31 Louis: Your Mom's House

31 Louis

December 1, 2020

There is a photograph of a mouse in a jar in this photo collection.  Once, to all of our amazement, our housemate Joe caught a mouse, of which there was no shortage, in a cartoon-like sugar jar and quarter trap he arranged.  I then attempted to convince him that the best thing to do would be to release the captive mouse into a nearby house where one of our old roommates, who was no one’s favorite, lived.  I am not sure whether he actually carried out this ethically questionable, yet humorous biological attack, though he claimed he did. More likely the mouse got to live out its culinary dreams in Joe’s toque blanche, as he cooked away at a high-end New Brunswick restaurant.  The point of that story: there is none. 

In the two years we maintained the lease, 33 people and a handful of pets held at least a short term residence at 31 Louis, affectionately referred to as “Your Mom’s House.”  The nickname was not only due the house being quaint in appearance, but because of some of the residents’ classy inclination toward “Your Mom” jokes.  The high volume of people and rotating personalities under one roof, left rarely a dull moment.  It was full of all sorts of weirdos with creativity, idiosyncrasies, dirty dishes and bad haircuts galore.  An illegitimate tenancy could have been yours for the steal of a $100 a month, contingent upon a very low bar referral and the availability of a couch or crawlspace or section of floor: all in the name of collective affordability. 

It housed a handful of hardy women over those two years, who shared its one bathroom with a bunch of animals and one Slovakian.  There was often a line in the hallway of people waiting to use that one bathroom, a great place to make small talk. But the alternate restroom, the backyard, usually had no wait time. Dumpster dived donuts led to humorous infighting.  Lots of things led to humorous infighting, and occasionally, not so humorous outfighting, which for some reason or another I was almost always wrapped up in.  But it was usually a good time.  The fallout of house parties and punk shows held in the basement would allow for one to make dirt angels on our previously white kitchen floor the following morning.  A mediocre band would spontaneously form at any given moment out of the collection of people standing around with nothing better to do and would dissolve just as quickly.  Most everything came and went pretty quickly in that house of transitory nonsense on Louis street.

For all the people who lived at 31L in those two years not present in the photographic series above, you’re either welcome or I’m sorry.  If the latter is the case, I can assure you, it was most certainly not a slight. Especially when considering some of the real assholes who were included in the series (you know who I’m talking about), I assure you the photographs selected were based on aesthetics.  Everyone who passed through that place made it the experience that it was, assholes included; cohabitation is always a ridiculous social experiment. 

One of the cool things about New Brunswick is the word of mouth hand-off that often happens with these houses.  We took over that house from a group of people who utilized it similarly and years later, after we moved out, I attended a few basement shows in that same house.  That is also one of the indicators that I may have been in that town for too long.  Anyway, there is positively some magic that manifests itself when a collection of people go in on a space together, it is almost always worth the inevitable hassle and mayhem and dirty dishes to make it happen.         

The following are a handful of pointless 31 Louis anecdotes that I jotted down in a notebook from the fall of 2007 into the winter of 2008 for no particular reason, some may be even a touch poetic: 

10/17- Prompted by an accidental plate drop, several of us continued to smash plates and other things on the kitchen floor in order to continue to watch how our weird flatware shattered into a really unexpectedly high number of pieces.

10/18-Roman’s friend stopped by with boxes of potato chips from a Herr’s Potato Chip Factory heist and suitcases full of paint.  Soon after, JP jumped down the stairs and whacked his head on the star shaped lighting fixture hanging from the ceiling.

11/20-While listening to an awful radio segment by Joe on click radio downstairs, JP calls up the show and tells the host, Joe, “Your fucking show woke me up you fucking jerk!” then hangs up and walks down the stairs to get breakfast 3 minutes later.

12/3- A gathered crowd at the top of the stairs sent the stolen wooden home depot man cut-out down those stairs on a skateboard.

1/30 - I met Allan at our front door before he left, as he was looking out onto the street he was about to bike off into, with my borrowed hoodie and Tom’s borrowed bike.  The wind was blowing so hard it knocked over the neighbor’s recycling can. Bottles rolled down the street and our front porch was mangled with plastic chairs.  Allan and I agreed it was a tornado and I felt satisfaction as I shut the door behind him, leaving him to ride that single gear bike through the tornado.

2/10- Pedro said in reference to my frustration of our grossly unkempt kitchen, “This is not an Anarchist collective household” to which I replied, “No shit!”  Dirty dishes are where I regularly lose faith in humanity’s ability to exist in harmonious collectivity.

2/11- I heard Allan on the front porch talking to some loud person; I looked out the window to find it was someone probably hitting him up for a cigarette or something.  Allan comes in and tells me that just prior to walking up our front stoop, the guy he was just conversing with was at our door, dressed in a NYPD Police hat and a non-matching green police coat, trying to get into our house.  When Allan walked up, he started to ask if Rob lived there (there is no Rob who lives here, but it was a good guess) as he back peddled away.  My afternoon would have gone much differently if I came out of my room to find some guy who obviously wasn’t a policeman, dressed as a policeman in our house.

2/14-Last night I had a very violent dream.  All the specifics I cannot remember, but it involved most of the crew in the house rounding up some people we didn’t like…The dumpster was overfilled with the dead bodies.  They had a little garbage tossed on top to ineffectively cover them up.  Apparently, I had left hiding the bodies up to Roman and Allan in the dream, and they did a half-assed job and now we were in quite an unfavorable situation.  I didn’t seem that worried or surprised in the dream, but because of the particular circumstances, I was more disappointed then I probably would have been otherwise.  I got really good sleep last night for the first time in a while… It’s kind of nice I live in a house with my adopted extended family, the 31 Louis Street crew.

Just like the photographs, for some reason these absolutely dumb memories are important to me and if I hadn’t scribbled them down or snapped those photos, I may have never thought of them again.