What We Did in the Attic Til 2am

I put a lot of grief and rage into my last post, but I want Fog City to also be a place where we hold onto joy.

So here's a flashback. After college, I lived in DC with best friend Corin for 5 years, before moving to San Francisco. We were dipping our toes into the adult world, still just boys, and cleaved together for good. I asked, and Corin shared his memories from that time. This is from 2008.

It always started with a knock.

Corin: “Come on up dude.”

I lived in the attic of the DC townhouse Lowen and I shared with two other roommates. It looked a lot like Mike Seaver’s bedroom from Growing Pains. Lots of nooks for my books, starship replicas, posters and DVDs.

Lowen: “I’m going to sleep in 10 minutes, but I just wanted to come up and see how your day was.”

It was never just 10 minutes. The attic gave me the peace and quiet I needed as a grad student, but Lowen had a 9‑to‑5 job, so we had opposite schedules. Late nights were our only chance to hang out during the week.

"Yeah, it was okay. I’m trying to start a paper for neuropsych," I said, rushing through the normal pleasantries to get to the good stuff. "You see the new trailer for the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie?!"

Lowen and I were friends since 4th grade, but didn’t realize we were both Trekkies until high school graduation. We never talked about it – both afraid to be seen as weirdos. When I moved across the country for grad school, I choose DC partly to make up for all of those missed opportunities of geeking out with Lowen.

Lowen: "Fool, that looks AWESOME! Hella sexy."

Corin: "Here's what I'm wondering though – we know Leonard Nimoy is in the movie, but he isn't in the trailer, so what's his role in the story?"

One of the ways I fooled Lowen into staying up past his bedtime was by activating his cerebral cortex. His mind can’t resist the challenge of an open-ended question. This is one of my favorite things to do – find out what invigorates people and light up that passion.   

Lowen: "Maybe he plays Spock in the future, narrating the first mission of the Enterprise?"

Corin: "Yeah, but there's already stuff in the trailer that breaks with canon, like the Enterprise being built on Earth instead of space."

It was like solving a Rubik’s cube together. I'd throw Lowen an idea, he worked on it, shaped it into something new, and threw it back at me. I’m not known for being a deep thinker, but Lowen knew how to ease me into the rigors of critical thinking. I always wanted him to become a professor.

Lowen: "So what? If it's a good movie, do you care if the Enterprise is built on Earth instead of space?"

You can’t stop Lowen from telling you exactly how he feels. This used to really bug me, but I’ve come to rely on him as the only person (besides Zadie) who actually calls me out on my bullshit. As a guy who deals with anxiety by faking confidence, I really need a friend like Lowen to tell me the truth.

We stayed up till 2am that night. Fears about the new Star Trek movie turned into a conversation about our fears of growing up – playing it safe, missing opportunities (with girls and our careers), and wondering what we’re going to do with our lives.

The attic wasn’t just about geeking out, it was our place to make sense of who we were becoming. That time in the attic is what I miss most about DC.