A Dirty Dozen
On Saturday night, the lot of us were gathered around a long table in a bar in Brooklyn, soothing a day of hard labor and good work with food and whisky. We were waiting on our cocktails to be served, and Linder had asked our end of the table for favorite moments from the day. Someone had said that theirs was the satisfaction of clearing out an entire room of debris, of the gratification of looking at a clean space and remembering how flooded and dirty it had looked a few hours before. L-Train said hers was when she was taking a panoramic video of the house while we were working on it, and how as she was panning around, showing people swinging crowbars or hauling out debris or prying out nails, there was this constant "wham ... wham ... wham" punctuating the footage like a cannon, and at the end, she swung the camera around to the bathroom where Linder was swinging a sledgehammer into tile with the steadiness of a swiss clock. Wham ... wham ... wham. cayetana said that her favorite moment hadn't arrived yet, that she was still holding out for a chance to smash something tomorrow.
"What about you, Cris?" he asked, "what was your favorite?"
Over the last many years, my friends and I have helped each move houses a countless number of times. We've built up this institutional lore around our methods, of knowing when it's more efficient to fire brigade items down a set of twisty stairs, and who you want around to help with a big, unwieldy dresser. We know a half dozen ways of getting a big mattress or couch in or out of a house, and that, in any job, it's always going to be silentq and sara w. who will be in charge of loading the truck; because that's what they're excellent at.
Therefore, I should not have been surprised when this crew that went with me to Staten Island had performed as smoothly as it had. I had, of course, slightly stacked the deck and recruited a bunch of people that I had done moves with before. silas7 with his quiet, steady strength. mishak and his eagerness to give anything a shot. heatray and his ability to take a step back and suggest a better way of doing something. I couldn't get silentq or ayun because of conflicting travel plans, but one never gets their dream team. I had done all of this and still worried about whether it would be good enough, or if some combination of spending an entire weekend together combined with disaster stress and a few new strangers would've made things blow up; but looking back, that was a small risk.
I took a sip of my water and said that it was a bit the same as L-Train, that I remembered standing in the middle of this house, and I could see everyone was working, being awesome, and I never had to give orders. All that I did was set things up so that we could get these people to this house, and just let them loose. They would make the most of it. They would do their best, because that's what they want to do. And they were all my friends.
On the drive back, I had asked joeyfresh what his favorite moment was and after a moment of thought he said, "it was two things. One, I loved breaking up the floor. Getting into a rhythm with the pry bar. It was almost meditative. But also, I just loved meeting all of the people this weekend. No ego. Nobody being a prima donna or being difficult. Everyone being positive and cooperative and happy. You have good friends, man."
Yeah, you guys.
