Real Estate — Days

There was a time in my life when I was around a lot of guys who didn’t know what rock music is. A lot of punks live in Washington, DC. It’s known for its punk culture and history, but I wasn’t hanging out in the right places or going to the right shows to find them.

This was also a time when I was spending time with guys who weren’t nice to me. I was drinking a lot and exploring the culture of the one night stand. I always had an easy time having sex with strangers. All you have to do is ask.

My longest one night stand lasted three months. He was a smoker and a frat bro dude in every sense of the stereotype. He chewed a mint gum and when I smell a certain brand of tobacco and mint, I think of him. It almost turns me on. I kept seeing him because he was nice to me and called me back. Drinking really fogs up the lens. Eager to have someone to fuck, it’s easy to look the other way when your personalities don’t match. Every sip says, who cares?

I was out with my roommate’s cousin the night we bumped into him. They were former roommates. I later learned when I was in the bathroom he asked the cousin, “you hittin’ that?” (Which still makes me want to die.) We took the bus up the hill to smoke weed at his place. I eventually pulled my signature move and excused myself to the gutter so I could puke alone.

When the guy found me on the street, cousin long gone, I told him, “I’d put the moves on you but I’m all vomity.” When we woke up the next morning I asked him what his name was.

I liked being the guy’s outlier. I could tell he hadn’t spent time around women like me — women that wore sneakers, that talked back, with an open mouth laugh, that could drink as much as he could, that surprised him. When he invited a friend to meet me I could tell they talked about me and how easy I was. I was easy. And I liked that it impressed them.

We both loved music and spoke the same language and read the same reviews. He bought two tickets to a sold out tUnE-yArDs show I was attending with an out of town friend one weekend…even though he only needed one. My taste was in the fuzzy, loud, psychedelic lane (Ty Segall, Man Man). And his was, well, Real Estate. It was 2011 and every time I hear their jangling, sun soaked guitars I think of him. When I hear music that all sounds the same, I think of him. When I hear vapid lyrics about wasted miles and aimless drives I think of my careless lifestyle.

Layered guitar patterns and reverbed, layered vocals transport me. The tight snap on their drum head makes me look around his room and wonder who this person is, not a book in sight. I never hear this music but it is instantly recognizable. It’s like a flash when it comes on, from outside my orbit. I smell the tobacco and mint on his breath and hear his constant apology for smoking.

He invited me to his house party and I naturally showed up in jeans and a flannel. But when I arrived everyone was standing around in skirts and heels. All the boys were in pastel button down shirts. The clocks had turned back and I was a freshman again wondering how I wound up at a Cornell frat party. There was no one smoking weed. Their cigarettes were alien to me. I stumbled upon a fellow Ithacan and we joked about standing in a time machine. He was tall and lanky and I was attracted to him but made myself walk away because of the sure bet of someone else.

I escaped upstairs with the guy, assuming we’d smoke weed. We started kissing and his friends walked in. I’ll never forget their faces. It looked like they had never heard a woman speak before. They talked about doing a bump and when I asked what that was, I realized I was in the wrong room at the wrong house party and politely excused myself.

When I hear Real Estate when cruising the dial on a car radio or out in a Trader Joe’s, or, god forbid, in someone’s home, I think of a sea of delicate pinks, yellows, purples, and stripes that lined the walls of that kitchen. I want to remember that I left without saying goodbye, sober. But something tells me I stayed behind so he’d have me one more time.

Once when we had sex while I was on my period, it got everywhere. And when I returned a week later it was still in his sheets. I could fuck in them but couldn’t sleep in it. In the middle of the night I slipped out and rode my bike down the hill to my apartment to shower and be alone. Thankfully my brain stepped in when he took me to the movies and leaned over during the previews to ask me who J. Edgar was. That was the moment I knew it had to end.

I used to tell these stories and one-liners as jokes to show off just how bad I let it get.

I cannot stress enough how rarely the band Real Estate surfaces in my life. I am lucky. They are a time capsule of an era of indie rock and of my past. Their music is boring and repetitive, but the worst part about their sound are these memories. I hate that I still have them. Maybe now that I wrote them down I can let them go.