CW/TW: Family trauma

                                          $272,105            3          2.5
Property for Sale         Zillow Estimate | Beds | Baths | 1,484 Sq. Ft.

25058 Mulloy Street                                                                                                         Built: 1975
Addison, IL 90101
Status: Closed Sale                                                             +$56,000 since sold on October 5, 2020

Overview

Shall I present to you the usual insincere patter vendors proclaim to the prospective buyer? That this is a home of great value: ​“Gaze upon its spacious kitchen, the large living room and parlor with soaring ceilings, skylights, and expansive patio. Great for entertainment! Perfect for a family of four or five.” Yet in all of its warm capaciousness, the hearth is empty, hollowed out, a husk of a house. The fireplace and chimney of angular granulated stone groans as you walk by, for this single structure – of stone upon aching stone – recounts every argument, every trial of those who once lived here. Yes, including you.

Location

This is the multi-layered site of your childhood, your adolescence, your transition to full-throttled adulthood, which rests upon the unceded territory of the Council of the Three Fires. Your grandfather carelessly joked that the house is on ancient burial ground, but all houses are burial grounds, sedimentations of times, condensations of lives. Which is to say, abundant temporalities reside within the architecture of the home itself, as well as the land upon which it sits. Condensing so many junctures and rites of passage, there is a palpable threat of memory overload or complete emotional breakdown. After all, it is dangerous for so many different times – and feelings – to dwell in one place together.

About This Home

Wooden floors creak not from age or the weight of your gait, but from longing. But just you wait! If you turn to the kitchen, you can commune with the ghost of your grandmother, who, as you recall, foresaw her own death when she called your uncle one January evening to ask why she was in the hospital nine months before she set foot in one. Nine months and four days before she died.

If you head to the “Green Room,” the small corner room that once served as your grandmother’s personal TV room, you can re-watch Saturday morning cartoons on the spectral boxed television from 1988. You can only just begin to sense the privilege of your mother and your uncle, the latter who has done right by you, the former who hid and denied her privilege, determined to not pass it on to her children. They came from a home with multiple television sets, expensive cars, and carefully tended gardens. College – and plastic surgery – were both paid for. Yet despite any uncomfortable sentiments, it is also a room of adoration; there he is, your grandfather, sleeping in his favorite armchair, before he wakes up to take you to lunch in order to celebrate your admission to graduate school. This is a good memory, but be careful turning the corner and digging deeper.

In the living room and parlor, be aware that the wallpaper sings a number of tales, and the shadow of a very Catholic Christmas tree, replete with Baby Jesus Nativity scene, appears as an antique hologram or elaborate apparition. If you are a visionary or a member of the Catholic Church, it would be difficult to distinguish whether this is a haunting or resurrection. If you observe the hologram for longer periods of time, you will see your brother try to eat the cotton snow of the Nativity scene and the look on your face when your grandparents bought you a Nintendo 64. Watch, too, as your mother once again turns your father away from the door after you had been waiting all week to see him. You know you will not see him for another 11 years, and then another 12. His novel’s pages blister in the fireplace as your mother sips chianti; she took his words for wood and twisted them aflame. 

Home Facts

Rather than the walls having eyes, they have ears. The skeleton encasing the ghosts of your past listens to your words and reads your thoughts with body organs hidden behind the crumbling, aging wallpaper. You may suspect the brain governing this home resides in the attic, high above mortals as any system of law should be, but the attic is, instead, a monument to technical obsolescence; there are landlines, televisions, and kitchen appliances and not a book in sight. The heart of the house is – now, where did you leave it? It always disappears.

Status:    C̶l̶o̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶S̶a̶l̶e̶​ Stolen        Property Type: Crypt        Community: Dispossessed

Lot Size: 9,583 Sq. Ft.        MLS#: Numbers are inappropriate in this realm

Home Value

Above you, as you sit at the base of the stairs, are the three bedrooms, which you love and despise. You love these rooms because your grandparents gave them to you; you despise these rooms because they remind you of how their daughter tore you away from them. Another ghost lives in the closet of the bedroom your brother and you shared; do not open it, no matter what you hear. Your grandparents’ room smells golden like your grandfather’s musky cologne and Sicilian skin. A three-foot tall bronze statue of a giraffe remains here; contained within are memories of the wild prints your grandmother donned and trips to the zoo. Your mother’s room conjures up Victorian lace, rose, and poison. When you sit on the bed, you remember that before you moved in that one afternoon in 1993, an older woman slept in the bed – your Great Nonna.

Back downstairs, adjacent to a second spectral television, sits a second green couch. This is Great Nonna’s throne, who will sit by you and kiss both your cheeks whenever you want – or don’t. She died here, chained forever to this house, another spectral accoutrement to this complicated familial assemblage that grows ever more unwieldy. She keeps asking you if your mother gave you what she’d left you – a hand-drawn astrological chart with life advice and predictions, and a letter stating how you truly are a beautiful baby. She knows this because “[y]our grandfather only speaks the truth.” You know you can only answer her in the negative, but she is a ghost, and ghosts are located betwixt and between, exemplars of a twisted, temporal arrangement. Great Nonna will repeat forever, and you will watch the tears fall from those violet eyes who pierced you even when you did not know the difference between one iris and the next. 

Going to the basement is an otherworldly task. It is the proverbial portal to layer upon layer of memories and their associated emotions. The phantoms downstairs are playful yet despondent. The lemon tree erupting from the tiled floor is an invocation. Dating back to the 1960s, newspaper clippings about the Teamsters and your grandfather’s unionizing efforts festoon the wooden walls and enliven his office in the corner, which can never be expunged. This is where he prefers to stay for most of the day; he will build ships in bottles for eternity, regaling you with his life’s triumphs and trials. The other half of the basement requires a more liturgical intervention. Christmas ornaments and Halloween decorations once dwelled inside the crawlspace, but now it is a dark, damp, and voracious tube waiting to consume bodies and souls. You can turn on the lightbulb, but you will not like the face of the demon – the same scarlet shade as your mother’s favorite matte lipstick – that stares back at you, nor the chilled echo of her voice. It is clear your grandparents knew the truth about your mother and attempted to trap her anger here once before. But the disembodied voice is still embodied in the woman living three hours north who abandoned your grandmother at the hospital on the eve before her death. “Ungrateful,” declares your grandmother from the kitchen, and the smell of fried eggplant wafts through the air. “She shall take nothing from the estate, but all of my love.” 

There is so much love in every surface, every chair, bed, and table; every stone, every tile, every shingle. But you cannot exorcise the ghosts who are bound here by both their earthly affection and despair. You can return here if you’d like, but phantasmal pasta and salad will not satisfy you, nor will lingering with the grief of an impossible otherworldly embrace. 

Neighborhood

That realm beyond the tattered veil.

Local Legal Protections

You don’t possess any rights except to the estate. You will testify in court against your mother, who contests every promise of your grandparents’ will for eternity. 

Cost of Home Ownership

$̶1̶,̶1̶5̶2̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶   Immeasurable 

 ̶3̶0̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶f̶i̶x̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶3̶.̶5̶%̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶e̶s̶t̶​    There is no interest, only endless therapy sessions on Erie Street.

You could save up to $47 per month by refinancing. Or, you could save yourself. Leave and never come back. This is one house that will never give up its ghosts.

​

Levi Rogers

Art by @iceicepop 

​ 
A field trip in middle school like any other. Except it wasn’t. We drove down the mountain in our yellow school bus. To downtown Denver. To visit the Denver Buddhist Temple. Two worlds removed from mine—Urban, Eastern. My parents didn’t love the idea. They, or their Christian culture, said Buddhist temples made you bow to ornate, false gods when you went inside.

I arrived with a religious exemption note. One of my teachers, also a Christian, didn’t seem to mind. She took me to walk around downtown Denver instead. The rest of my classmates walked inside the temple. Past the bamboo and Buddhas, pagodas and trickling water features. Outside it was warm and smelled of spring. I wondered what was inside the temple I was forbidden to enter. Whether or not or how they would make me worship. I wondered if a bow meant worship and if God tell the difference. I thought of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the book of Daniel. They refused to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol and were cast into the fire. Yet, they didn’t burn. An Angel of the Lord saved them and God praised them for their faithfulness. So, in a way, I felt special. Maybe even in a holy, all-consuming-type way.

For lunch afterwards we all went to the McDonalds on Colfax. The McDonald’s was two stories and we ate on the second floor. My classmates asked me where I went. I made some excuse, suddenly feeling embarrassed. Then our food came and we forgot about the entire morning.

My college friend Jake later told me that a Buddhism is not a religion, a “buddha” is simply one who is with all the sense of reality that is possible with their material and mental capabilities. He and my friend Abby once lived in a Buddhist retreat center near Goldendale, Washington.

I think now about Jesus and Buddha. Sometimes even Muhammad. How far their messages have gone around the world. And how distorted they’ve become. Crushed through the teeth of men and religious hierarchies and nation-states hungry for power. Made into something corporate, manufactured, violent. Corporate Buddhism retreat. Christian right-wing nationalism. Violent extremists who claim Islam. I want to return to the the well. If there is such a thing...

While it's still a matter of speculation as to how much of "The Dating Game" that Janie has actually seen, here is her version of the show with just one suitor in the hot seat answering questions --- that is, with our old pal Levi answering on behalf of the book.

It's like the Dating Game, only about your book. I'm Janie and I'm trying to date your new book. In this case, I'm trying to get in with Las Vegas Bootlegger: Empire of Self-Importance by Noah Cicero and available through the always wonderful Trident. According to Las Vegas Bootlegger bio, they're all about [how]"Ryan Neroni is a lonely lawyer with bad breath. All his life he's had everything handed to him on a silver platter, but after winning what should have been a career-defining lawsuit, he discovers that what he really wants is to drive contraband across state lines in a fast car with tinted windows. With the help of Theresa Barahona, an innocent and aspiring multi-level marketing entrepreneur, nothing can get in his way. Not social expectations, not the emptiness of the western U.S., and certainly not a string of surreal experiences orchestrated by a shadow organization known only as 'the Committee.'" 

Q. How does your book take its coffee?

A. grande iced twp pumps of classic sweetener creamer

Q. In terms of furtive hopefulness, what does your book wish on and what for? (I.e.: does it wish on times of day, shooting stars, birthday candles, the tides coming in, etc etc)

​A. It hopes that everyone stops caring about things that hurt them

Q. Your book is preparing a sacrifice to appease the hoarsely voiced king of demons, Bael. What is the sacrifice and what does the ceremony look like? 
​
A. It would sacrifice expectations, it would take place in a court house. There would be 9 day trial, the lawyers and their paralegals would work all night eating great meals. The jury would give a preponderance of liability to expectations.

Q. Your book is putting together its resume, what skills does it lie about having?

A. Works well with coworkers, above average skills in Excel, enjoys work.

Q. What is your book’s favorite movie monster? 

A. A desert hitchhiker.

Q. When going out on a blind date (do those still exist? Okay, like, when going out on a Tinder date is probably a better example), where does your book take the person they’re out with if they ended up not liking that person and want to get rid of them?

​A. They go to a bar, but the book leaves in the middle of the date because it just knows this is stupid.

Q. When confronted with a coven of witches is your book welcomed into the fold or do the witches cast a spell to entomb book in an old tree by the swamp in a remote and cursed location? Why?
​
A.  Las Vegas Bootlegger gets along with everyone. ​

When I watched the first episode of One Tree Hill, I was 23 and the series finale had aired two years earlier. I went into this viewing expecting the drama of The OC or innocence of Dawson’s Creek, its prime-time counterparts that I had only recently finished watching for the first time. With those two millennial classics in my repertoire, OTH was the logical next piece, the final leg of what I imagined to be holy trinity of teen dramas that my peers had dedicated their weeknights to in our adolescence, while I remained amused by Spongebob and devoted to Canada’s teen soap, Degrassi: The Next Generation. ​

The Ghosts’N Goblins series (Makaimura 魔界村 in Japan) celebrated its 35th anniversary last year, a year before this year’s iconic Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda’s 35th.  A new game, Ghosts’N Goblins Resurrection, was just released for the first time since 2006.

The first eponymously titled game in the series didn’t captivate my attention, but its sequel certainly did.

I have been obsessed with Ghouls'N Ghosts since its inception in 1988. It was a much darker, more sinister (yet oddly creepy-cute) sequel to an already odd game about a hapless bearded and fragile knight that was contemporary with Super Mario Bros and would share infamy for its unforgiving difficulty. As I now believe, Ghosts’N Goblins has, over time, become its own genre.

I wasn't able to find Ghouls'N Ghosts as a kid at any arcade or convenience store, just the Golfland amusement park in Mesa, Arizona... until it was made available on the Sega Genesis. Maybe not the first time I wanted to get a console just for one game, but certainly the one that stuck. Ever since then, I was fascinated by the entire world and mythos of it. I even sent ideas to Capcom (and they very politely declined).

Eventually I would make a website devoted to these ideas for a sequel, and would reach out to an equally obscure, but far more successful, website devoted to Video Game Bosses (Destroy All Monsters! no less) and write a review of many of the symbolic, mythological references "hidden" in the game (along with many notes from Mike Bevan, curator of the now defunct site):

​If you bore witness to the golden age of MTV (right after they swapped the music videos for reality shows that were as awful as they were amusing), you remember "My Super Sweet Sixteen." The epitome of noughties decadence; teenagers running amok, making demands for cakes, ice sculptures, and gifts. Though, realistically, there was only one acceptable gift for the birthday girl who starred on her respective episode of that show, and it was a very specific brand of car. Her meltdown rivaled that of any infamous "Bridezilla" if things did not go as planned. Growing up middle class, I was never destined to have a super sweet sixteen. I honestly don’t remember my sixteenth birthday party at all, and not because of any teen drinking hijinks, as my friend group’s notorious Prude™. 
​
But I’ll never forget my worst birthday ever. April 12th, 2020, almost a month to the day after Washington, DC’s lockdown to reduce transmission of COVID-19. I was excited for a birthday surprise that hadn’t occurred in years: I would celebrate my day the same day as Easter! Unfortunately, one month before my birthday, the entire city shut down. I planned a Zoom call with a friend who lived in Canada, I bought a pot roast to make myself a Sunday dinner, and I even bought myself a special dress. I chose an old-fashioned aesthetic, a white floral number with a sweetheart neckline, just begging to be fluffed up with a petticoat. As much as I tried to turn a day of isolation into celebration, I realized there was nothing I could do to fix it. I got so drunk on the Zoom call that I ended up talking to someone’s sister on the phone somehow once everyone else fell asleep or logged off. I spent my birthday worrying about my father, hospitalized after a stroke and then a diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia just a couple of weeks prior. The pot roast came out dry.