On Sunday May 8 (my first day off at my new job) I moved into apartment housing and when I look out my window I can see a boat, mailboxes and trees. Old boats are part of home landscaping here. Gardens are blooming tremendously and seem to outdo the sun, or definitely enhance it, at every turn. It’s hard to appreciate the beautiful colors when rain is dripping from your hood and the tide is rushing in, but the sun unpeels the glory every time it decides to show up. It’s hard to believe that all this beauty and brilliance is here all along, just waiting for the right lighting.
My new “furnished” digs doesn’t have a coffee pot.
At $750/month for a shoebox bedroom it should have viable internet, more than four coat hangers and a damn coffee pot. And a lock of angel’s hair. And a damn coffee pot.
Instead the outdoors are my oasis (as it should be in such a place).
I’ve moved into this overpriced shoebox hole with two girls from work: Jazmin and Claire. They both work on the boat in guest services and I work on land as a tour rep. My roommates claim the place is haunted. I’m too busy being annoyed by lack of wifi to care about ghosts.
It is a breezy, multi-odored cornucopia of small bedrooms in a structure called “The Ohashi House.” To enter said house, you walk down an alley between two buildings: Ketchikan Dry Goods and New York Cafe.
The Front Door
Walking Out To Town
There’s a code on the door that our whole company knows (secure) and the sure smell of mold and mildew that greets you as the door with the code swing open. You can continue straight through another door to a seedy laundry room straight out of American Horror Story or continue up a carpeted flight of steps, through two doors that we usually leave unlocked and into our aforementioned cornucopia of bedrooms. Two of the bedrooms are uninhabited and we fill the other three. The bedrooms are 10 feet by 6 feet and have enough space to fit a twin bed, a small desk that doubles as a nightstand, a kid-sized dresser and a mini fridge. We can’t afford enough groceries to stock the large fridge much less have a private fridge in our room. However, the fridge could also moonlight as a miniature whore house film set so I like to keep some of my things in the smaller, cleaner fridge in my room for aesthetic reasons. I really am dramatic about germs, come to find out.
The place doesn’t have any ventilation, so I try to crack a window to let the air blow through the odor clouds. In my bedroom, the window is bigger than the others but I didn’t realize until I chose this room that the window doesn’t open. There are two showers but only one has a toilet. The first bathroom had sprigs of long twisty black curly hairs surrounding the lip of the sink when I got here.
On my first night:
A faint cigarette smell wafted in and out of my bedroom throughout my first night’s sleep. I did not feel safe on the bed, comfortable on the bed, able to sleep. I tossed and turned through the hours and thought about how I was losing sleep and $750. I kept dotting the sheets with lavender essential oil to fight the smell(s).
Apparently one of the deckhands lives upstairs and there is a living room up there. He locks up the whole unit when he leaves so we don’t have access to the living room. It’s a gentleman’s living room and we must be the lady maids who live below.
On my second day: I got home from work, stripped the bed and looked on with terror at the top of my mattress. Thankfully, although the mattress sucks compared to the one at Amanda’s, it has no suspect stains.
My Shoebox
I called Suzanne, my 75 year-old dock commander with a New England accent thicker than chowder, to ask if she knew where the laundry room was. I found it and wondered if Dexter had fastiduously de-limbed a body there.
I stuffed half of the bedding inside, including pillows, and turned the knob 25 times and pulled the handle. No rushing water sound. Just the echo of an old knob on an old steel basin washing machine. I was gonna be real pissed if I had gone through the trauma of facing my alien mattress top and finding the washing machine was defunct. A nice lady walked out of a mystery door and showed me how to coax the knob.
I finally heard the rewarding sound of running water and left the machines to their devices.
My roommates are sweet little baby children: I say that because I am turning 30 this Summer and they are both 21.
Claire is blonde and in denial of her extroversion. Jazmin is admittedly introverted, engaged to a man who lives in Hawaii, and has long black curly hair and speaks the Spanish (this will come in handy as I prepare for peace corps!)
As I unpacked on my first day here, Claire played the guitar in her bedroom and her affected and beautiful singing voice about being a sailor was my soundtrack. There is a tall thin package in the kitchen addressed from Jazmin to someone I don’t know. Inside there is a fire stick that Jazmin knows how to twirl. She plans to work on a medical marijuana farm with her fiancé after this summer. She doesn’t have a data plan here so we have to email her to get her attention.
The ladies returned home from work as I was exiting my inaugural Ohashi shower. 9/10 times the water shuts off midway from twisting the knob from cold to hot water. The other girls use the second shower because the water gets piping hot. Even though this shower is temperamental, I like the idea of it being my own.
Thankfully, sleep has gotten easier. I invested in Febreze and crack windows in the kitchen whenever possible.
Last night, Claire invited me to go to the beach to see Jazmin fire twirl. I was so tired, so very tired, and have 4 mornings in a row of work at 6:30 (Thursday Friday) and 7am (Saturday Sunday) start times. But when you live in Alaska, you go to the beach when invited and you don’t ask questions.
What a glorious world to know such interesting people. Everyone who comes to work here has two things in common: a longing for adventure and a story. I don’t have a longing for adventure (see: the bitching about the crappy apartment), I don’t have firesticks or guitars. I’m a homebody on the search for something more. I taped up Barbra Streisand and Audrey Hepburn to the wall above my dresser.
As I was readying myself for bed the other night, I saw three black cats through the empty room window. I pulled up the lower pane to say hello and only one stayed to eyeball me. I threw my processed turkey meat out the window as I declared “This is my livelihood!” but the cats showed no interest.
Jazmin is going to bring home salmon skins from the ship to supply the cats. We’ll try again another day.
