Bill Shaner

I ignored the indistinguishable smell coming from somewhere in the bathroom as I brushed my teeth. I made my way out into the kitchen, past the mountain of dishes piling out of the sink, the three strangers sleeping on my couch and shut the front door quickly, before the weed smell and flies got out. Finally, some fresh air. My roommates are good people; they’re just riding some weird hippie phase a little too hard. This is my second month living with them and it’s starting to feel like a mistake. I put on a Dismemberment Plan album I downloaded last night for the 20-minute walk to class. As “The City,” a chaotic, awkward break-up ballad began to play, I saw a frail, middle aged asian woman in a tattered red track suit picking beer cans out of my neighbor’s trash, two shopping carts full of returnables dragging behind her. “Now I notice the street lamps hum, the ghosts of graffiti they couldn’t quite erase, the blank face stares on the subway…” She looked at me and I looked away. “…This is where I live, but I’ve never felt less at home.” Those few seconds burned in my head all day. On the walk back from class, I ignored the sunny day and lost interest in my normal walking games (Funniest Haircut Of The Day, Who Looks The Most Like Oprah, Make Eyes At The Pretty Girl and See What She Does etc.) Instead I observed the urban décor of Northeastern’s West Village, the MFA and Harvard Medical fade as I went west. I overheard a homeless man with three teeth lying to people about the bus he can’t afford to see his ex-wife outside a Seven Eleven. I noticed the vomit on the other side of a trash can, the massive pile of cigarette butts by the back door of a pizza place and broken glass filling in the cracks of sidewalks. I passed a park where people with shopping carts akin to the one I saw this morning were resting. One waved and said, “Good afternoon.” I waved back. One of my roommates greeted me from behind a bongo as I past the sink and the flies and the bathroom smell, holding my breath until I shut my bedroom door. I called my parents. Boston didn’t feel like home anymore.