"Jo, are you sure we don't need any drywall?"
"Yes, Rhys, I'm sure."
"But are you sure, sure? The apartment upstairs isn't finished yet. Maybe our landlord would want it."
"Then she can get it."
"Okay, what about a free treadmill? It's in the Bronx, but I bet we could fit it on the subway if you helped me carry it."
"Where would we put it once we got it here?"
"Yeah, true. But how can you go wrong with a free ornage tabby, and a free rotweiller?"
"Listen to yourself, man! Do you see what you've become!?"
New York may be expensive, but everything is free. Everything, that is, except for time. My first night here, Brooke and I walked to carrie.anne's apartment in Bedstuy, and on the way we saw the nicest, most comfortable couch we'd ever laid eyes on. Unfortunately, it was a love seat, and we already had a better couch. That didn't stop me from rationalizing. It was hard to give up something so good and so free, even though we couldn't use it. I thought about fitting it in my room, but then I would have a giant bed and a couch but no room for a desk or a dresser. If only we didn't already have a couch! Then we could carry it all the way back to our apartment, drag it up the stairs, haul in into the living room, and pleasantly surprise Jo, who had resigned himself to sitting on the floor for the rest of the year. The reality is, if we'd taken that couch back, Jo just would have been annoyed.
The next morning, I awoke to a room with no couch and room for a desk. So I got on craigslist new york and looked at the free section. Dear Lord, it had it all: free DVD players, free refridgerators, free clothes, free canned food and spices even. Too bad we already had most of those things! That didn't stop me from coveting things I'd never wanted before.
For instance, do I really need this?:
After flirting with the idea of spending the rest of my days zooming around the New York subway picking up free trinkets and pieces of Ikea furniture, I calmed down and realized that free stuff is sometimes worse than nothing. So I decided to get only things I absolutely needed. And even then, only things that were nearby, or small enough to carry on the subway by myself.
First thing that seemed reasonable... a humidifier in Brooklyn. I've never really used one before, except maybe as a really young kid, but I'd heard they were good for your skin and your breathing. I emailed the guy, and he still had it. So the next day, first thing, I got on the G-line and took it to the next to last stop. I ended up in a "real," yet not "urban" neighborhood that didn't remind me of Austin at all. He was only a couple of blocks from the train, and after buzzing him a few times, he came down with the humidifier, which was had a brown, stickly layer on the top.
"Is there anything I should know about this," I asked.
"It's a humidifier," he said neutrally.
"Oh."
"The woman who lived here before left it. I've never used it before, except to test if it works. It does. But I don't need it for anything."
He gave it to me indifferently and then went back upstairs to his dry, humidless apartment.
He must have thought I was strange, traveling all this way for something he just barely didn't throw away. "What's with that humidifier guy," he must have wondered. "Why's he so obsessed with humidifiers?"
That first night I tried to figure the humidifier out. I couldn't see how to get the water in, but it looked like it had a handle on the top that lifted up. I pulled hard as I could, until I almost broke the handle off. Here's what it looked like when I was through with it:
Turns out the water goes in the bottom. I've been using it every night since. Except last night, when it was just too muggy. I hate to waste it, but I was really just hurting myself.
I've only gotten a couple of other free things since. This shelf, which originally was empty:
And a free haircut, for entering the professional world, that I have mixed feelings about. She says she took off "weight, not length." I say she just made it look weird. This is me before:
And me after:
I still don't have that desk, though!
I usually don't get suckered into giving strangers money. I need it to buy stuff, you know? And why should I give a stranger money if he's not giving me money? I mean, I'm a stranger as well. So why don't I, as a random person that you don't know at all, deserve your money too? Still, the temptation to give people you don't know the fruit of your labor is always there, waiting for the right pitch.
The "hilariously honest" approach -- "Spare change so I can get cracked out?" -- doesn't work on me. It reminds me too much of the attrocious self-deprecating intro to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius ("You might want to skip much of the middle, namely pages 209-301, which concern the lives of people in their early twenties, and those lives are very difficult to make interesting... Beyond chapter four, the book thereafter is kind of uneven.") Either it's a lie, and therefore not funny, or it's true, and I don't want to read your boring, uneven book. Or pay for your crack.
H the Great was different, though. He was offering me something:
H the Great intercepted me on my way to the Whole Foods in Union Square. He put this CD in my hand and eagerly pointed at the cover.
"That's me, man, that's me! H the Great! This is my CD, it's got some radio play, I'm doing it all independently, all I'm asking for is a small donation. A small donation, that's all, so I can print some more."
"Oh, I can't," I apologized, though I hadn't really done anything wrong. "I just moved here, I'm trying to save money, I've gotta be better than this guy from my high school..."
"Whoa, you know, you look like that kid from That 70s Show. You've got that look."
"You mean Eric?"
"I don't know about that, man. Where are you from," The Great asked.
"Austin. Texas."
The Great's eyes lit up.
"Texas! Every time I've been to Texas, all the girls have big titties! Why is that? You noticed that, right? It's not just me! All the Texas girls have big titties!"
I didn't know what to say. So I just kind of agreed with him. Then I gave him five dollars.
