In Twilight Regalia

OR, HOW I LOST MY LOFT

Today I made a serious American breakfast. A not-so-frequent event. And we happened to have fresh strawberries for the pancakes. And I remembered my live-work loft apartment I once had loved so much, and the banana pancakes we ate there each weekend and …. Lisa, who made them for us. Perfect, circular, golden-on-each-side discs with perfect fresh banana pieces mashed well into them (anything close to the end of the banana was chopped out) in perfect ordered stacks on plates with a new stick of unopened, and therefore unmolested, butter. She was very particular about the wrapped butter.

Lisa, a slim dark haired woman who resembled “Emily the Strange” before Emily existed, came into my life answering a classified add for roommate, along with an ass of a husband, Paul. Paul could not sing, but made many excruciating recordings in our shared workspace, had an obsession with expensive desk items and refused to use anything but “The Clapper” to turn out the lights. He’s another story.

They had seemed so stylish and young and nice and hip at first. She had a measured calm way of speaking, sophisticated. She looked very …. I would say “Mod”, even before the acid green trend and the rehashing of 60s graphics and miniskirts and smooth sleek Audrey Hepburn hair returned in the 2000’s. She was all simple sheath dresses with her short blunt bangs and her simple bags and shoes. If she’d been a car, she would have been an Alfa Romeo Spider, or maybe one of those classic white Cadillac convertibles, or some other Barbie car. Somehow I could envision her with a picture hat and a round hat-box shaped bag in vinyl, Foster Grants, and a cigarette holder. Maybe even elbow length gloves. She just had that kind of classic-Barbie-accessories thing happening. But behind those Foster Grants were many a dark secret.

Cinnamon was her enemy.

She first broached this subject with me when I was making french toast one morning, and she panicked upon seeing a small square spice can on the table and told me she could not have cinnamon in the house, at all, at any time. She was deathly allergic to it, she claimed, and had had her throat swell up on a cinnamon roll that nearly killed her. Really!. I said. I had never heard of this. I took her seriously and reluctantly gave away my box of cinnamon. When she asked me to clean the cupboard under where it had been, I complied with a goodnatured Californian “whatever.”

Then as months passed I noticed she and Paul only invited me out with them to one restaurant, the same one each time. Paul then divulged that Lisa had a “problem.” She was terrified of RESTAURANTS that could harbor cinnamon. This one had none, never used it, and it would never be lurking in the air, on the utensils, in the soup, etc. She would not eat in any other restaurants. She may not even be allergic to it any longer, he said. But she refuses to go get tested again for tolerance levels. He, the great enabler, would take care of anything that affronted her. He didn’t want to push her. Which really meant, “I don’t want to fuck with her over this.”

There was the day we were shopping in Embarcadero Center and she walked in a far reaching arc away from the side of the hallway that had a bakery in it.

And then it wasn’t just cinnamon.

Sunday mornings with her perfect, glorious pancakes, I noticed that butter thing. She threw out half sticks of butter. Sometimes near-whole sticks. I noticed she rarely kept leftovers. One day when I reheated some spaghetti she looked at me oddly and walked away. I realized she had never used the microwave. When I mentioned she could use it, she said she preferred pans. She didn’t like the hot spots?, I asked?. No, I just don’t use them, she said. Case closed. O-Kaaaaaay.

There was the day she said she would rather I didn’t dye my hair when she was in the apartment, the chemicals in the air were strong. But it’s just bleach, I thought; a clean thing. Hmmmmmmm.

We talked around it and I found out more. Planes terrified her, she’d never even been in an airport. Certain clothing items she had just disappeared–she’d thrown them out because they came into contact with something she couldn’t bring herself to believe was launderable. Lipstick older than a month gave her pause. Anything was possibly suspect.

My food got thrown out of the fridge, without asking me. She had wanted to wait to ask me in the evening, she said, but it was THERE
and it was just THERE
and she couldn’t wait and have it THERE ANYMORE.

And the day she threw out my bar of soap, my empathy wore out.

First thought: WHY AM I LIVING WITH THIS FRUITCAKE!???!!

Second Thought: Every time I pick a roommate it’s something. Why should this be any different from the lesbian 19-year-old girl with the Shawn Colvin fixation or the Moroccan guy who wouldn’t pee with the bathroom door shut?

Third thought: I could kill her?.

Fourth thought: I could help her.
::sigh:::
Alright alright I’ll fucking help her.
Fruitcake.

Yes that is the pathetic real me, it takes about four levels to get to something worthwhile, and even then grudgingly.

So we began with eating. I talked to her about eating. She talked with me for hours about wrestling with her compulsions. She really did want to change. But she kept dancing away from actually DOING anything about it. And in a few months she did acknowledge she wanted to eat somewhere different. I asked her each time I wanted to go out, did she want to come too?
Just to sit with us?
Not this time?
C’monnnnnnnn.
Eventually she sat with us. She ate nothing but drank bottled water at first. Finally one day I got her to eat half a sandwich. She was feeling very brave that day.

Enter the darkest secret of all: She divulged they had children. They were living with grandparents, two boys, one 11 and one 6. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently she had been so unable to deal with raising them (nor was Paul great at parenting), the grandparents had taken them off their hands for a while.

When I saw her finally interact with her children it was the most peculiar thing I’d ever seen. She looked as if she intellectually wanted to love them and be good to them, spoke to them lovingly and encouragingly, yet could barely bring herself to touch them. Children were, after all, the prime germ-carriers of the planet. The children themselves were halting little birds, well aware that they were barely able to express themselves in her presence, and had to be careful not to break her mood. They were the most squashed little souls I have ever seen.

I do not like little boys much, but I felt for these two. I wanted them to have arms around them, to give them tousled hair, reading lessons in laps, and french toast with cinnamon. They deserved better.

So to make a long story short that’s how I lost my loft. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about the boys or the food or the prison of her food-fear anymore. We had arguments and words, and our friendship dissolved as they decided to force me out. Amid bitterness and progress and further digressions, I let her take the loft with Paul and the children and they shut me out. I moved on to a place with no more banana pancakes.

But I thought much later, those boys had to have something like contact, and eventually they got it. Paul, ever the ass, ditched them all and last I heard she had begun to take care of them herself. She renamed herself Felice. Remarkably, she began to pull herself together. Last I heard she had done many new things, eaten in different places, and flown in a plane.

Still wonder if she ever tackled the cinnamon.
Trade you a can of cinnamon for the banana pancake recipe, ‘Lise.

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