Back To A

Back to A The story of a girl, a shitzu, and a Manhattan apartment

Part One

Anisha Ahooja

www.BackToA.com

For Harold, Always and forever.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I'm moving from, and what lousy events led up to me moving these massive boxes, and how I landed up in an empty one bedroom on the Upper East Side in the middle of the night with a mattress and a shitzu, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff now bores me, and in the second place, my ex's lawyer and mine would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal. They're quite touchy about anything like that. They're nice and all I'm not saying that, but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas and how, with a little help from the most unexpected sources, I decided that my empty apartment and I needed an awakening.

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The Meaning of A. . .

Back to Beginnings. . .

I have always believed that the letter A represents a beginning. It comes first in the alphabet, after all. A is for apple, which is given to teachers on the first day of school (okay this never happened when I was a teacher, but it's a nice idea if you like fruit, which I don't, but the intent is still focused on a new beginning.) Putting your best foot forward. Re-inventing yourself, even. A has possibilities. Personality. A can be anything.

When I hit 30, I went through a period during which I believed I was at Z. I had done everything I had set out to do, and at a breathtaking (or manic, depending on how you look at it) speed. I was the kid in kindergarten ready to provide a dissertation when asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up." I was the eldest. The teacher's pet.

The good child. Those kind of brats always end up at Z before they know it.

Then they freak out for a bit and have a nervous breakdown because nothing has been planned for the next. . . several decades or so. So now what?

Back to A. Some of life's most complicated questions are often discovered in the simplest of solutions. Start over. I'm creating a next time. Because nobody says you can't, and there's something exciting and thrilling about starting from scratch and re-discovering who you are now, and how that person may be very different from the first time she was at A. For me, this solution came when I began to make my generic Upper East Side one bedroom (no fee, thank you very much Google and Streeteasy.com) into a home. For three months I lingered - fearfully, resentfully, maybe even lazily - waiting for the morning when all my stuff would magically appear. We're talking no furniture, not even forks and eating Dominos pizza and other finger foods at every meal.

There was no come to Jesus meeting or any other sort of mind blowing revelation that made me decide to go back to A. I just woke up one morning and decided I was tired of living like a secret bum with very nice shoes. I wanted to walk into an apartment that may never make the pages of Architectural Digest, but would make me smile. My stuff.

My taste. My touch. I realized I didn't even have a theme, or a style. . or a boyfriend or a husband or a roomate. I could pretty much do whatever I wanted - carve a completely fresh path. Entirely on my own.That's what A looks like. It's awesome.

Here's my journey, and hopefully it will inspire you as much as it continues to inspire me each day. If a home decor blog and my 7th grade diary had a baby, this would be it. It's messy and immature at times, a lot of paint gets spilled along the way, but we're slowly coming to life again, this apartment and I. Together.

It's even better than Tiffany's. . .

Moving Day. . .again When your movers call you at 10:00 a.m. on moving day and announce casually "we can't make it because it's pouring outside" your whole life tends to flash before your eyes. Harold was so outraged he even went down to the lobby to see if it was really true. He reported back that indeed there were no movers.

My Old Life One year ago home meant this. . .

My Rented, Fake Life And then, for the past year a furnished pad at 502 Park Avenue meant this. . .and today I had neither.

502 Park. . .

And yeah I know furnished places are creepy and meant for business men who need places all over the world like Hong Kong and Dubai and other business'ish' places where bankers like to go and be important- not a girl and a shitzu who've lived in Manhattan for over a decade. But there's something about not owning anything that allows you to float for awhile and suspend time. None of it's real, and sometimes that's exactly the kind of transition you need. It's a lot of dresses and heels and late nights and Barney's and Bloomingdales and Bergdorf's (they were my neighbors, not my fault). When you lose everything and aren't prepared for it, you're not quite ready to acquire anything else of substance. You dabble in the superficial - people, places, 'thrill of the moment' purchases. Life is all frosting and no cupcake. If you know what I mean.

Some of you know better than others. . .

That annoying Friar Lawrence did warn Romeo, though, that the sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness and some other blah blah blah-ness about doing things moderately. Betty Crocker vanilla frosting he knew not.

What a night for a dance, You know I'm a dancing machine With the fire in my bones And the sweet taste of kerosene. . .

I get lost in the night So high don't wanna come down To face the loss Of the good thing

Dreaming of Revelry Without divulging too much or sending my entire family into a panic attack, let's just say the Kings of Leon had a very timely hit that year that kinda said it all. . .

That I have found. . .

In the dark of the night I hear you callin’ my name With the hardest of hearts, I still feel full of pain. . .

So I drink and I smoke And I ask you if you’re ever around Even though It was me who drove us Right into the ground. . .

See the time we shared it Was precious to me But all the while I was dreamin of revelry. . .

So the movers eventually came, but it was late and an irate super let them know the job had to be done in an hour. "Lady, we're going to have to dump everything in big boxes," but they said it kindly and there was nothing to do but watch my life go into massive boxes.

Don't let Harold fool you - I know it looks traumatic, but if you know him like I know him, he's just pissed and sulking.

He loves Park Avenue and does not think Third Avenue is a very good look for a shitzu who looks as good as he does.

And because the super at the other end was equally put off and it was getting increasingly late, I got another "Sorry Lady, but we're going to have to dump everything" and once again, there was nothing to do but acquiesce.

Sometimes you wish you were the size of a shitzu and could collapse on a round, leopard bed

One fancy Baker silver chest (yep, the Barbara Barry diamond chest), my reading chair, and everything I had in the world on a pile on the floor. Â We were Back to A.

"Let's go for a walk," I told Harold, and we stepped over the pile and into the night like we always do.

It was still raining outside and I'm not going to pull any hokey it-felt-like-abaptism crap on you. Â We got wet (I'm forever in search of umbrellas and gloves) and it sucked and we went back upstairs and sulked for a bit, and decided to deal with it all tomorrow -"I won't think about that now, I'll think about it tomorrow" - Scarlett O'Hara style.

And in the dark we could have been on any street in any room in any place in the world. Â That's the thing about night. Â It has always been the great leveler.

The Story of a Chair It was not the iconic opening scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's that made me fall in love. The black dress, the upswept hair, the enormous glasses. . . and of course, Tiffany's at dawn. Although I came very close. New York City's most iconic cinematic seduction did not hold a candle to the rush I felt watching Holly Golightly's fantasy stroll come to an abrupt end. A five-floor walk up. Misplaced keys. An infuriated super. Lipstick stored in the mail box. Parties with no guest lists, and without an end in sight. A phone hidden in a hatbox, a misplaced shoe, a cat with no name. Then to sit on a fire escape amidst the crowds and sing the loneliest song in the word. . .that was and is the New York City that has a permanent hold on my heart. Inexplicable. Frenzied, even, but sparkling with possibility and feeling - the forgotten pulse that suddenly begins to beat and leaves F. Scott Fitzgerald reverent: "New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world." A perfect place for an awakening.

And there in the window of the new Modani store on 19th between Park Avenue South and Broadway was perhaps the most perfect desk chair in the entire world.I walked in immediately, paid for the chair, and carried it out of the store much to the bemusement of Roman, the coolest salesman in New York.

"Are you sure you don't want it delivered?" Delivery? And deny myself the fun of cabbing it uptown with Holly?

"I got it, thanks." I really did.

The next empty cab that pulled up was one of those big van ones. . . the driver loved the chair and even helped me bring it from the cab to my building's lobby. I was in love with this afternoon. No desk yet, and not much of anything else, but I look at Holly Golightly every time I enter my apartment and recall a girl who was once lost, but did eventually get found.

It makes me happy. Rave on, Truman Capote.

“Hey Harold,” I asked, suddenly overcome with inspiration. “Hey do you want to come with me to Sleepy's and get a bed?”

Believe me, there were never two more entertained individuals than Harold and I at Sleepy's that afternoon.

One thing was certain. There was not going to be any awakening if I couldn't sleep to live. I looked across the empty apartment and could tell that even Harold had not had the most comfortable night. He was looking a little lost, really.

“Hey Harold,” I asked, suddenly overcome with inspiration. “Hey do you want to come with me to Sleepy's and get a bed?”

In this new life, I was going to play an active role in every decision I made. I wanted everything that came through the doors to be hand-selected by me. And a story that came with it. Sometimes the shortcut deprives the pleasure of a possible memory. Just because you can call something in or order it doesn't mean you should. Believe me, there were never two more entertained individuals than Harold and I at Sleepy's that afternoon. We tested everything out. . .

And ultimately settled on the softest one possible. A metal frame, the box spring and the mattress were delivered later that afternoon and I snapped pictures with all the enthusiasm one would have if one suddenly did not have a bed. You might, too. You never know. I had to do a Bed Bath & Beyond run next (plight of the sheet-less. . .with furnished apartments you don't get to leave with linens) but I didn't go there first.

Harold and I strolled over to Central Park instead because it was unseasonably warm and I was in the mood. Follow my whimsy. Pick every item I would own by myself. I was developing a new set of rules and that realization alone was a monumental discovery.

I think my 20s had me so preoccupied I never sat down long enough to think about how I might be changing and what my likes and dislikes were. . . I was going on some preconceived idea that may have been formed in my early teenage years. Maybe what we refer to as a mid-life crisis is actually a metamorphoses. A necessary shedding. Not a breakup or a separation or a divorce, but a necessary release to begin again, go back to A. Perhaps all goodbyes should be done gracefully and with quiet acceptance.

Celebrated, even, for our constantly evolving selves.

Central Park has just the right amount of cement to grass ratio to please Harold and my different tastes. . . But I was wearing sneakers and jeans, and decided to sit on the grass near a blissed out Harold anyways and read for awhile under a tree. The grass felt lovely.

Back to Bad Ass Harold and I went to Gracious Homes - the one on the other side of the street where the boys go - and we were not messing around.

We needed weaponry.

I needed a Phillip's screwdriver and a staple gun.

Yeah, baby.

In my old life there was a fully equipped tool box that my ex-husband used to store in a cabinet above the fridge. I couldn't even reach it, much less ever thought of doing so.

So it may not seem like a big deal to you, but these two tools had all the power of mass weaponry to me. I bought them because I needed them, and I was going to ultimately store them someplace lower where I could reach them.

Because I will be reaching for them often.

I had Top Gun’s “Playing With the Boys” on my ipod and it was my soundtrack of the day.

All your days should have a soundtrack; I highly recommend it.

Back to the task.

I found this incredible table off Craig's List for $40 dollars. You should cyber-by (my word for online drive-by. Shakespeare made up words all the time and he wasn't even that famous when he did it) Craig's list like, five times daily. Even if you aren't looking for anything in particular. I wasn't looking for the Derek Lam dress I bought this weekend, but when I saw it I knew I had been looking for it all my life. Craig's List is like that. A Japanese girl was going back to. . . well, Japan, and she didn't care that this table was lucite and heavy and gorgeous and worth a few grand. She wanted it out, and she wanted it out on a Sunday.

There was an ad for "Man With A Van" on Craig's List as well; I called the girl and the man with the van, and by noon on a Sunday I had this amazing table in my house. I told you I meet the best people online.

Always time for Green Flea, and I went in search of chairs. They were quite beautiful, and at $200 for all four quite a bargain. The nice man at the Green Flea stall said he would drop them off with my doorman on his way home, and once procured I popped the seats off with the phillips screwdriver (it took a very long time, I'm embarrassed to say - - not because it's hard to get four screws off, but playing with the boys does not always equate to boy strength). Once off, I brought out my favorite Hollandlac paint, sanded the babies down for about ten seconds and got bored again, and started painting - obviously with Pandora playing America Radio in the background.

It’s okay to spill. . .

Can anyone deal with how painfully beautiful Bertie Higgins' Key Largo is. . . might be the only song that makes me cry a little bit. Reminds me of me when I'm not feeling particularly Back to A, which I do sometimes. It's okay to slip. It's okay to spill.

Anything that drips can be wiped away.

My place was a war zone. It made me think of what other people do in their apartments. I might be alone in the level of activity that occurs in mine. . . but I like it that way. It's a factory of one over here sorry Harold, one and a half - and let me tell you, we know how to rip it. As the chairs dried, we went in search of fabric. Our heart was set on the typical Hollywood Regency pattern Kelly Wearstler uses so well - and just when we were utterly discouraged, we found a shower curtain at Gracious Home and wondered. . .why not? It was cheap, we cut it up, placed the cushions on them face down, and took out the staple gun. But we could not figure out how to work a staple gun. I brought the cushion, the fabric, and the staple gun back to Gracious Home where the awesome man behind the counter showed me how it worked. It's really easy - you just have to lean down on it and not treat it like some delicate stapler. Push your whole body into it - BAM! Bam! Bam! Bam! The sound is thrilling.

Here’s looking at you, kid. . .

We went back home and went to work on the other three cushion covers - you don't have to be neat at all - only psycho guests will get on all fours and look under your chairs. And you probably shouldn't be friends with people like that, anyways. I tend to decorate in the evenings (sorry to any neighbors reading this, yes that was me with the bam bams) and I usually have my best girlfriend in D.C. keeping me company on g-video. She thinks my nighttime decorating is fascinating and hilarious. When it was all done I played Key Largo again. . . but it didn't really make me sad. I found the lines that made me smile.

I am finding it all, once again. Just like they did in Key Largo.

Back to A Part II Coming Soon. . .

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