Studio Renee

There was an abandoned house nestled in the hills of a small town just outside where I grew up that my friends and I would sneak into.  

Unlike most imagery of abandoned houses, this one was quaint and bright, build in the style of Spanish adobe houses that were common where we lived. It was old, but not rundown nor shabby. The only pieces of furniture were a fabric soft and a piano.

I can't recall how my friends found this spot, just that they brought me there one afternoon to record videos on our DV tape camcorders for a project my friend was working on.

She was always working on something with her camera and were were always her willing participants in the shape of actors or crew. The project itself escapes me now, but we found ourselves lounging around this little abandoned casita on a lazy weekend afternoon.

I always tailed behind my friend, a year ahead of me in school, and admired her edgy left-of-left attitude and creative visions. She would lend me movies from indie directors I never heard of or seen before in the brightly lit aisles of Blockbuster.  

When I would get grounded for my horrible grades, I would watch the DVDs on a tiny plastic portable DVD player under my covers at night. 

Her family was from South America and mine was from Mexico, so in a tiny town filled with white people who immigrated to the southwest, she and I were connected by the unspoken rule of our high school, which was mainly that all Mexicans were the same, even the Mexicans that were Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian. 

I learned to pick up a camera and shoot and direct my own projects. I could never quite match her queer and radical style, but slowly I learned how to develop my own voice through imagery. 

I directed my winter final video project in the old abandoned casita with my friends filling in as actors. The plot revolved around my actor/friend falling ill with a mysterious sickness that only the magical potion procured after a fantastical adventure in a winter wonderland could cure. She dramatically fell to the ground at the foot of the piano while my other actor/friend cursed the magical illness and vowed to save her soul. We ran wildly around the town, acting and recording the rest of the movie with bright eyes and full commitment to the project.

Getting to the casita was always a bit of a challenge when I was on my own without the original group who brought me there. My legs had a muscle memory more than I had actual memory, remembering to climb the long staircase past the alley behind the Mexican restaurant (very average food) and turning the corner after several rows of houses. I think it was blue, or maybe yellow or white, but I do remember the large windows that looked out into the yard with trees and a little gate.

Once, I took my high school boyfriend there so we could be alone. It was like playing house, alone together in a sweet home up on the hill, away from supervision and the inevitable changes looming on the horizon. I remember being laid down slowly on the rug in the bedroom as he kissed me, light pouring in from the spacious windows as the afternoon sun watched us.

He slid his hand under my shirt softly, slipping under my bra and running his fingers across my skin slowly. I can still remember the warmth that shot through my whole body.

The last time I saw the casita was in my final year of high school, nearing our graduation day. My boyfriend and I had snuck off again and were trying to find the house through our muscle memory. It took longer to find than before, a few wrong turns and mistaken staircases, but eventually we stumbled into the backyard. 

I reached towards the back door handle when I abruptly stopped and froze because I noticed there was someone's belongings peaking out from the large bedroom windows that hadn't been there before. 

It appeared that someone had finally moved in, no longer leaving the house empty. Disappointed and nervous, we quickly turned around and ran back towards the alleyway, but I peeked back over my shoulder for a last look. It was hard to make anything out as we ran, but I could see a few small baby toys strew messily along the same bedroom rug and a crib tucked in the corner. 



Originally written 5/24/23 at 2:37pm, updated and published on 1/19/24.
©2024 by Renee Salmon