The Apartment

I was sitting here yesterday, daydreaming about my first apartment in Chicago. It was in an old yellow brick, courtyard building, just off Clark street. I had never lived on my own before, and for only one hundred and twenty five dollars per month I finally had my privacy. Having grown up in a house with ten brothers and sisters, it seemed like heaven. I didn't mind having to walk up some stairs to reach it, nor the fact that when I tried to take a shower only a slow trickle of lukewarm water came out of the shower head. I had my own kitchen, with my own refrigerator, filled with my own food. Crappy food, but it was my food. The entire apartment consisted of one room, a small kitchen, and the bathroom. My living room now is larger than that entire apartment was. So what was it that brought back those memories? Clutter, Mark's clutter. The last square inch of kitchen counter space has been taken up by Mark's crap. I don't have any idea how he cooks in there. And then there are Mark's shoes. He scatters them around the bedroom, and every night I trip over them on my way to the bathroom. He has at least fifty pair, and I think he is trying to kill me with them. Kind of like the movie Gaslight, only more sinister. Clutter, clutter, clutter. That's what makes me yearn for the simplicity of that little studio apartment. Or, I could order up a dumpster.