Free Desk

Identity Crisis at Dawn

6:45 am in downtown Salt Lake. It’s almost warm enough to not need a jacket. Almost. Dark and quiet, empty street at the job site. The state capitol sits high on the hill about a mile away. All lit up. I feel a pang of patriotism and nostalgia. The neighborhood isn’t awake yet.

Salt Lake is like that: it’s the middle of downtown but the little side streets feel like sleepy suburbs. I grew up here but never ventured west of West Temple or north of North Temple, the notable exception being a single trip to the fairgrounds in Rose Park to take my driving test and get my first license when I turned sixteen. Now I’m on the wrong side of the tracks every day.

Propped against a power pole, coyly but solicitously is a free desk. Removing any doubt, there is a neatly printed sign affixed, which says, “FREE DESK.”

Oh, you dirty little bitch.

Its small well-crafted, laminated wood top is reminiscent of a butcher block. Two Z-shaped legs, sturdy looking and low-profile, have been removed, the hardware carefully taped to one of them. Transporting it in my Subaru would be easy.

If there wasn’t already a bunch of shit in the back seat. Also the trunk.

A flat-screen monitor that I don’t use now, but will most likely need on the next job or when I have something resembling an office. Several books. A basket for the Sunday meeting. What’s left of a case of the bubbly flavored water preferred by sober alcoholics everywhere: La Croix. Do you say Lah Croy? Leh Kwah? No one knows. A screw gun. Hardhat. A box of forty-plus, blank 10”x10” pre-primed canvases. Well, not canvases exactly; squares of wood that were cut out of the doors in an apartment building to appease the city inspector that I’m going to paint on someday, when I have a space at home for such things - these could go in the storage space I shell out 150 bucks for each month but they’re in the back of my car for now. A t-shirt. Okay, three t-shirts. A sweater my dad gave me that I’ll never wear but which obscures the monitor from would-be thieves. Several ball caps. I don’t wear hats. A box of… stuff. More stuff. Paperwork. Receipts.

As within, so without, they say.

There’s no doubt I’m a mess. I’m mostly okay with that.

I don’t fully trust neat people. No one has their shit that together. What are they hiding? Where are the fucking bodies, Frank?

My jumbled thoughts as I stare at the desk, overstuffed backpack heavy and slung over one shoulder. I need to go in, do a quick site check and take some pictures. I need to clock in.

The desk is sexy in a street-worn way; well taken care of; no gouges or ink stains. I could move some things around in the car and make it fit.

But here’s the thing: I have a desk at home. It’s small, smaller than this one, which is perfect because I have limited space in the room I rent. I paid $65 dollars for it when I moved in about three years ago. It felt like a big investment on my meager retail-job income. An investment in my future.

I like to think I have a complicated relationship with stuff, because that feels romantic. Sophisticated.

But really, because I’m lazy and avoidant, and because of its proximity to my bedroom door, my perfectly functional desk has become little more than a surface to put things on. Unopened mail, a shoebox of knick-knacks, unused gift cards, photo-booth strips from a once-romantic relationship and my modest laundry basket. Other. Random. Shit.

After a long day, it’s a convenient place to put things so they don’t end up on the floor. For me, this is progress.

Underneath are four Home Depot moving boxes, unpacked after three years, rendering my desk more-or-less unusable. I only know that one of those boxes has my mother’s ashes in it. She wanted her kids to spread them atop Big Sur. I didn’t plan on my sister dying and my youngest brother ghosting the whole family indefinitely. Sorry, mom, I never planned to live here long anyway. Is three years long? I know you understand.

I need to dust and vacuum.

Standing in the street in the early dawn, staring, I’m entertaining the same fantasies my useless desk at home evoked when I first saw it at TJ Maxx. I’ll set my computer up on it, notepad and pens within easy reach and I will wake up early every day, coffee in hand and write, because that is what writers do.

I do something that surprises me. I get honest and let the bracing, icy water of realistic expectations wash over me and find a shred of self-control. I tear myself away, I go in and take my pictures.

Not today, Free Desk.

I spend the next eight hours exhausting myself; over-preparing for our weekly meeting at the job site with the client. These meetings still scare me; I’m expected to run them and seem like I know what I’m doing. I actually do, but I’m convinced that I don’t. The imposter syndrome is strong with this one.

The meeting goes better than I anticipated but I am tapped out when I leave and the desk is still there. I can’t believe no one has taken it yet.

I yell across the lot at my coworker, “Hey! Talk me out of taking this desk, wouldja?”

He walks over and admires its construction, slowly runs his hand along its edge. “It seems pretty solid. Hmm… well-built. It’s in good shape but I think it’s gonna rain tomorrow…”

“You’re supposed to talk me out of it!”

He shrugs and leaves. I stare blankly for another ten, fifteen minutes. Defeated, uncertain.

I want to cry.

More for the deflation of the naive writerly fantasy that it represents than the desk itself.

And because I’m tired and hungry.

I let it go. Kind of.

The next morning it’s gone.

I’m not sure how I feel, but it’s gone.