anger is still here. It’s just learned to sit down. It knows it’s late. It knows it can’t collect. So it does what it can. It keeps a ledger, notes the small delays, the repetitions, the moments where something almost worked. Then charges interest on the memory.
I don’t go back to the old apartment. It came with me. I stand in a room I keep rebuilding out of habit. I wait for the light.
Blink. Blink.
And then it comes on, like it always has, for a moment. Long enough to call it real.
