Just a fucking room.

I can’t give up this room. It may mean nothing to you, but it’s more than just a fucking room to me. The apartment is under my name. The gas bill is under my name. The electricity bill is under my name. Location, city, neighborhood; I worked my fucking ass off to find this apartment. I sacrificed a fucking lot to get this apartment, lost a lot of fucking things (not superficialities) to get this room. Including my goddamn mind. I’ve almost lost my life trying to keep the place. My room is still just a goddamn room to you all. It IS NOT just a fucking room to me. It is a symbol. It has been leased to me under a new life. A life after the desolate one ravaged and pillaged the soul I had. That is why I have two names. I have died once before, and this apartment, this room, is that life’s epitaph. It is not just a room.

 

They’ve promised my room away to some person I’ve never met before, (we’ll shed some light on this person in a moment), what little soul I had left, I laugh condescendingly, but was a drop in the bucket to their laugh. Let me give you a tour of the boat. The Ship! There is a room downstairs, the only room downstairs, the hazing room. We judge and size the new roommates down here, and it is a place where the newcomers move into. They prove themselves here. We discover how narrow their souls are, and we have discovered plenty o’narrow ones, and are okay with letting them stay here. That’s the kind of place we are, everyone deserved a chance. It is not just a room.

 

There are three rooms upstairs. J has a room upstairs. J‘s name has been added on the lease, next to mine, and R‘s. R drifted away into oblivion, lost at sea, mourned his own existence in the process. I, myself, was apart of the original crew. Plank Ownership, is what they call it, and I have never once exercised my right as owner. Never. Not fucking once.

 

M moved in after R‘s replacement moved in, and bunked together. The captain’s room. I never had a desire to be in the captain’s room. The largest room. Still don’t. It isn’t just a room. It simply isn’t my room. Then the replacement moved away, leaving M in there, and out of simplicity’s sake, she was allowed to keep it. I can’t speak for the other members of the ship, but I didn’t consider that room as just a room. I liked M, she needed a place to go, I was in the position to help her, the jigsaw pieces fell into place. Exuding cordial hospitality, was an understatement in how she was welcomed.

 

Then there was my room. Not just a fucking room. This was mine. My space. My face. My castle tower. My dungeon. My escape. My resolve. My room. My fucking room. I am sitting in the living room writing this, because I am, now, living there. T was moving out, and I teetered from moving onto the streets, New fucking York, and staying. Of mutiny, as mutinies go, the newest member, in the captain’s quarters, had promised an upstairs room away. Not my room. Not my fucking room, I begged and pleaded. A scornful gale of ferocious gall battered me, telling me my begging and pleading (be mindful of my having being whimsical the entire time) was manipulative. NO QUARTER for ye who holds plank ownership! Thy doth do drugs and listen to the same three songs anyway! But I rebut, I haven’t been able to afford any drugs! But mine medication doth none of thine concern! My room. My fucking room, had been deemed just a fucking room to them.

 

It mattered naught who took ownership of my room. The only, the only, time I had asked for anything of the crew, was shot down in a mammoth hail of cannon-fire. I was ordered (via text) to strip my life and badges off the walls. My walls. Ingrateful scaliwags! I shouted inside my mind. But I had no strength to shout it aloud. I never do. I had spent the last month living off bananas, always fucking bananas, to work my ass off to find a new living, to stay out of New fucking York, my ass was worked off of it. Again Contemporary jazz bands! Kicked out of my own band! The gales of Santa Ana were quite rough that evening, so rough, my vestigial snakeskin balls had to take cover. My room had become just a room, and the beast rests in the lobby of purgatory. A petition was signed! They shout. I chose never to register as a voter, was never overbearing enough, gall was too much work, not like a kitten, not how I was raised, and my father’s funeral occupied my plans of the weekend, but I voted not to go to that either. Spare my snakeskin bits. They chant, it’s just a fucking room!

Life is a series of fucking rooms. Who you get stuck in those rooms with add up to who you are.