Where is home any more?

There is a house in Las Vegas with most of my stuff in. Bed and sheets, clothes (including a growing number of Doc Martens), Lego, and more kitchen utensils than I need (but not more than I want). My car is parked there, and all the tools for work and play are there too. It has a pool.

There’s a house in Eugene, Oregon, with some more stuff. Most of this stuff is in a garage, because in Eugene they don’t have to park the cars inside to prevent them from turning into furnaces in the warmer months. That, and the house is already full of other stuff. There’s boxes of books I’ve read, and probably some more kitchen utensils. There’s an MGB chassis that I suspect is going to end up being mine.

There’s a house in Salisbury, UK, that doesn’t have enough stuff in for it to be called ‘stuff.’ There’s my salopette foulies. A jigsaw puzzle. An MGB model kit (1:24 scale, so much more manageable than the Oregon one). And apparently a chequebook from an account long-since cancelled.

There’s a house in London I stay in on occasion, and last time I stayed there I did laundry unsuccessfully, leaving three or four items of clothing stuck to the top of the dryer. Amateur mistake, you’d think I hadn’t been doing my own laundry for 24 years…

And then there’s the myriad hotel rooms I’ve stayed in over the last couple of years. I daresay at the rate I shed hair and the speed with which some rooms are expected to be turned over there’s still DNA evidence I was there. HAIR. I said HAIR.

You know what? They’re all home. Because, and I shudder to get mushy, home is where I take it, where I make it. Home is somewhere I’ve never been before, as long as I’m there with a friend. Home is all of the above places, because of the family and friends who are attached to said places. Maybe not the hotel rooms per se, but even them, depending on where they are and why I’m there, have friends attached to them. Attached as in “hey, I’m in London and several mates live there,” not attached as in “hey, morning, I see you’re still handcuffed to the radiator.” That’s a different type of friend.

Besides, you should never handcuff someone to the radiator. That’s how injuries happen.