Degrassi knows all.

This morning, after a slightly painful phone conversation with my mom, in which I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her Jill had thrown me out (and so had to answer questions about Jill, although I don’t know the answers anymore: “How’s Jill? Is she going to work the same amount when she starts back at school?”), I turned on my favorite television show (and probably yours), Degrassi. This show has, oddly, played a tiny but notable role in all of my somewhat-significant relationships, as far as I can remember: I used to watch it with Sarah and Eric, I’m pretty sure Emilie and I talked about it on occasion, and I think I tried to get Jill to watch it once or twice. It’s so emotionally overwrought and melodramatic but, I admit, I love it. Here’s a rundown of the scene I caught:

What’s his name, guitar-playing coke addict dude—okay, it’s Craig (I looked it up—it’s been too long since I’ve watched it). So Craig comes home and some hot older blond chick (I don’t know who she is—I’m really way too out of touch) is there and it’s Christmas time or something and he asks her for advice: he’s supposed to be spending the night with Ashley, but I guess he’s having doubts, and he says something like, “She’s a great girl, right? I should feel lucky that I have her?” And the blond woman tells him, “Love isn’t about luck. Love is about being with the right person.” This is, apparently, profoundly inspiring to Craig, and he runs out the door, without a word, as she calls after him, “Hope I helped!”

So he shows up at this ice-skating rink and runs out there with his shoes on and calls after this girl Manny, and he slides up to her and tells her, “It’s you, not Ashley—it’s you, it’s always been you.” And homegirl looks skeptical for a minute (and for good reason, from the sounds of things) but then slowly breaks into a smile and accepts and kind of shrieks, happily, and jumps up and wraps her legs around him, y’know, in that joyful I’m-so-crazy-and-romantic-that-I’ll-jump-up-on-you-and-wrap-my-legs-around-you-without-warning-and-you’ll-just-instinctively-be-ready-to-catch-me kind of way.

And I’m thinking, that kind of shit only happens on TV and in the movies, or it only works in TV and the movies, and when you try to make that kind of thing happen in real life—the way I did, on occasion, with Jill—you just end up feeling cheap, and fake, especially when you’re reminded that you probably got the idea to say things like that—”It’s you, it’s always been you”—from watching Degrassi in high school.

Then again, when Ashley gives him a new-old beautiful beat up guitar, he doesn’t seem so eager to drop her and leap into Manny’s arms, so maybe the show knows a little more about how romantic love actually works in the real world than it initially let on.

Incidentally, no word from Jill, so the status of my worldly belongings—all my clothes, my computer, my camera, etc.—is still in the hands of fate, except I don’t believe in fate, so it’s just in her hands, I guess, and I’m waiting for whenever she tells me she’s going to throw it all out on her lawn so I can go pick it up.

I made sure to warn Jaclyn last night at work that I might be wearing the same clothes for a few days, and that she shouldn’t worry, and that I’d try not to stink.

I’m thinking about taking up running, in other news, because I need to do something.

“This is what they write about.”

I’m on the green line train, Boston, bound for North Station, and I’ve very recently become homeless. I think, “Yes, Judah Nagler of The Velvet Teen, this is what they write about, isn’t it?” thinking specifically about Al Burian and his book Burn Collector, a compilation of his most excellent zine work. The book is largely about Burian’s time spent homeless, or mostly homeless, sleeping on couches, broke, unemployed, in Portland, Oregon and Providence, Rhode Island. Courtney loaned the book to me during my last visit to Philly, and I’ve been obsessed with Burian’s hilarious and heartbreaking tales for a week solid. It’s only fitting that, as I near the end of the book, I find myself in an eerily similar situation: I’m out on the street with literally nothing but the clothes I’m wearing and that very copy of Burn Collector.

Let me back up a bit and fill you in on my situation in general, in case you’re one of the many people with whom I haven’t communicated in a while: in the last three months, I’ve traveled roughly 6000 miles, moving across the country three times–Denver to Boston, back to Denver, back to Boston. The specific reasons for each of these moves have already become hazy and shallow to me, so I can’t really tell you why I’m here. I’m just here.

And tonight, I’m homeless. The short story is: I’ve been kicked out. You probably know I was staying with Jill. In fact, she’s the whole reason I came to Boston in the first place. And now, through a series of circumstances too laughably pathetic and painful to recount at this moment, she’s kicked me out. All my stuff is still in her apartment; she wouldn’t let me come up tonight to drag it all out of there. The deal, she tells me, is this: she’s going to put all my shit out on the lawn in a couple of days. The idea is aggravating, mostly because I’ve got a laptop and a couple of other things I don’t want to lose, or see smashed on the pavement. I manged, though, to bargain her down to this: she’s going to, whenever she feels like it, probably some time in the next few days, throw all my stuff out on the lawn in front of her house, but she’s going to call me when she’s about to do it, so if I’m free, I can run over there and grab it all. Seems fair to me.

So until she calls, I’m stuck with what I’m wearing: a pair of jeans that haven’t been washed in far too long, and the old beat-up Cure “Boys Don’t Cry” t-shirt I inherited from Nick. Actually, I got lucky, because I had the foresight (before last night’s drunken adventure to The Other Side and Eastern Standard and, eventually, Shannon’s apartment, where I slept on the couch) to pack a spare t-shirt, to wear to work today, and—the real saving grace—my phone charger, so I’ll actually be able to receive her call when she says, “Come get your stuff, asshole.”

I don’t think I’ve processed yet how I got myself into this, or what it means. That can wait.

In case you’re wondering, my course of action, after being told to leave empty-handed, was something like this:

- call Courtney;
- call around to see whose couch I can sleep on (Rhianna comes through);
- get to Rhianna’s and immediately open a beer;
- walk with her, and beer, to CVS to buy a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and a bar of soap;

and now I’m typing this on Rhianna’s boyfriend Rob’s giant amazing iMac in an otherwise dark room near a window overlooking the North End.

I aim, with this post, to take this woefully neglected blog in a new direction: specifically, I want to document whatever it is that’s going to happen to me here in Boston, where, oddly enough, the only constant factor I have going for me right now is my job at Whole Foods. And when better to start writing about my uncertain adventures then the absolute first night? You’re getting in on the ground floor. Congratulations. You can be witness to all the details: whose couches are more comfortable, whether I retrieve all my belongings (intact or otherwise), what I end up doing with my life now that I’m here in Boston, et cetera.

You know, the good stuff.