Barry Yourgrau - Mess: One Mans Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act

Mess is a work of nonfiction. Certain names and identifying details have
been changed.

Photo credit for Langley Collyer: The Sun, New York, April 8, 1947.

Copyright 2015 by Barry Yourgrau

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Book design by Ellen Cipriano

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Yourgrau, Barry.

Mess : one mans struggle to clean up his house and his act / Barry
Yourgrau.First edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-393-24177-8 (hardcover)

1. Yourgrau, BarryMental health. 2. Compulsive hoarding.
3. Yourgrau, BarryHomes and haunts. 4. Housekeeping. 5. Storage in
the home. 6. AuthorsBiography. I. Title.

RC569.5.H63Y68 2015

616.852270092dc23

[B]

2015009523

ISBN 978-0-393-24805-0 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

For Cosima,
in all her variations

Contents

Mess

T hats how it begins.

With grocery bags.

Grocery bags, and the unexpected buzz of the doorbell one afternoon, at my apartment/writing studio here in Jackson Heights, Queens. At that rasping blurt, my heart seizes in foreboding. It always does. Isnt one of the features of contemporary urban apartment life that the ringing of the doorbell without prior warning is a sound ripe with menace?

Who is it? I cry, rising uncertainly from my desk chair. The reply makes my heart dive through the floor.

Its me! cries my girlfriend, Cosima. Let me in!

I have the shock of being caught.

Whats up? I ask, when I reach the door and open it a crack.

This is the first time in five years that Cosima has been at my threshold, though her apartment is just around the block. Her brow and upper lip are beaded with sweat. Laden grocery bags strain from both hands.

I forgot my keys at home, she pants, irritable and short-winded. Let me in, these bags are heavy.

I struggle to keep a wild edge out of my voice. I cant, I reply abruptly. Why dont you go to your mothers? Her mother lives two flights down from me.

My mother isnt at home, Cosima snaps. Why cant I come in? she cries, her voice rising.

Because I dont want you to see whats in here! I tell her savagely, through gritted teeth. You know thatokay?

I can see a look of horror flash in her eyes. She steps back. Shes had a glimpse past me.

No, I dont have a crack pipe or a chat-room dungeon habit or a dead body. But my condition would provoke alarm, even disgust, in most people. Make that the condition of my apartment . Im a pack rat. A clutterbug. I have something of a hoarding issue.

Jesus Christ, Cosima says. A stark pause. Give me your keys, she says tightly.

I go and find them, my keys to her place, and bring them to the door. I offer to help her carry her groceries downstairs. Thats all right, dont bother, she answers, laboring off toward the elevator. I watch her go.

Im sorry, I call after her.

I shut the door, numb. I go back to my desk chair and sink down with my heart still pounding. I feel shamed and exposed. Some line has been crossed, a hidden life revealed. For a few minutes I get up again and go about lamely gathering and throwing out some of the litter of newspapers, magazines, and junk mail adrift on the floor by the entryway. But then I get overwhelmed and I go back to my laptop, back to resume half-working and half-surfingmy customary mode, the activity in which Ive been interrupted. Except that a sick worm is gnawing inside me. A definition of troubled or addictive behavior I once read bubbles into my head, not for the first time, here behind my barred door: Its behavior that interferes with your intimate relationships and obligations.

No, Cosima has not been across my threshold in five years, even though this place was hers before she passed it on to me. Because I havent wanted anyone in here . Not her. Not friends. Not the super, at first because of general concerns about him sniffing around for the over-aggressive landlord; and then, despite the place needing some usual repairs and attentions, out of paranoia that things had oozed into such a state of neglect, the landlord would immediately seek penalties. This hostility is typical for someone like me. Its about shame, but also about the hypersensitive intimacy of the things around mehowever trivial and derelict they seem.

I lie: the super did come several years ago to repair the grout around the bathtub. Its long since crumbled again. And the exterminator enters, once a month: a person with a Dickensian grotty aura about him that feels oddly comradely. And speaking of God enjoying a laugh, I actually had to let in a film crew one day last year. My TV producer twin brother and I were making a video teaser for a possible reality show, featuring the two of us wandering my multicultural neighborhood, and his three-man crew needed somewhere to assemble their equipment. It was tense, on my part. The crew director is someone Ive known slightly over the years. Glancing around, he said, with that quiet genial empathy that makes you grind your teeth, Dont worry, I understandmy mother used to be like this.

Like this...

Cosimas lively elderly mom, Nadya, who lives downstairs from me and is the lone person I will grudgingly allow to stay overnight (when shes overrun by guests), puts like this like this:

Pathological.

As she herself saw a therapist for several years for this same problem, I forgive the tone of her appraisal.

But as Im forever fiercely reminding heras I would you, if you were ever in here kindly do not touch anything . If you want to, please ask first. But Id rather you didnt ask, because Id rather you did not touch anything .

Theres a fair amount not to touch.

Pacing this lair of mine now, I make an aimless miserable survey, shaken by the encounter at my door. I actually groan at what I see (Im given to that).

I occupy a medium-sized one-bedroom apartment. Its dim little entryway greets the unwelcome visitor with a dark waist-high wedged-in bookshelf, its top piled up with years-old magazines, junk mail, a few bills, some teetering empty boxes, an empty wicker basket, and a couple of long-expired calendars (from Madrid, from Brussels) which I just cant bring myself to relinquish. Down beside, ready to trip me or you, sits a box of my girlfriends books, destined for her place for over a year now.

I drift into my small as-it-were dining area. The dining table hosts a permanent slovenly debris, of books, mainly, plus assorted stationery, old pencil-heckled text printouts, plastic bags like an invasion of blowsy desiccated jellyfish, and a set of half-broken opera glasses. Right now this debris also boasts a dazzling white team shirt of Brazils Corinthians soccer club, refolded in its torn grubby wrapper, bearing the signature of its rotund, recently retired superstar Ronaldo. A Brazilian friend gave it to me when Cosima and I were down in So Paulo recently. I wore it to the gala reception for visiting French grand chefs, grinning to beat the band and guzzling Champagne. I pick it up, to put it somewhere more dignified, but then, at a loss, just put it back. The four chairs at the table are occupied, by books, magazines, various bags. The space from here to the side wall, one half of the dining area, is unnavigable because of heaped boxes, shopping bags.