Atlanta apartments of the past:1999-2009, pt. 1
I am 22, a week or so away from my 23rd birthday, and I am moving to Atlanta, Georgia. The reason I am moving there is because a couple who hired me to get in their separate businesses in order were impressed enough with me that they wanted me to go with them to run their businesses in another city. I am 22, I’ve already failed at living outside of Greenville once, and I am not passing up this brass ring. I need to get out. I don’t want a life here; I want to be somewhere, anywhere else, than South Carolina. This decision leads to a series of shared homes and apartments for over a decade. And even when money is tight and my other decisions are bad, I never regret moving to Atlanta. Atlanta is where I really came into precarious adulthood and found the friends who continue to be part of my life.
525 Boulevard SE
I moved into the spare large bedroom of a house in Grant Park owned by Cayenne, a lesbian contractor friend of my employers. I can’t remember what my rent was but it probably wasn’t much. The bedroom has a bricked up fireplace, two shallow closets, and wall to wall carpet. With two cats not really allowed to roam the entire house, I am glad the room is big but feel bad for my kitties.
I am young and heady in a new city. I steal Cayenne’s beer on a regular basis, stay up too late, and eventually wear out my welcome. One of my cats escapes briefly and after a tear-soaked romp through the streets of Grant Park–not as gentrified as it is now but not too far either—I find my cat under my car. None of my friends from Greenville visit me and I spend too much time exploring new bars alone. I also find myself juggling a dying relationship with a guy who moved to Texas while engaging in a new one with a man 16 years my senior; this latter relationship proves to be detrimental and ongoing for nearly five years.
542 Oakdale Rd NE
I end up living in a basement room, rented from a seminary professor who lives upstairs with his rheumy-eyed elderly dog.
The place is musty; the carpeting not too dissimilar from what you’d find in an office. There is a nook into which I tuck my bed, a large table for my desktop computer, and I’ve managed to make a little living room in the space. Again, the cats aren’t allowed upstairs and once again they manage to escape one morning because I left the door open upstairs by accident. In hindsight, I wish I could apologize to my cats. These are my super irresponsible years and I had no business taking care of cats. But they were always fed, taken to the vet, and fretted over.
This basement arrangement lasts about a year; I rarely see my landlord. He has no beer to steal and most nights I am out at the bars, seeing bands and kissing dumb boys I barely know. The relationship in Texas is over (but it really never began) and The Unbalanced Relationship has begun. Blame my age, but I want Older Boyfriend to take me seriously despite being in my early 20s. Pretty sure making out with guys at bars is a no-go, but again, I am young and don’t think past next week. Older Boyfriend even stays over one night, amused by the fact I live in a basement room. He doesn’t have to say anything but the message is clear: Bless your heart. I lived in shitty places too when I was a youngster.
1300 McLendon Ave NE
Guys, I just googled this address and oh my god, what a difference. It’s clear that the house was bought at some point and totally overhauled into probably a one family home, but it was a four apartment house when I lived there. Two downstairs–my landlord lived in one of the units–and two upstairs. Mine was one of the upstairs apartments, facing the street; the bedroom was like a sunroom, covered in windows that were drafty and paint-chipped.
This place was $600 a month, not including utilities. There was a rickety deck out my front door, and during the warm months, if I left my screen door open, the cats would be visited by possums. There were also TONS of roaches because of the second apartment on the floor. They crept in through the cracks of the walls and sometimes I had to sleep with the lights on to keep them from crawling on me and the cats. The shower was one of those narrow stand up jobbies; I never could keep mildew off the shower curtain.
Honestly, one of the worst indignities was that I had to ask That Boyfriend for a $600 deposit because I didn’t have it and my parents certainly didn’t.
I lived in that apartment during a lot of tumult: my car finally broke down, I left the coffee shop ever so briefly and lived off unemployment for a couple of months, I got a DUI, and eventually That Boyfriend and I broke up, but this time for good. I associate this apartment with a lot of bad decisions made with the help of a lot of beer. I am sleeping on a terrible futon my dad bought me instead of a real bed; I am trying not to cry at the fact I can’t seem to keep the apartment clean. (I rarely invited friends over, and uh, the ones who were coming over were not staying overnight.) I can’t remember what prompted me to look for a new place eventually, but as you can see, there wasn’t a whole lot to make me want to stay. To me, 1300 McLendon Ave is Peak Shitty Early Twenties apartment.
Another time I will talk about the nicest apartment I ever lived in and how I fucked that up royally. Then there’s the apartment I was living in when I met my now-husband and how a tornado ripped through my neighbourhood, which led me to my final apartment before I moved to Canada. Going back through these addresses has reminded me of how far I’ve come and how exhausting it was. But hey, at least there aren’t roaches!