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Appt. 2104
by Robert Drake
I currently live in a small apartment not far from the bustling commerce of Baseline Road and the culture of Mill Avenue in the city of Tempe, Arizona. My place is in Building Seventeen of a local apartment complex. Building Seventeen is the farthest from the Baseline Entrance and near a second gate on a side road. My apartment is on the second story and is on the side of the building facing away from the street. I access my apartment via a pathway from my parking spot that winds past a small pond filled with lily pads to a short staircase up to my doorway.
The first room you see is my living room. It is really rather impressive. Looking upward you notice that I have tall cathedral ceilings born from a slanted roof. At the very top are three windows on a vertical wall between the peak of my roof and the gable of another. These windows provide the majority of the light in the room and offer a view of the sky at night, though with the smog of Phoenix not very much can been seen. The main living room is rectangular, elongated toward the right from the doorway when facing inward. I have a small table opposite the doorway. On the table is a lamp, a fan called a Vornado, and a day calendar with “Zen” quotes. I read the quotes daily, they have not been very impressive thus far, and I always keep the fan on low. It spreads the air about the room nicely. Within the table, on its shelves, I place mail that I do not wish to immediately discard.
Beside the table is a couch. I often sleep on the couch; it is very comfortable and gives me a good view of the television. I do not watch very much television, but I am rather fond of a few shows and have a slowly growing collection of DVDs that I find amusing. In the corner, diagonal from the doorway, is a second table. I have a spider plant there and second lamp behind that. Next to the lamp is “Ein Dog.” It is a stuffed animal of Ein from the show Cowboy Bebop. It was a gift and I like it very much. I also have two bottles. Originally they had maple syrup. They are about an inch in width, and four inches wide at the base but narrow to about a half an inch at the neck. When I had used the syrup up I washed them out and put water and food coloring in them. I now have a bottle with blue water and one with green water sitting on my table. They are quite decorative. The green one was originally going to be red, but it came out orange. I kept that for awhile, but eventually my mom drained it and refilled it with green food coloring.
Near the table along the outside wall, right from the main doorway, I have a loveseat that I never use. Behind that is a glass wall and a sliding doorway that leads to my balcony. There is a curtain with shades, but it works very poorly and I usually keep it open. It makes the room brighter and I can look outside at the pond. It also allows me to get a bit of daylight without having to go onto my balcony. Ever since I moved to my small apartment the balcony has been infested with a large flock of pigeons. They have thoroughly removed any chance at tastefulness on my balcony. I almost never go out there. Arizona heat is difficult enough to adapt to as it is without the added distastefulness of pigeon markings.
The living room is my largest room and where I spend the majority of my time, but it is not my only room. Once again at my main doorway if you look to the left I have a small dining area. It is connected to my living room; there is no wall, but the ceiling is much lower. I have a small table with four chairs, each painted white. I do not much care for my dining room, but it is occasionally nice to sit and eat at the table. When not used for that purpose I often leave my things there. Over time the surface space has been increasingly taken over by books, papers, and pamphlets. Above the table is a small chandelier controlled by a dial that adjusts the brightness incrementally. At the rear of the dining area is a bookshelf that I have packed with my most important possessions that I keep within this apartment. It includes my small personal library of Jonathan Swift, Nietzsche, my precious epics, and a few other notables here and there, along with all the newer books I have recently acquired, Frankenstein, 1984 etc etc.
Left from the dining room, parallel with the outside entryway to my apartment, is a small kitchenette. It has the standard amenities: oven, dish washer (I hand wash everything), sink, refrigerator, and microwave. I have many small pantries that I keep things in. The linoleum floor always seems a little bit dirty, but never enough for me to do more than broom occasionally. Over the sink is a window that faces the outside, but I always have it covered. I used to turn the shades so some light came in for my plants, but I didn’t like that people could see in. I moved the plants to my living room and now keep the shades completely shut. Near the refrigerator I have a washer and dryer behind a closet door. I was very pleased when I saw them. It is much more convenient to wash my clothes at three in the morning than have to find quarter-machines somewhere in Guadalupe. I like my little kitchen. I’m always very contented when I draw the hot water from the sink and wash dishes listening to music. It’s quite cathartic.
On the opposite side of my apartment from the kitchen I have the last few rooms. There is a small hallway connecting them to the dining/living room. Directly ahead is my walk-in closet. The ceiling lowers to a standard height at this point giving the back of the apartment a much more cloistered atmosphere. The perception of tranquility and semblance of isolation serves my temperament, and hopefully my writing, rather well. On the wall in this small corridor is the temperature control. I usually have it set to around seventy degrees. It is really rather cold. I always sleep with a large number of blankets and wake up with a chill, but could not survive otherwise. While I am fond of the Arizona heat in the day the relentless warmth is unbearable in the evening. I cannot sleep in warm weather comfortably. During the day I will sometimes lower the air conditioning, but more often simply take a walk when I want some heat.
Past the corridor, when you face right you see my bedroom. It’s a decent sized room, completely square; with a fan that does not have a light. The fan clanks a bit and I still wish that it doubled as a light fixture. I had my lamp burn out at night and had to stumble around till I found light bulbs. On the doorknob of my bedroom door I have my beads. Two are necklaces I bought from the Navajo near Four Corners. The other two are Hawaiian beads I’ve had since I was three. I’ve always had beads on my door; they told me when my mom was in there dumping off clean laundry. I remember that whenever I hear them echo off my doorway as I brush past.
Inside the door to the right I have a dresser. I pretty much only keep undergarments and socks in it. On the dresser I have my cantenna and a foot and a half tall Kachina doll that looks over my room. Beyond the dresser is a tall lamp. Going around the room I then have my computer desk. It’s about four feet long and three feet deep. It almost looks like a table as it only has a single narrow drawer. I got it for its surface space. I really love my desk. I have on it a lamp, a router, a modem, a print server, a printer, five speakers, my monitor, space for writing, my gaming microphone, keyboard, dozens of cds, and everything else that I use commonly near the computer. Beside the desk is my computer chair. It swivels and all that. It’s made from black…most likely faux, leather. The left arm has been ripped over time, but I never seem to notice when I lay my left elbow down. Under my desk are my desktop and my file server computers along with the speaker subwoofer and a second printer just off the side. Above the computer desk is a window. It’s usually covered with the shade. I sometimes lift it when writing, but I don’t want people looking into my room so I keep it down as a rule.
Behind the desk and computer accessories is my bed. It’s a queen bed I think. I have four blankets. The first is a soft white one that has become my favorite. I then have two others similar in style, one brown, one blue. They aren’t quiet as worn in as the white one and feel a bit rougher. The final blanket is a dark blue velour blanket that is very warm, but feels too soft to my skin. I usually wrap it around a second blanket. In the corner near the bed, left from the bedroom doorway, I have a small table with my alarm clock. There is nothing on the walls, which are a creamy offwhite. In fact, except for my beads, and my Kachina doll, there is almost no decoration in my room, or in my entire place for that matter. I used to have a spider plant in my room, but it never got enough light and I had to move it. I would have liked to have opened my window a bit, but it’s positioned perfectly to spy on my room. I didn’t want that so I just moved the plants into my living room.
Aside from the bedroom, the last rooms are the bathroom and the walk-in closet. Parallel with my bedroom, just down the short hall, is my walk-in room. In truth it is a closet, but it indeed could well serve as a small room. More than anything else in my humble quarters I am pleased with the large storage space. To the right, immediately within the closet, is where I place my dirty clothes. Along that wall going towards the rear I have my dismantled trebuchet, a few boxes, and then a vacuum. Above these items is a bar that I hang my shirts from. Above the shirts are long shelves that are currently home to my suitcase and a few boxes. On the back wall of the closet are a half-dozen shelves. On the lower shelves I have printer paper and a few drafts of works I have written. On the shelves that are at chest height I have office supplies. On the top shelves I keep a box for my internet modem and a few other knick-knacks. In the corner I have my potato cannon. The left wall is lined almost entirely by boxes. Above them, across from my shirts, is where I lay out my pants. The entire room is filled with boxes, clothes, computer parts, and anything else I can stuff in. The closet is becoming rather cluttered these days, but still serves admirably.
To the right, when standing in the closet facing outward, is my bathroom. My bathroom is a small nook towards the rear back corner of the apartment. It is a divided bathroom with a single room for the toilet and shower separated by a doorway from the sink and mirror. The bathroom is rather cramped, but suits my solitary needs. I have a red mat on the linoleum floor and a plain cream curtain over the shower. The shower drain always seems clogged and has taken many gallons of Draino, but has never given me enough trouble for me to bother maintenance. Over the toilet is a rack that I have a pair of red towels on.
The sink just outside the bathroom is cracking from hard water. I try to keep my sink fairly clean to prevent further damage, but often neglect the mirror. I look into it and see dull patches on my face. More than once I have been somewhat startled until leaning closer and noticing that it’s nothing more than bits of lint collected on the mirror. The towel rack beside the countertop has fallen off, but I haven’t bothered to try and fix it. It was initially rather irritating, but now I simply throw the small hand rags on the counter.
This is perhaps a very poor description of my apartment, but it should serve. My place is small, but I am rather fond of it. I have written quite a lot in this place and have had an enjoyable time in my…university days. It is hard to believe, even sitting here, that I wrote the entirety of Ravencrest in this place. I remember my second story room in Wisconsin that I finished up The Throne of Drakaar and the seclusion I attempted in the computer room in the house I lived in New York. I think of those places still when I write, but in truth I have written more in these Arizona walls than anywhere else. For that I am thankful and perhaps why I decided to memorialize this place with its own little bit of posterity.
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