A List of Things I Own That I Can Sell to Pay My Rent

by Rob Owens

I woke up on the morning of Jan. 2 and had to face the facts: In order to make rent, I had to sell something I owned. This is a strange realization. I don’t really buy things (that’s a lie, I buy cheese). Or, rather, I tend to accumulate things that result in memories, rather than material goods. But on that morning, I had to sell one of those material items to pay my rent. Here’s a short list:

There’s my record player. I wouldn’t mind selling that. It has a speaker connected to it, which means it doesn’t sound as good, which means any serious vinyl head would judge me for having it. I can’t sell it though, because my girlfriend bought it for me. We’d only been dating for two months when she made the purchase, because she loves me I suppose — or wants to ensure that I’d stay in Washington D.C., because with accumulation comes settling. It stays.

There’s my keyboard. I bought it on Craigslist. It’s a 76-key, non-weighted keyboard, with a cacophony of various sounds from various genres of music I don’t listen to. I paid $75 for it — a deal. I’ve written one good song on it called, “Son Tus Ojos,” inspired by my South American muse. We are a D.C. OKCupid success story. It’s a simple song about the people who make living life accumulating record players worthwhile. Selling it would easily net me double what I paid. But getting a replacement would cost way more than what I did. Not ideal.

My electric guitar. Total impulse buy. The kind of purchase you have when you have savings and aren’t that into brunch. I watched a video of a band covering Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and I knew I had to buy it. I don’t use it ever, but it looks amazing. It was $125, and I’d sell it for that. Maybe — if I’d throw in the amp I paid $25 for — it could find a new home.

My acoustic guitar. This was my first purchase in Washington D.C. more than a year ago: $50. An Epiphone. I’ve written a lot of songs on it. It has a name, Berninger, for the two months I listened to nothing but “Terrible Love” by the National. If one of those songs charted on Billboard Top 100, the guitar would be an investment, or something the Hard Rock Café can use to help sell unsatisfying hamburgers for $20. It’s an untouchable.

My Beach Boys record. I was in Brooklyn at a Boy Scout sale where the aunts and uncles of the local troop sell things. I bought a Star Wars record for $2. The Sound of Music, $2. Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, a buck. Brooklyn record shops sell vinyl for the right price. These people don’t have Twitter, don’t know what Pitchfork is and thus aren’t really familiar with the market of what they’re selling. The record was called Smiley Smile. I looked up if any copies were on eBay, and one floated around for fifty. I felt bad for ripping off original Williamsburgers, so I gave five. The album is the kind of record that makes a collection more valuable, like a reverse toxic asset.

I have seven books: One about Dylan; a book about the joys of practicing guitar; a book about the joy of singing with other people; a biography of a British keyboard player touring with Nico from the Velvet Underground; something called Madame Bovary’s Ovaries, which I bought at the dollar section at a used book store; a Rolling Stone writer’s memoir about karaoke singing; Patti Smith’s Just Kids. That’d sell, but they have to be thousands of those floating around Amazon.

My computer? The N key doesn’t work. Which is problematic for writing verbs. And adverbs. And nouns. Sentences in general.

I ended up selling the electric guitar, which, I must confess, was tough. In standard tuning, the G string has a buzz on the second fret. I knew this, which is why I didn’t play it, but I had to sell my guitar to pay my rent and I had compromised my Craigslist ethics to do it.

Any halfway decent guitarman would know an Epiphone with screwed frets isn’t worth it. But I, halfway immoral Millennial, had a plan. I tuned my guitar to Open G. No buzz, all love.

A man from the suburbs of Virginia meandered to Columbia Heights with $125 and stories about his son’s band in South Carolina, the full-ride his daughter got to Tulane, and the child who hasn’t found his place in the world. He took the stories with him. He left the cash. The rent was paid.

Rob Owens writes songs and resides in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Alexis Fam

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