Wellity, wellity. 2020 is coming to an end.

Hypothetically.

There is still time for the world to end before 2021.

But hopefully that won’t happen. After all, we each likely have hard-wired high, misguided hopes for the new year.

Because we have to. Survival requires a little hope, sporadically and strategically spread out over our overstretched notion of reality.

I have only one resolution for 2021 and that is:

MOVE OUT OF THIS APARTMENT!

Why? Well, funny I should ask because it’s the perfect time of year for a fun list, looking back on why the holy fuck we want to move:

1. If we don’t move soon, we will be featured on the ID channel.

2. I pass a patched bullet hole in our wall every day. We apparently missed that in the apartment viewing.

3. A neighbor recently hit our car with their car a block away from where we both live and then quickly drove away from the crime scene only to return to park

RIGHT ACROSS THE MOTHERFLIPPING STREET.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t realize they hit one of their neighbors and, when they did, they also did the right thing and removed their license plates.

I realize that it’s a cosmic rule that once you pay off your car, your car will be almost instantaneously destroyed.

As such, our neighbor may have simply been compelled by the fates.

At the same time, I don’t care.

I do not want to be their neighbor anymore.

4. Our apartment building has street parking on a one-way street. And Milwaukee drivers are really terrible so presenting us with an extra driving caveat is like asking birds to pour your drinks.

It’s not going to happen.

You’re going to have to pour your own drinks and Milwaukee drivers are always going to go the wrong way down one-way streets.

It’s another cosmic law. In fact, yesterday someone speeded the wrong way down our street as I was outside cleaning up the apartment trash which I had been taking to the dumpsters until it wonderfully exploded all around me in a colorful display of recyclables and profanities and this guy going the wrong way down our street asked if I wanted to have sex with him.

He yelled this out his window and didn’t slow his car so he must not have meant it.

Or he thought I was way more acrobatically skilled at having sex.

Either way, if I had the power to explode vehicles with my mind, I would have done it.

But you just can’t fight cosmic law.

5. It’s nice that our tiny city front yard space aspires to be a real live landfill but it also is demoralizing.

6. Sex trafficking is really bad in this neighborhood.

At least that’s what our landlord and the local police said (after we moved in).

And a couple months ago I had a white panel van pull up behind me in the narrow alley as I was, once again, trying to dispose of our apartment trash in our apartment building’s dumpsters.

My immediate thoughts were:

“I’m sure there is a rational reason for this van just pulling into the alley far enough to be hidden by the other building. I’m sure your fear is all in your head.”

followed by:

“No one is getting out. They must not want you. They probably think you’re a man.”

Strangers often mistake me for being a man. Even the transgender community has mistaken me for being one of their own. Once when I was doing a public speaking gig at a Pittsburgh community event which mistakenly had an OPEN BAR a very inebriated woman who was openly trans asked me where I was in my transition.

“Oh! Well, I’m not trans. I’m just a cis girl.”

She looked at me. Then she looked away and apologized to the opposite wall.

I assured her it was fine but also asked, “Why did you think I was trans?”

She responded that it was because I was publicly speaking on behalf of LGBTQIA+ young people who were experiencing homelessness (fair point) and also because

I was “tall, dressed androgynously and (had) big teeth.”

Honesty.

I recovered and said, “Okay, sure, but… why does that make me a dude?”

She shrugged and looked very sad and said, once again: “I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t offended… more… mystified. Notions of gender are insanely limited.

Meanwhile, people stocking groceries are always “Sorry, sir!” and, when once waiting to place an order at an outdoor concession stand, the kid inside yelled, “JUST A MINUTE, SIR!”

And I returned fire and yelled: “I AM A WOMAN! A WOMAN!!!” and the people in the seating area behind me did anything but look at me.

In any case, regardless of whether the van drivers were sex traffickers or thought I was a man and thus ineligible for their brand of sex trafficking, I got the fuck out of that alley as fast as I could.

It would be awesome if sex trafficking did not exist.

But, focusing on what I can control, it would also be nice to live in a neighborhood without a really rampant sex trafficking problem.

7. Our apartment was infested with mice, centipedes and the most aggressive moths I’ve ever encountered when we moved in.

We just didn’t realize it at first.

The first night we stayed here a little mouse peeked its mouse face under our bathroom door.

It’s taken a year and a half and my nicest sweaters are now destroyed but it’s been quiet on the domestic war front for months now.

But any day we may see the Mouse-Moth-Centipede resistance rise and overtake us for the final time.

9. The walls of our old apartment are decorative and its windows are the original.

This means we often enjoy a nice breeze while sitting on our couch and, while it’s nice to be in touch with nature, the borders of indoors should be a little more real.

10. There is a mini van which is always parked outside and its car alarm goes off at least three times a day/night and it is never turned off in less than five minutes.

Never. I can handle the ongoing and increasingly more-academic-than-concerning question of whether *that* was a gunshot or fireworks but… the incessant car alarm is killing me.

It’s such a simple little thing but there is nothing else that makes me physically feel such a lack of control of my life than this.

11. Finally, the top reason for why I want to move is… I don’t want to die in this apartment.

2020 has been personally tough because of all the rather horrid health news I’ve received. Death has felt imminent.

And this apartment isn’t haunted in the least.

That means there is a vacancy and I simply don’t want to be the one to fill it.

The thought of spending eternity staring angrily out the window at our neighbors’ stupid car causes me great distress though I could potentially haunt my neighbor which also intrigues me.

In any case, in 2021, we are going to MOVE. Grateful to have a roof over our heads and a solid floor beneath our feet but pneumonia or violence or the rodent resistance uprising may be our end and I’m more interested in having a proper yard to stumble out into and die in some day, ideally with a drink in my hand.

FURTHERMORE … AND IS THIS “GOOD NEWS”??????

Last week I received an interview invite for an education position at a maximum security prison!!!!

It’s the same prison my parents used to often drive by (with me in the backseat) before the highway was later moved.

In a way, I’d be going home.

Going home to prison.

And if I worked at a max prison, I’d be getting paid for having to cope with hostile environments which would be a nice change of pace and…

we’d finally be able to move. I’d also be better equipped to answer the question of “Was that a firework or a gunshot?”

Hope lives.

Meanwhile, life remains very very very very very very very tricky.

Regardless,

Happy New Year, everyone!

Hope we all make it to 2021. Jokes aside, if you’re feeling a bit iffy about making it to the new year, please reach out:

Welcome to a Safe Space.

Call, Text, Chat and Online Services

If we lose you, there will be a disturbance in the force and none of us can take yet another disturbance in the force.

You’re not alone and we – the weirdo community – need you.

Hopefully see you on the other side in a new year where all of our most essential holiday resolutions come true.

🖤🎬