You Have to Give Up What You Have to Get What You Need
My kitchen was crumbling. So was I.
This is the first story from our 10th issue, themed “HOLDOUTS”—about the things we hold onto, and hold out for. Read the editor’s note here.
After publishing his coming-of-age essay “My Prince-Themed Bedroom Was a Revolution” in Wrong House’s debut issue, I knew I needed to invite Jesse back for a second round. We caught up over Zoom, his then-crumbling kitchen lurking in the background. He had recently scheduled a contractor to start its renovation. The project was one he’d deferred for years. I thought he was holding out for the right time, the right income, or maybe for his cat Francine to have a string of steady days before firing the starting gun on construction.
As it turns out, there was a lot more to it than that. What he reveals in this (devastating, beautiful, ultimately optimistic!) essay is the way that our homes often make physical the parts of ourselves that we conceal from others—and the ways they can be sites of self-redemption. —Lila Allen
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Written by Jesse Dorris // Illustrations by Samantha Shaffer
My kitchen began self-destructing about 10 years ago. Little things at first: A fray in the wood drawer by the sink meant it wouldn’t really open, but who remembers what I kept in there anyway. A spider crack across the first row of tiles on the floor, the veins a muddy brown that stood out against the jaundice of the porcelain. One of my cats, a calico named Cuddles with frayed nerves, brought the damage to my attention one hot summer morning. I hid it with an unremarkable runner. Cuddles didn’t like guests, and neither does his shy but calmer brother, Francine Fishpaw. Back then I was weathering the end of the long-term relationship I’d failed to keep warm, and also been burned by a subsequent, abusive romance, which I only mention to say that I wasn’t really bringing people into my apartment. I had to save up what few resources I had for self-improvement, not home improvement. The cats kept the secret of how I really lived.
The drawer broke, but I could still wrench the long roll of parchment paper from it on those winter nights I craved a pile of roasted vegetables as my dinner-for-one. When I’d lived in a group house years before, I’d whipped up elaborate suppers for my friends, who’d bring in a little weed or another frosted dirty martini to keep me going; to this day, when I visit my family for the holidays, I make a multi-course Christmas dinner from scratch for the dozen or more of them. There was a time, in this apartment, when I hosted a baby shower for a dear friend and whipped up homemade fucking fresh mozzarella, the white clouds trembling in cheesecloth suspended from a cabinet. I suspected the woodwork would come crashing down any minute, so I didn’t keep the Dansk in it. I made another friend cashew ricotta with turmeric in the food processor, you can guess the damage from that.
As time went on, I’d come to barely offer a stranger water after I’d fucked him, waving him out the door. I made a few new close friends who’ve never even seen where I live. I know it’s far, I’d say with faux-generosity, absolving them of the obligation to come out to my neighborhood in south-central Brooklyn, a leafy place that fiddled with becoming fashionable over the years but never really did. I’ll come meet you in the middle.
My dishwasher broke in March of 2020. That was fine; I had all the time in the world to wash the food I could barely taste in my lockdown depression off those nice white firestone bowls. Cuddles was always spooked by the groan of the dry cycle anyway. I’d just stopped dating a guy who projected the disgust he felt for himself onto me with the precision of a gardener misting orchids. The kitchen blinds fell off a bracket; a weird little bubble swelled behind the paint on the right-hand wall. I grew sure of the fact that someone who lived in a space like this—a design writer no less—was broken too. Somehow, I became fairly successful at writing about people with a lot of money who used it to make over the world in their image. I wrote so many stories about this. I had no idea how they did it.
Cuddles died of cancer. My mom fought and banished cancer. I didn’t date a single person. Those stories of people building cities and making houses into homes took me to places I never dreamed I’d find myself in: Riyadh. Helsinki. Oaxaca. Tulsa. Each time I came home, my kitchen was closer to dust. I started saying no to travel because the gap between my external presentation and interior life became a kind of jet lag I couldn’t shake off.
Alone on a dance floor one June afternoon, I watched DJs Octo Octa and Eris Drew embrace and kiss each other. I was on a lot of mushrooms, and the walls of the Ruins at the Knockdown Center crumbled and reassembled themselves into the shape of a Swatch I had as a kid, the most fabulous thing I’d ever seen, an olive green armband and cool gray face with a grid of white dots and yellow hands. Alone on New Year’s, I was on a lot of mushrooms, and I watched Francine fall asleep, his furry little tuxedo body draped across the threshold of my stupid kitchen, his tail making strange shapes in time to a record of ambient music composed for Japanese department stores. You isolate yourself, my therapist said. But aren’t you actually a social person?
All these people I’d never met moved into my building. My therapist asked: Why don’t you ask them if they’ve renovated their kitchens? Each week I’d told him I couldn’t date anyone because I couldn’t have them over because I was embarrassed about my kitchen, by which I meant myself, of course. But I also meant my kitchen. I began doing mutual aid as a way to stop feeling sorry for myself (I’m a Leo), distributing food and water and gender-affirming clothing to unhoused folks on the Lower East Side as part of Backpacks for the Street. Every Sunday afternoon made a little spider crack in me which eventually formed tectonic shifts. Nothing is certain; this could all be gone tomorrow. Making your own little corner of the world a place you want to invite the world into is decadent if you stop there. But abdicating agency over your own happiness won’t keep you safe, either. Could I imagine divesting from shame.
One cold spring night I poured a glass of whiskey my father had sent me during lockdown. I’d been holding onto it for some reason. I emailed the listserve. Five people recommended the same contractor. I emailed him. He came over a few days later. This is easy, he said. We can pull everything up. We can pull everything out. Go to this supply store, pick out counters and cabinets. We’re looking at six weeks. I’ll send you the estimate. I went to the supply store and picked out a green like the Swatch band for the cabinets, a gray like the Swatch face for the counter. A terrazzo-y floor tile was on sale so discounted that it must have been sitting there for years, holding out for someone like me to stop holding onto the idea that he wasn’t worth being in the world. New appliances from Costco; nothing fancy, but they’d work. A splurge in the form of crackle-glaze handmade backsplash tiles in a glamorous shell blue, a kind of MCM101 that reminded me of the places I saw when I was a kid whose inhabitants I imagined as interesting, accomplished, and loved.
The six weeks, of course, have now been two months and counting. Those tiles are in boxes, still waiting for installation; electrical outlets are dangling over the counters; the appliances have yet to shrug off their security blankets of plastic film. Francine and I have spent the summer in my bedroom, hiding from the nice construction team and eating from the microwave. This holding pattern feels like, but is not, wallowing in depression. You have to give up what you have to get what you need. There was a heatwave, during which I realized I’d been sent the wrong backsplash tiles; that the counter manufacturers hadn’t measured the sink properly and so it would take another two weeks; that the founder of the mutual aid group had died a few days after his husband had suddenly passed. I spent two days in bed, Francine tucked into my elbow. I thought I’d feel lighter, destroying so much in the hope for a future. You can die of a broken heart, I guess, I told him. You can also die of hunger, Francine said, his words conveyed by a paw across the bedside table where the treats were. His claw made a little nick in the wood: the next thing to go. ⌂
Jesse Dorris is a writer and radio host based in Brooklyn.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
PAST ISSUES
ISSUE 01: FINE, I’LL DO IT MYSELF ⌂ ISSUE 02: NO THOUGHTS, JUST VIBES ⌂ ISSUE 03: DON’T SIT ON THAT! ⌂ ISSUE 04: HOLIDAY SPECIAL ⌂ ISSUE 05: SWEATIN’ THE OLDIES ⌂ ISSUE 06: KITCHEN SINK ⌂ ISSUE 07: HACK JOB ⌂ ISSUE 08: OUT TO PASTURE ⌂ THE SHOE REPORT: MILAN DESIGN WEEK ⌂ A NYCxDESIGN CHORUS ⌂ ISSUE 09: GETTING WARMER
My Prince-Themed Bedroom Was a Revolution
The “Kiss” singer taught me I could be whoever I wanted to be. Starting with my own room. // By Jesse Dorris
Absolutely wonderful and so painfully honest. Entropy is real and stronger than we are.