I'll Never Forgive Myself
A reminder to ask questions while you can
In 2014, I was apartment hunting in London.
Now, as a 30-something who gets hungover from drinking a soda, this sounds so foreign and glamorous. But I do remember being scared. I had no idea how good I had it.
A young couple showed me a room in an apartment they wanted to sublet while they were moving into a bigger place. There was a baby on the way.
“Congratulations!” I said, because that’s what you say.
“Thank you,” the woman said.
“Fingers crossed it’s a boy,” the dad said.
I have no idea what kind of personal information I shared about myself. Maybe that I was visiting from L.A. or that I wrote about pet driver’s licenses and Lindsay Lohan. We fell into awkward silence pretty quickly.
The tour of the apartment led us to the kitchen, which the couple showed me with little fan fair. Here’s the shared fridge, you get your own cabinet, we have a community spice rack. Look at this nice window that looks out onto the street!
They didn’t say anything about the wall. The very very green wall.
Do you remember when Nickelodeon used to slime celebrities and lucky children on TV? That green. The wall was slime green.
And The Green wasn’t contained to just one wall.
It looked like someone painted the wall and then, using a shitty dry brush, started painting the floor and adjoining walls … but then gave up. The wooden chairs and small round table also sported paint splotches. I know this is my memory playing tricks on me, but when I imagine the scene, there were also neon green handprints on the fridge.
And then I left.
I never asked them why their kitchen looked like an alien crime scene, and it’s one of my only regrets in this life.
Sure, I can muster up some theories: one of the roommates might have been a youtuber and needed a green screen, didn’t consider just buying a green screen. Maybe the person who painted the kitchen suffered from a rare form of colorblindness and through their eyes, the highlighter nightmare looked like a cozy dream. Green might have just … been their favorite color.
But I will never know, which means you will never know.
And for that, I will never forgive myself.
