Paul's Actual Apartment (Patreon)

Today I did something I've been afraid to do since last year: I called about an apartment  for rent. 

I'm not moving. The house that Elephant Town was inspired by has two units that are frequently vacant, and it would be incredibly useful to me if I had photos of the rooms. Despite my fear of a) wasting the landlord's time and especially b) lying about why I'm there, I finally called today and asked to see the apartments. 

Luckily the contractor who met me had to be there anyway, so my fears melted away (I still couldn't lie; I told him I was taking pictures for out-of-state-friends who wanted to move to town, which isn't entirely untrue).

This is Paul's living room, which is identical to the room directly above it. The room upstairs would have become my bedroom in 2006; I almost moved into that second story apartment, but a strange sentence that came from the landlord's mouth while I was signing the lease made me panic, and I talked to my then-roommate Kris about it, and he wound up moving in instead. He made the sunny bedroom beautiful, filled with plants and his records.

Before the landlord put me off, I'd spent a lot of time in that room, preparing it to move in. Somehow I failed to predict that the downstairs room would smell just like the upstairs one; when I entered today, I was knocked straight back to 2006, and all the excitement around that time: my unknown future, a made-up job that was somehow turning into a career, new friends who were doing the same thing I was, the end of a relationship that had shaped me and prepared me for this, working from home. It was a flash of emotion, quick like a sneeze, but I felt all of it.

I tried to act like I wasn't in a light-headed daze in front of the contractor, and it didn't faze him at all when I asked if I could not only take a billion photos, but also sketch out the floorplans before I left.

(The photos up top are from the farthest room on the right here, the entrance to Paul's place.)

Last year I'd already laid out the rooms in my head - incorrectly - and I've written enough scenes that I can't easily alter them to be accurate, but it's still helpful to have photos of the details and the atmosphere of the place. 

Berto's apartment, which I checked out that same year, 2006, used to be an efficiency with no kitchen. It's since been updated... but his banter with Meighan throughout the entire second chapter hinges on him not having a kitchen. 

So, sorry Berto, you're stuck cooking on those little electric hotplates. 

Anyway, I thought you'd enjoy taking a peek at the actual room that inspired this whole book (well, the identical one downstairs). You'll be seeing a lot of this scenery soon. :)