November 30, 2025
i am rarely able to resist the siren song of an estate sale and i have been to so many.
i went to one in a basement suite in a shitty neighborhood where a man with schizophrenia had lived. his brother was selling his things in cardboard beer flats and reusable grocery bags from superstore. i dug through boxes and drawers, with the things inside as fractured and disorganized as the mind of the person who owned them. sexy lady belt buckles butted up against bibles and faded christmas decorations.
there was a lava lamp and a bong, copies of willie nelson on vinyl and old shitty knick knacks as far as the eye could see.
i bought a naked lady belt buckle that i gave to a guy i like who wears jeffrey dahmer glasses and reads books about aliens. i bought an old bible with a list of family birth and death dates and many passages highlighted and a couple old porno tapes on vhs. i had never seen deep throat before and i watched it on my pink disney princess tv with a couple of guys i know. they were drinking beer and i had kombucha. deep throat was weird and i didn’t like it.
i went to another estate sale of this really religious old italian lady and her daughter gave me some old silver catholic medals and a couple plants (which died later because i over watered them).
i went to an estate sale where an older guy was selling his mother’s things out of her shitty trailer in an even shittier trailer park on the bad side of town. i bought a mirror for $5 that i use as my vanity mirror. it was hung crooked on the wood panelled bathroom of this crappy trailer – this antique mirror someone had painted gold. the flowers are chipped on it, but it’s really beautiful.
at the same estate sale, i bought a tiny sterling silver rosary for $1 and a huge sterling chain that was broken for $0.50. i got the chain repaired for $8 at this mom and pop jewelry shop in the dying mall i like to go to. i gave it to this guy i have a crush on who is really into hip hop music and chunky chains. i like it when he wears it because it looks really expensive but it wasn’t.
the guy selling his mothers things gives me some of her crosses because he said he never believed. we had a weird conversation about god and the meaning of life and i sat with him for a while outside on lawn chairs. he gave me some crystals he found in an old coffee tin before i left and a bunch of old skeleton keys too. he was nice and i still think about his religious mother and her gold mirror and wood panelled trailer.
i like estate sales. you get to see inside people’s houses and lives – these super intimate glimpses into who people were – the things they kept. i like to try to understand other people and im not really sure why. i guess i find people fascinating, all of our little ways of being and our intricacies. we are all so universally weird and broken and beautiful and wild. i like that about us.
hospital vespers 