The apartment we found was smaller than the one Pam showed me but livable enough, and Mark’s biceps seemed to throb in approval. Sure, it didn’t have an oven or a fully closable bathroom door, and the toilet was barely bigger than one of those training potty seats parents use to put on top of normal-sized toilets to teach their babies how to shit like civilized humans. But whatever. I was running out of time, and Mark’s skull veins weren’t getting any calmer. Two days later, I was signing a lease. (Along with a piece of paper that said I’d promise not to lick the walls. For real. The lease agent said it was totally standard. “Just a little thing that says you won’t sue us if you chew on the windowsills,” he told me. I signed it, but still. It’s a pretty fucked-up thing to ask of someone. I should be free to chew on whatever I want to in my own apartment.)

I finally had my own apartment to destroy at will, which is perhaps the greatest feeling in the world—to have the freedom to debase a space that belongs to you (however temporarily) in the manner you wish to debase it. There’s nothing greater than sitting on furniture with your bare ass knowing that it’s your furniture to defile, or pissing into an unwashed toilet you know is being seasoned like a skillet with every use, or spilling an entire bowl of cereal in bed, knowing you can ball up the sheets, toss them down the trash chute, and buy new ones the next day with not a single soul to judge you for it. Finding an apartment in New York City is perhaps the greatest struggle, but it yields the greatest and simplest reward.

ON SELF-SUFFICIENCY