-The following is a nonfiction piece that I wrote a few weeks ago, detailing the experience of moving from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach. Though I said originally that this blog was going to be dedicated primarily to developments in my writing career, I’ve decided to try and branch out from that a bit. This will be an ongoing process, as I am still gradually coming to terms with the whole blogging concept, but I’m trying to make a concerted effort to post more often and on a wider variety of topics, as I know it will attract more attention to this site. So for now, enjoy the following story, and I should have more for you soon.
I think it’s safe to say that most people at some point in their adult lives have had the experience of moving, and regardless of whether the move has been across the country or from one side of the street to the other, I need hardly tell you the stress that usually becomes involved. In my particular case, I have been taking part the past few days in a move from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The process started a few months ago, when I was still waiting to hear back from the various graduate schools to which I’d applied. My girlfriend Megan and I had been talking, long before getting those responses, about places we might like to move to, if and when I was shot down. This was my second year of applying, and my hopes weren’t exactly high. I’d be hesitant to say what exactly it is that gives you a leg up on the competition when it comes to admissions to creative writing graduate programs- your writing sample, G.R.E. scores, college transcripts, or recommenders, but whatever it was, I’d come to believe that I didn’t have it. Realistically, I knew it was in our best interest to look at alternatives in case I didn’t get in, and that did indeed prove to be the case. I’d moved back to Pittsburgh a little over a year ago, generally because Megan had just finished her undergrad and wasn’t yet ready to leave the city in which she’d grown up. I had no objections to moving back, provided I did so with her understanding that it would be a temporary arrangement…without getting into too much detail, suffice to say I didn’t care to live in Pittsburgh for the long term. It’s not that it’s without its charms, it’s just that I didn’t feel there was a whole lot left for me there. I’d lived there for five years, when I was in school. I simply felt that it was time to move on, a case of been there, done that.
We started the process of looking for a new destination city first by looking at parts of the country where we both had an interest in living, then by state, then narrowing it down to cities that met a wide variety of criteria, among them potential recreational activities, the crime rate, job market, and most of all, affordability. We looked at the Southwest and the West Coast, Arizona, New Mexico, and multiple cities in California. I’d lived in Los Angeles before and found a lot to like about it, but in almost all of these cases, the bottom line was the same. Looking at housing, and our respective careers, or lack thereof, it was clear that for most of these options, even pooling our resources, we weren’t going to be able to afford to sign a lease without running the risk of going into severe debt somewhere down the line. The same was true of New York, one of the few places we looked at seriously on the East Coast. I’d lived in the city before, and I think it’s common knowledge what an apartment runs in the Big Apple, or an efficiency, or a broom closet, or anywhere else you might be able to squeeze yourself in.
That left the Carolinas. I’d vacationed in North Carolina before, Beaufort, specifically, and found it picturesque, and charming. I’d been through South Carolina too, albeit briefly, and had enjoyed my time there also. To be along the coast, especially, in the smaller resort towns… to experience the fabled southern hospitality in the cool of the evenings, to walk along the beaches, to be eaten alive by mosquitoes…well, I guess no place is perfect. We looked online at some possibilities, and found that some of the places we were most interested in were surprisingly affordable. Myrtle Beach, for one, looked especially promising. Going in on an apartment or condo together, I’d be paying about the same amount that I had been for my place in Pittsburgh, and she would actually be paying less. We started looking into it more seriously, and before very much time had elapsed we’d decided that barring something drastic enough to get us to change our minds, at the end of our respective leases, we’d be moving there. It was the South, as I’d started telling people, but actually, it was more like the South lite. It was touristy; it wasn’t like it was Alabama or Mississippi. No offense to either of those states, or its residents, but there’s no way in hell I would ever live in either. To say that it’s not my scene would really be putting it mildly. As far as I’m concerned, the more Confederate flags in the vicinity, the farther away I want to be.
The fact was, I’d never been to Myrtle Beach before, so even when we’d decided to the point of ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy that we were going to move there, I didn’t really know quite what to expect. Prior to the move, the four previous cities in which I’d lived were Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, New York, and Los Angeles. A diverse group, to be sure, the Midwest, the East and West coasts…but this was the farthest south I’d ever lived, and all I had to go on were my few brief, prior experiences there. We headed down on a Friday, a drive of some eleven plus hours, with a hotel reservation for three nights and appointments to see three different places. The first was at ten on Saturday morning. It was about a half hour drive from the hotel, and it was raining most of the way. The weather forecast, actually, was for rain off and on throughout the weekend. It was a condo we were looking at, one that on the website we’d visited had appeared by the pictures displayed to be almost identical in price and appearance to a great many others that all seemed to be within a few mile radius of each other. They weren’t gated communities, I suppose you could say, they were just segregated communities, well removed from non-residents, that didn’t happen to have gates. We were greeted by a cheery blond chick with a southern accent; please note that when I use the word “chick” here, it’s not because the word is part of my usual vernacular when it comes to women. It’s just that with this particular woman, that’s exactly the term that comes to mind. If there are any women who are reading this that are offended by the term, chances are they probably aren’t chicks, because the type of woman I’m referring to doesn’t get upset when you use the word to describe them.
Anyway, the place was a bit more expensive than we’d like. It wasn’t completely out of our range, but we would have been in a crunch almost immediately. It was nice, definitely, far nicer than anywhere I’d ever lived before. The rooms were spacious, the carpets were immaculate, the kitchen was big enough for me to prepare more elaborate meals than the galley kitchen in Megan’s last apartment. There was plenty of closet space and a room that would have been great to use as a study. But we’d be living right next door to our nearest neighbors, and when I say that, I mean we’d actually be living in the same building with them, only a few feet away. The place was like retirement living for people who aren’t retired. I guess that all condos are like that, much like apartment buildings, but to get right down to it, we both exchanged a look when the chick’s back was turned (she’d been prattling on in her adorable accent about how everyone knew each other there and she couldn’t picture living anywhere else) that indicated we were both on the same page. Megan and I are antisocial; we don’t like people. We didn’t feel the need to know our neighbors, particularly if most of them were like this girl.
The second place we went to, later that afternoon, we knew we had to make work. We’d been discussing it, and the price was right, not to mention that it wasn’t a condo, but instead was an actual house, right by the ocean, no less. That was a key selling point. Unless the place was a complete dump, Megan said to me, we were probably going to have to take it, and I agreed. The third place, that we were supposed to be looking at on Monday, was a last resort, and the asking price there had also been a little rich for our blood. We were in a bind. I just hoped that the place wasn’t going to be too dreadful. We were there slightly early, ahead of our potential landlord, who we spoke to on the phone. He said he was on his way, and while waiting for him we parked on the front lawn, got out of the car, and approached the building. It was raining, not very hard, but enough to wake the mosquitoes and get them all excited. I was swatting at them as I made my way around the side of the house. There was a screened in porch, but I wanted to get a look at the rest of the building before I went up the steps. There was a woodpile, which I navigated around, some trees to my right, dividing the yard from the next one over, and some untended bushes in front of the house, on the right hand side of the porch, with longer green offshoots that quivered as they were rained upon. I got about a third of the way around the house before I walked into a spider web. I froze, as one invariably does in such circumstances, and tried to locate the spider. It was behind me, scurrying busily away from me, and back toward Megan, who’d been walking up behind me. I think I said something like, “Baby, watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it!” It took her a second to identify what the problem was, then she screamed and dashed back out into the front yard. I didn’t blame her a single bit. It was an absolutely fearsome looking insect, with long legs, a sleek looking, well proportioned body, and ominous red and blue markings. I didn’t know what kind it was, but I remembered Megan telling me before we’d made the drive that Myrtle Beach and the surrounding areas of South Carolina are home to the brown recluse spider, among others. This wasn’t a brown recluse, but it still could have been venomous, for all I knew, and it also looked big enough to devour my hand in a matter of seconds if it landed on it. I waited until it had found a secure spot in the remnants of its shattered web before I chanced sneaking past it…and that’s when I noticed the other spiders.
The bush in front of the house was covered with an intricate, multi-tiered pattern of wispy, yet very strong looking webs. They crisscrossed each other at multiple locations, and in them were several spiders, perhaps as many as twenty. They were none of them small, and some of them were indeed quite big, or at least I, who have never lived in South Carolina, thought them so. The largest probably measured about three inches, taking into account the legs. They were active, too. I could see some of them moving about, taking swipes at insects that flew past or were already caught in the web. I’m not afraid of spiders, but I can’t really say I like them either. They creep me out some, if you want to know the truth. There’s something so alien about them, and then there’s the fact that they’re vicious hunters and predators…and some of them are deadly poisonous. But anyway, there they were, and the two of us stood there, and looked at them, while it rained on us, and we were bitten by mosquitoes.
I think at that point we might have exchanged another glance. I remember thinking something to the effect that the situation would really have been funny, if it was happening to somebody else. After five minutes or so, Damien, our potential new landlord, who lived up on the second floor of the house, arrived. He didn’t seem to mind being rained on at all, quite the contrary, he almost seemed to be enjoying it. We followed him up the steps and onto the screened in porch. As he approached the front door, I pointed out that there was one of the larger of the spiders dangling from the door jamb in front of him, at about the level of his chest. He cupped his hand and made a pass at it, trying, as it seemed, to palm it like a basketball. I looked on at this with some amount of well concealed amazement. He missed the spider, but managed to knock it down, along with the strand on which it had been dangling. It continued to dangle from his hand at about six inches from the wood planks of the porch. I pointed this out also, and he absentmindedly brushed the web off. He got the door open and we went in. There was a fine salty smell in the air from the ocean. I guess I’d say about the place that it was more function over style, being nice about it, but I thought I could see potential there. A good sized living room, decent bedroom, room to use as a study…when I got to the bathroom the first thing I noticed was what looked like a good sized cockroach lying on its back, dead, in the shower. I moved on to the kitchen, which was also of a good size, and had two more dead roaches in it, one over by the refrigerator, one in the floor below the stove. I must say I didn’t make too much of it, though. Maybe it was because the spiders had made more of an impression on me, and partially because I’d seen a dead roach before. After all, I’ve lived in New York and L.A., and both of them have their own particular brand of the pests.
We spoke with Damian, briefly, about details like how we would be splitting the bills. I mentioned the roaches, but he said they were called Palmetto Bugs, and were quite harmless, like the spiders. There was a running joke, he said, among South Carolinians, that the ubiquitous Palmetto Bug was the real state bird. I didn’t find it funny. The bills seemed reasonable, however, and even before negotiations started I was quite sure this was the place. In spite of the spiders, and roaches, (or Palmetto Bugs, if you’d like), and function over style, when he knocked the price down fifty bucks without any prompting from us the deal was sealed. The rest of the afternoon was spent in paperwork. Damien’s property was represented by White Realty, run by the uncle of Wheel of Fortune pseudo-celebrity Vanna White. Generally, the staff was a handful of late middle-aged women with southern accents that I found pleasant to listen to, unlike that of the chick we’d met earlier, Jennifer, or whatever the hell her name had been. There were a good many papers to fill out and sign. After it was all said and done, and we’d given up checks for the first month’s rent and the security deposit, we were given the keys, and our mission was more or less complete. We had a place. Our main purpose for coming to Myrtle Beach had been fulfilled, and we were in it for the long haul…well, twelve months of it, anyway. We left the next morning. That was Sunday, and we had managed to leave a full day earlier than we thought we might have had to. This proved to be important, seeing as our intention had always been to leave again on Tuesday morning, regardless of which day we’d managed to come home on. This meant we had one full day, Monday, to recover…or not. I suppose it depends on your idea of recovery.
I returned to my house the next morning, after having slept perhaps six or seven hours. It hadn’t been enough to replenish what the last three days had taken out of me, but hey, what can you do, especially when there’s a four month old kitten crawling all over you, an affectionate animal, yes, but also one that enjoys biting the nose and ears, and has needle-sharp teeth with which to do it. He’s teething, a reason that explains the problem, but doesn’t solve it. I did various things that needed doing, while Megan did the same, including the last of the packing, while also trying frantically to give the place a thorough cleaning as she went. It was a lot to do, and a short time to do it in. We took some time out in the afternoon to go see The Dark Knight, the new Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie, did some shopping at Target for the new place, and had dinner one last time at our favorite Indian restaurant in Oakland. Then we went downtown to pick up the Honda Element, which Megan had rented from FlexCar, a service whereby you can rent one of several different vehicles for a length of days that you determine. I drove the Camry back to Megan’s and parked it across the street, while she drove the Element home. The rest of the evening was spent much the same as the afternoon had been. The packing and cleaning continued, and we were in bed sometime around one, having set the alarm for twenty minutes to six. At six o’clock our friend Tom was supposed to come and meet us in his truck.
I slept poorly, as I always do the night before I have to get up early. I think it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If I know that I only have a limited amount of time to sleep, then I become more conscious of that fact, and therefore can’t get my brain to shut off. I rose when I saw feeble rays of light coming in from the window. The clock in the kitchen told me it was five thirty. I got in the shower, hoping the hot water would wake me up, then threw a microwavable dinner in the microwave, which was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, still plugged in, for this purpose. I went in to wake Megan, but the cats had already done it for me. Then, swigging Mountain Dew and an iced coffee energy drink respectively, we waited for Tom to arrive, while Megan, who had become convinced that there wasn’t going to be room in the two vehicles for all her things, tried to figure out what might possibly be thrown away. I helped with the process as best I could. She had a lot of raw materials needed for the creation of the bath and body products she sells through her home-based company, Disquieting Designs, and some of these took up quite a bit of space. We took a moment to attempt to feed the cats the sedatives that the vet had prescribed, which we had picked up from the pharmacy the day before. I’d assumed there would be some sort of kitty drug that was used for this purpose, but in actuality the vet had given us a scrip for five Valium, the same kind used to get us humans under control when we’re freaking out. He’d recommended a quarter of a tablet for the younger one, Jeter, and half a tablet for Bettie, the older one. (In case you’re wondering about the names, Jeter was named after Yankee short stop and multiple time Gold Glover Derrick Jeter, while Bettie was named after infamous pinup model Bettie Page. I’ll let you try and work out which animal was named by each of us.) We tried to give them to the cats by sticking them in some wet food. Jeter gobbled his down, but Bettie, who knew something was up, ate around hers. We had to pry her jaws open and force it down, a move not calculated to get her in a better mood. She was already agitated from us packing all of her favorite toys. The animals being drugged, we then locked them in the bathroom to avoid them being trampled, or running out the door when we were moving the furniture. Bettie’s anxious meows followed us as we went about our various tasks.
Tom was late in arriving, and when he did come, it was just at the same time as the rain. It had been clouding up for the past hour, and even though I’d been hoping it would hold off, I also knew that it wouldn’t, because that’s just the way these things go. He parked the truck across the street, and then we stood around discussing the bed, the couch, and the matching chair that goes with it, trying to decide the best plan of attack. Tom, who, as the operative “guy with the truck,” had helped people move before, had brought along some plastic sheeting to protect the furniture from the elements, as well as various bungee cords and restraining devices to prevent it from flying out of the flatbed while on the highway. I could only assume he knew what he was doing, because I certainly didn’t. I was ready to lift when he said to lift. We broke down the metal framework underneath the bed first, set it aside, and carried the mattress and box spring out first, laying them down in the flatbed. It was not pouring, but rather raining briskly, as if the elements were reminding us that they knew what we were up to, they were firmly in control, and they could dump the heavy shit on us whenever they damn well felt like it. It was the kind of situation that breeds grumpiness by everyone involved, not enough sleep, early morning hours, rain, gray skies, and lifting heavy things that could easily fall on your foot and break it if you weren’t careful, plus a sense of urgency from wanting to get on the road, knowing that you have an eleven plus hour drive ahead of you. By way of compensation, I think I was trying subconsciously to be more cheerful, balancing it out, as it were, the result of which was my going about the maneuvering of the furniture with a mad grin on my face, while all of us continued to become progressively wetter. Megan had picked up a six pack of twenty ounce Mountain Dews from Giant Eagle the night before, and I was through the first one before seven o’clock.
Suffice to say that Tom and I got the furniture into the flatbed, after a good deal of maneuvering, grunting, and cursing. The couch we tilted up on its side on top of the mattress and box spring, the chair next to it, and we fit the cushions into the crevice created by the overturned couch. As Tom worked with the bungee cords, I went back inside to find Megan staring at the remaining pile of her things that had not yet made it into the vehicles, there in one corner of the living room. The pile was still fairly sizable. It was, to put it mildly, a tough situation. It was now apparent that some unpleasant decisions would have to be made, and they would have to be made quickly. We were on a timetable, all of us. Megan and I wanted to get on the road, because I’d have to be driving the FlexCar back go Pittsburgh the next day, and the move absolutely had to be done by then. Tom needed this taken care of today too, as he was pressing on to Nag’s Head to visit relatives when he’d finished helping us. There was no time to try and contact Megan’s mom to come and take her extraneous things to hold for her in safekeeping; she was at work. And there was no way we could leave them there in the apartment, as the keys were being surrendered to Megan’s landlord. No, some things were going to have to be left behind. There was no way around it.
I remember thinking, as I watched Megan make these decisions, that these are the moments that test us. Days, or perhaps weeks down the line, we would look back on this and laugh, doubtless under more pleasurable circumstances, hopefully securely ensconced in our new beachside home, on the screened in porch, drinks in hand. But that was then, and this was now, this was the event, and it was taking place in the present, not the past, no matter how much either of us wished it was over and done with. To be fair, I think Megan responded as well as anyone could have, under the circumstances. I’ve known people who would have balked at the idea of having to choose which among their possessions they just wanted to abandon, but she didn’t so much as blink. She rapidly issued orders, and I followed them, helping her carry box upon box to the trash pickup area in the back of the building, dumping them unceremoniously on top of one another, spilling their contents onto the rain soaked pavement. There was a dead squirrel lying in the grass by the side of the building, and each time I walked past with another box I couldn’t help but look at it. I remembered noticing it earlier; it had been there for a couple of days, but the rain was assisting the decomposition process significantly, and it was turning black and runny, almost as if it were melting. I could clearly see the shape of the skull as I walked back and forth, the teeth still bared as if in defiance of its current situation.
As I stopped to stretch, standing there in the back of the building after having dropped off a heavy roll top desk that hadn’t made the cut, I heard a crash from the street out front. I turned to see that one of the large plastic storage bins with Megan’s Disquieting Design products had fallen over the side of Tom’s truck and the contents were lying strewn across the street, the rain falling on them indifferently. She and Tom were scrambling to pick them up. I took a deep breath, drawing myself up, exhaling with the air of an exasperated kindergarten teacher whose students have discovered that the whistle is actually an empty threat, powerless to harm them. Then I went to continue throwing away the last few things that Megan had dictated, because there was work to be done, and these moments in life, unpleasant as they are, make up the sum total, and all you can do is hope they balance out. Everything loaded into the two vehicles that could possibly be taken, Megan swept and mopped the floors, then we let the cats out of the bathroom. I will never forget the sight of Bettie, the dope having taken effect by this point, winding her way down the hall to find the living room bare, not only her toys and scratching post taken, but the carpet, the desk, the couch and chair, everything that she had known and taken for granted the entire time that she has lived with us, the majority of her life, to that point. The way she must have looked at it, she had been force fed drugs, locked away for a while, ignored and neglected by the people she trusted, then released, only to find out that the universe had simply vanished, that everything familiar and comforting was gone. What must that do to an animal’s mind? We stuffed her in the carrier and carried her out to the car, with her yelling at us the whole way. Jeter responded much more good naturedly, but then, he was younger, and hadn’t had as much chance for the living situation to be imprinted on him. During the early stages of the car ride, Bettie threw a temper tantrum the likes of which I have never seen from a domesticated cat before. She seemed so distressed that we let her out of the carrier so I could try to comfort her; Megan was driving, and I tried to sit her on my lap and pet her, but she would have none of it. She tried to attack Jeter repeatedly, leapt and climbed over the stacks of boxes as much as the four square feet of space would allow, and leapt up on the dash board at one point so that we almost wrecked into the median, all this with a half a tablet of Valium working on her. Eventually I managed to grab her and deposit her back in the carrier, but she continued yowling at us for the next four hours, and I’m not exaggerating at all.
We got to Myrtle Beach sometime between eight and nine o’clock that night, to discover that the furniture from the previous tenant that Damien had told us would be removed for our arrival was still there. We tried repeatedly to call him, while at the same time unpacking the Element, ducking spiders and picking up fresh mosquito bites along the way. Eventually Damian arrived, and together with some Spanish speaking houseguests that seemed to be staying with him, cleared away the unwanted furniture. I helped as best I could, but I had very little left by that point. I’d been chasing caffeine with caffeine throughout the day, and all my body wanted to do was crash. By the time Tom got there in his truck it was nearly three in the morning, and Megan and I had stretched out a blanket borrowed from Damien on the floor for us to sleep on. I offered Tom the same, but he elected to sleep in the back of his truck. I would have liked to unload the bed, couch, and chair that night, but I don’t think anyone was physically capable of it. At that point, Megan and I had been awake for close to twenty-four hours.
I left the next morning, sometime before noon, having unloaded the truck and lugged the furniture, with Tom’s help, into the new place. Tom went on to Nag’s Head to visit with his relatives, after being thanked by Megan and myself profusely for his help. In the mad rush to load the last of Megan’s possessions into the vehicles, the directions from Myrtle Beach back to Pittsburgh had been thrown away, so I was left trying to navigate backwards through the Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach directions. I got lost repeatedly, and the drive took fourteen hours, the last two of which saw me barreling through the remote sections of West Virginia’s Interstate 79 North doing eighty-five miles an hour, again quivering from my caffeine intake, red eyed and delirious, laughing at nothing. Though I am not a religious person, when I finally got out of the Element in front of my house on Nicholson Street in Pittsburgh I think I said a prayer of thanks, to who or what I do not know. The ordeal was done, that much was certain, and I had one day to recover before work. What is to be taken from all this? When I look back on the whole experience, a few days later, the image that keeps coming back to me is of Megan’s bin of Disquieting products lying in the street, being rained on. I remember Megan’s expression as she turned away from the truck to see what had happened, and the swift gamut of emotions that passed across her face- dismay, acceptance, and resolve, all within three or four seconds. The impression it left with me was of what calculation we must sometimes make in determining what is most important to us, and sometimes this must be done quickly, unexpectedly, as it was in this case, under the most literal of circumstances. When it comes down to it, when we are under the gun and faced with the choice, what will we each discard, and what will we choose to keep? It might not always be what we were expecting. When it comes to the material, is this not simply a choice born of poverty? After all, if Megan and I had the money to rent a U-Haul, then nothing would have had to be left behind. We’d chosen to do it the way we had because of affordability, much as we’d chosen the next place where we’d be living. In the end, Megan had acted quickly because she’d had to. She had chosen to leave the things that she felt could be replaced, and taken what she felt she needed. She’d prioritized.
Back in Pittsburgh, when I’d returned the Element to the FlexCar service, I found myself in my room, surveying my meager possessions, and thinking what I myself would have left behind, given similar circumstances. I would be leaving in a couple of weeks, to join Megan in our new home, and even if I had room in the car for everything, the idea still seemed worth considering. Granted, I had very little to begin with, even less than Megan, but it was not because I didn’t have material wishes. My lack of possessions was also dictated by poverty, as, it seemed, was just about everything else in my life. Perhaps, one day, and this was something that Megan and I had discussed, we’d both be better off. We were living in our uncertain twenties, each trying to enter uncertain careers, in an uncertain period of American history, at least from an economic standpoint. But still, we both postulated that at some point we would be in a better spot financially; it was not unreasonable to hope so. I still feel the same way about it. But when that time comes, and I have all the material possessions my greedy, good little consumer American mind can conceive of, then I hope I will remember the fleeting lesson learned of this experience of a few days ago, that the things that should be held most dear to us are few, and are hardly ever able to fit in boxes. What is most important? The answer is different for each of us. But I think that all of us would be well served, every once in a while, to ask ourselves what we would most wish to take, and what we would be most willing to discard.
