Reality with an expiration date

by Jovana Kežić (Serbia)

I didn't expect to find USA

There were times when I wanted to experience life on my own, but the idea of such a journey died shortly after I first felt what it was like to experience all adventures with equally lost people. It happened in Boston, over one summer. It’s about an odd life in a house I accidentally found and where I decided to live while attending work & travel student program. The enormous house was located in the well-connected and beautiful suburb. On the other hand, it was a bizarre place. Rooms were full of kitschy objects and religious symbols. In addition to the old fashioned furniture you could find life-size Mother Teresa and Madonna statues and Buddha with cook cap. There was also Cupid over the toilet, Illuminati and other religious books, and modern backyard pool. My first thought was – Very, very unusual; I’m in. In the strange house lived an old lady, house owner, a peculiar character. Her lady friend, also the resident, claimed she had been married to an Italian gangster. There was a Russian guy, old lady’s „pet“, who would spy and deliver information about any bad behaviour in the house. It was an international atmosphere in which more than sixty people of different nationalities lived in addition to permanent residents during the four months of my stay. There I also met a group of students from my country who eventually became one of the main reasons for my overjoy. Black cat named Munchkin would be leaving gifts in the form of halves of mice on the mat outside the back door. The doors would never be locked (no one even possessed keys) and unknown guest could surprise any of the about thirty residents, any time, day or night. Thankfully there have never been cases of robbery, but, having said that, the potential robber would have been greeted as one of us since we didn’t actually know all the people who lived in the house. There would always be somebody awake and somebody asleep; somebody going to work or to Uni, and somebody coming back home from somewhere. It would frequently happen at the same time. In the bushes outside the front yard you could find a significant number of used coffee cups which started ending up there after my roommates relayed their morning ritual to the front yard fence (since the old lady didn’t allowed smokers in the house). They were too lazy to bring them back, of course. Oftentimes in the kitchen, there would be leftovers of sugary chocolate cakes bought at the supermarket at the low price. It was always a birthday or some other celebration happening. There were warning messages everywhere, handwritten, with the words "Serbian guys - be quiet!!" or "no cooking after 11 pm!". Blank envelopes with the owners' names inscribed were lying on the tables. It was a subtle sign the time has come to pay the rent. Piles of letters and packages were waiting for their owners to finally pick them up. There was always a long queue for laundry and fighting over vacancy in the fridge. You could find a man sleeping in the garage or accidentally fall over a religious person meditating on the floor in the dark, somewhere around two in the morning, and none of this would appear strange. Searching for a runaway Chinese girl on the neighbourhood streets late in night, continuously hiding wine bottles from the old lady, waiting for your mates to come home after late night shifts, so you can finally be watching films in the fully decorated room with Christmas tree in the middle of July, all of that, and much more, was our Boston day-to-day reality. Can you now imagine the dynamics of our life in that house? From some personal moments to social events, from usual chaos to expected goodbyes, there was everything. Strangers from all around the world became a weird family. Can you feel the sorrow of leaving that crazy life behind, or even worse, of knowing the day when it is going to end? It was almost like some reality with an expiration date written all over it. It was wonderful.