BIG news

after yeeeears of careful...meticulous...PAINSTAKING study, i finally have a balcony to my name.

i first wanted a balcony when i was 16 because i figured around 16 was really the prime, balcony sitting years. i thought that once i’d have the freedom and financial wherewithal to purchase a home of my own with a balcony to my liking, i’d be as a tax-paying, working-class capital A Ah-dult, with a mortgage & kids to pick up from school & lots of emails to respond to all the time & other such constraints that frown upon wistfully gazing out at the night sky, wondering what the world had in store for me. so as a make-shift solution I briefly removed the window screen in my teenage bedroom, before realizing that both the concave of the roof and my being in direct eye-line of the neighbor that ran the HOA was too precarious for this to really work.

i first got a real balcony when i was 22, in my New York apartment, on the 18th floor of a high rise in the middle of 30th and Park, directly facing the empire state building. the ultimate manifestation of my balcony aspirations, you might think. but it didn’t quite feel that way. that was a stage of life that felt right on paper: working for a popular late-night TV show in midtown manhattan during the day and overlooking the world’s greatest skyline at night. but really, i thought i’d skipped steps somewhere, that it came too quick and felt too hollow, and that instead i just felt 18 floors removed from wherever life, wherever the heartbeat of this endlessly mythologized city really was

empire state from the 18th floor and the slightly more humble yet still enviable fire escapes perimetering Elizabeth St Garden in LES

in the succeeding year, i spent some time kicking rocks in Europe, eyeing some of the quaintest balconies known to man. tiny secluded spaces from the bustle of the city, themselves bustling with signs of life: flower pots and elaborate vines and tiny string lights and clothes hanging on clotheslines.

field research for the balcony of my dreams in france, spain, and croatia

i moved to D.C. some months later, and my first week in my first apartment, i didn’t have wifi or a TV or even hot water, so at dinner i’d pop out to my fire escape and stare at the proper balconies (at least, according to D.C. building code) across me, finding companionship in the flickering flood lights across the street that seemed so much more alive to me than the corporate offices and massive skyscrapers peppered across manhattan. i was content with the 20 ft square footage of quasi-balcony to my name, squeezing myself in between the loose electrical wiring to my left and the young married couple that would eat grapes while watching the sunset to my right, as if it was a timeshare i got a quarter of the year. in the meantime, i developed a penchant for going on long-walks in the alleyways behind my neighborhood, enamored by thriving, robust patio scene here i had somehow been uninitiated in while growing up in the suburbs of Maryland, mistakenly defining D.C. by the narrow brushes i’d had with the nauseating politico class downtown.

when my sublet ended, i felt that i could compromise on pretty much anything––in unit laundry, a dishwasher, an elevator––but i could not, would not do without some outdoor space. for my budget, this felt like a desire beyond the scope of ordinary reality (Zillow had no trouble reminding me how rare this was), so i employed every manifestation trick i had up my sleeve. i made my home lock screen a balcony from a facebook listing posted 3 years ago so my subconscious, elastic and determined, would absorb it at every passing glance. i once stopped on a stoop on my way to a party i was already late to so i could furiously scribble down exactly what my dream apartment would entail:

i changed my leasing agents name in my contacts list to some pithy little affirmation about the universe conspiring in my favor. during walk-throughs, i tried to play it cool, contorting a little arch in my eyebrow to pass off the appearance of scrutiny, so i could preserve even some semblance of a negotiating hand. as if the cracks in the wall or the rusting old stove that had been there since the Clinton administration were not immediately leveled out, in my personal ledger, by the views of the big trees and old row-homes. as if i was not already blinded by the very thing i wanted most.

and so here i am. as it stands, my inventory includes:

-Two (2) bags of clothes i washed at home in anticipation of an impending laundry drought that will last at least 4-7 weeks

-Three (3) flights of stairs that the D.C. humidity makes feel like 6

-Seven (7) empty glasses sitting in my sink because i made the amateur mistake of offering my guests something to drink the other night (clearly a woman with no dishwasher should be operating a la California: water only upon request).

-and most importantly: AT LAST. TO CALL MY OWN. ONE MF’ING BALCONY!!!!!!