Tenting

A dream sequence from Tyler

I love my Big Agnes. Or so I keep telling myself.

Standing at a whopping three-and-a-half feet tall and weighing only four pounds, it’s not actually that big, and that’s the problem. Or, one of the problems. It’s not the most glorious permanent living solution.

I’m trying to see the bright side of things. In fact, I can’t help but see the bright side of things when the summer sun wakes me each morning at 5 am, shining through two layers of slim, supposedly breathable fabric. The only spots that don’t leak light are where pigeons have left droppings on the rain fly. I tried to remove that fly several times on sunny days and eventually got drenched anyway, so I decided it’s best to leave it alone and sweat through the blistering nights.

But it’s fine enough. I don’t have to spend every waking moment here. I have an apartment only a few yards away! I can sautée vegetables in the kitchen as much as I want, rinse in the shower as long as I want, and lounge in the living room as frequently as I please. This is just my sanctuary… my forced sanctuary.

Maya greets me each morning like Juliet, opening her bedroom window to whistle a tune. Luckily, she also wakes up with the sun regardless of exposure level. I think she began this ritual to make me feel better about the ordeal (and since I don’t have any electricity to charge my phone or plug in an alarm clock). Then, I grumble while I hear Jess tiptoe nearby to leave me a mug of steaming coffee. They each have their own olive branches.

I’m not sure how we missed it when signing for the apartment, but we only noticed upon move-in that the apartment had two bedrooms. No one seemed game to share, so as a resolution, the kind landlord offered us his “lightly used yet heavily loved” Big Agnes tent. When the other two stayed silent on taking up the offer, I shrugged and agreed that it would be my new home. We’d set it up on the apartment’s back patio.

Maya sympathetically smiled at me and grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t worry! We’ll prorate your rent by 25 percent.”

Well, I thought, that’s a good deal.

And so it has been for an unknown, dreamlike amount of time. I bide my time worrying about the number of spiders that might crawl on my body while I sleep or about any big rainstorms flooding my tent and ruining my pile of unkempt clothes in the corner. Parts of me wrestle with each unfolding neuroticism until my avoidant personality soon decides to address the problem once it’s a clear and present danger.

I can’t live my prorated, tiny tent life stuck marred with concern, so I’ve made my tent home in the best ways I can. Human bodies don’t need 100 square feet or more to sleep. I tuck a West Elm-chic twin-sized air mattress into one corner, draped with neutral-toned cable-net throw blankets, hang in the corners creamy pink silk ribbons, and keep a stack of books to read by my bedside, relying mostly on New York’s light pollution and a battery-powered night sky projector to illuminate the pages.

When I flick on the projector, I forget I’m in a Brooklyn backyard — it transports me somewhere else. And then, when I am done reading, I occasionally roll up the sides of the fly and look out the screens. Each side is a window to somewhere different. On one, we’re placed on the corner of my childhood street on a summer day where the cicadas screech and the kids laugh in the distance. Across from that, London’s Hyde Park quiets down at dusk as people shuffle out of the park and the swans cuddle in the round pond. And behind me, snow gently falls in a nighttime pine forest broken up only by a lone house outlined by the glow of a bonfire. Each direction a new world I cannot enter but a living painting I can admire and send me off to my slumber.

One night, Jess offers me her bedroom while she travels out of town. The prospect excites me; I’m not sure of the last time I slept between plastered walls. She changes the sheets and leaves me bottled water on her dresser as if I’m at a hotel. But when I lay down, her room expands to the size of a palace. The door is a mile away and her single window, two. Streetlamps’ rays creep through the edges of her blackout curtain, and the silence punctuated by creaking wood frames only rattle my soul.

This isn’t the same.

Now, I worry what might happen to my tent while I am gone. Will it be ransacked? Will the raccoons nest inside? What if a big wind gust tips it over and rips a hole? When I am not there, Big Agnes is in danger. As it protects me, I must protect it.

By midnight, I rise and don her comforter as my Imperial Mantle. I parade out the palace entry to our snakelike hallway, through the rusted kitchen, and down the patio steps. At long last, Big Agnes opens its awning to embrace my sleepy soul.

Journeys end in lovers’ meeting. Maybe Big Agnes is what I have always needed. I don’t think Maya nor Jess’s bedrooms have portals to other places and times. And neither of them know the comfort of a cave that cocoons you, or the sounds of the night that match the rhythm of your heartbeat. In truth, I think they got the short end of the stick.