Movin' On Up

My friend MJ moved last week, with the help of a select few friends and her parents. Her father said at one point, as he sat to rest his back or, more likely, his heart, “You can really tell who your friends are when you move.” I answered him, “You’re right. You’re family, so you have to be here.” And he is right. By the looks of it, MJ is virtually friendless. She had me, her boyfriend, her boyfriend’s best friend, and her mom and dad. She also had some heavy ass furniture and a couple of flights of stairs, which might have had something to do with the scarcity of BFF’s. Or maybe because she moved on a Tuesday, when most normal folk are at work. MJ and her boyfriend work for themselves, her parents are retired, and I am a perpetual volunteer with trouble saying no, so we were it.

Did I mention the majority of us are over forty and have no business schlepping heavy boxes up and down stairs? Honestly, this isn’t MJ’s first apartment, and we are no longer in college. Over the years, a person accumulates more than just life experiences, and even when moving from one street to the next, as MJ did, all of that clutter, down to the last paper clip, needs to be dumped in a box and loaded in the U-Haul. It is one’s life reduced to a cardboard village, and it always takes more boxes than you think it will.

The obvious question is why didn’t MJ hire a mover, and since it is so obvious, let’s not even answer it. Instead, let’s reflect on my favorite part of the move. It revolves around a beautiful hand painted armoire that MJ had in her tiny office/storage space. I don’t know how tall the piece is, as it stands on delicate feet and has a cornice and post on top, which easily add a foot to the overall height. It does not have wood doors, more of a filigree metal decoration, all curlicues and ornate design. What it lacks in solid wood it makes up for in mirrors that line the back panel. It is the kind of piece of furniture that is best sold with a house, as it would take four men to move it. Only we didn’t have four men, we had three: one with a heart condition, one with a massive ego, and one with a sailor’s vocabulary.

“Motherfucker shit damn,” I heard from behind the massive armoire as it teetered on the top of MJ’s front stoop. MJ flitted about like a hummingbird on crank, trying unsuccessfully to find a way to be helpful. MJ has legs a mile long and the upper body strength of a rotisserie chicken. She would have been more useful in a tiny pleated skirt and some pom poms, cheering on the ego and his potty mouth cohort. The other man, her father, kept taking off his baseball cap and slamming it on the ground, like he was angry with an umpire’s lousy call. None of these theatrics was going to move that armoire down the stairs and into the U-Haul. I was there to help, but I’m no fool. I stood on the sidewalk and watched.

Eventually, with much grunting and yelling at each other, the armoire crawled its way down the five step stoop and over near the back of the rental truck. One of the armoire’s ankles cracked, much to MJ’s distress. In her mind, the piece was irreparable and should have been abandoned at the end of the driveway. I made myself busy packing boxes inside the house, so I don’t actually know how the goddamned motherfucking piece of shit got in the truck.

MJ and I loaded up the back of my car with more boxes and drove the half mile to her new home, a condo inconveniently located at the top of a full flight of stairs. When we got there, the three men were “debating” how to get the cocksucking son of a bitch off the truck without further causing damage to it or themselves. With an extra boost of machismo, they strong armed it out of the truck and onto the ground, at which point the cracked foot on the armoire snapped off all the way.

That snapped foot was the cue for everyone else to snap as well. MJ yelled at the ego, the ego yelled at MJ, MJ’s father yelled at his hat some more, and the best friend cursed. I stood on the sidewalk and watched some more. The ego was bleeding lightly from his well toned calf, at which point MJ decided to go for full castration by calling more men to help. MJ knows a lot of men who are willing to do pretty much whatever she asks of them. If she played her cards right, she would never have to scoop the kitty litter again; she only does it because she likes it. The ego and the potty mouth, knowing that more testicles were about to show up and get the job done, found the strength and vocabulary to get that monstrously large piece of furniture up the stairs. They grunted and groaned stair by stair, their mesenteric lining tearing with each heave. I watched all this from where I stood on the sidewalk. After they pushed it in the corner, the ego took the broken foot from MJ and wedged it in place, like Cinderella’s glass slipper. Good as new! This of course was when the other men showed up. Men have the knack of suddenly appearing when they are no longer needed.

With all the swearing, the fighting, the blood loss, the tears, and the drama, it already felt like a home. At least, it did to me, from where I stood on the sidewalk, watching.