For sale: All he has so he can hit the road
Friendship man puts his life on eBay -- all for a lump sum
link:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07076/770288-85.stm
ebay auction: 250093359092
Saturday, March 17, 2007
By Chico Harlan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette
Kevin Boyle in his Friendship apartment -- "Parting with all these things will be genuinely hard. I cry when I break a mug. ... I'm unbelievably materialistic."
Click photo for larger image.
On May 1, if all goes as planned, Kevin Boyle will leave Pittsburgh in a state of pure tabula rasa.
He will own only a half-dozen items, including a 2001 Ford Taurus station wagon. He will keep just enough clothing. Everything else will be gone, sold on eBay in one lump sum. His life -- like everybody's life, a summation of things -- will belong to somebody else, auctioned away for perhaps no more than $6,000.
Mr. Boyle has always loved his things. His current desire to sell everything doesn't represent, he warns, some Thoreauvian desire for material detachment. By habit, he collects, evidenced by the five remote controls on his coffee table; by the three clocks in his living room wall; by his 100 DVDs; by his 15 scarves; by his seven dinosaur figurines; by the four presidential busts that rest on his flat screen television, Rushmore atop a Toshiba.
He owns thousands of things, all crammed into his one-bedroom apartment. He's 24. He lives in Friendship. He dislikes his "meaningless office job." And two weeks ago, he made a decision.
"I was in my cubicle, listening to the hum of computers," he said. "And I thought, It's time."
He decided to take a road trip -- 180 days of solo driving across the United States. This required money, which, by his logic, required a radical step. Last Saturday, he photographed his possessions and compiled a list, now appearing in eBay auction No. 250093359092 ("Everything I own in one lump sum"). He's parting with items both practical and novel, the by-product of his love for antiques and his save-a-holic tendencies. (Even after deciding to sell everything, he has continued to purchase, most recently a DVD copy of "V for Vendetta.")
Of course, after enough collection and enough diversification, the mass of one man's things becomes just as unique as the sensibilities of the owner himself. Bidding on Mr. Boyle's items ends next Wednesday, and so far, nobody has bit. As several have told Mr. Boyle via e-mail, they would love to bid on a piece of his life, but not his entire life.
As it stands, you get everything. You get his size 10 shoes, even if they don't fit. You get a harmonica, even if you can't play. You get a Sears catalog, just in case the other items -- a fire hydrant from Beaumont, Texas; a full kitchen of silverware and cookware; eight lamps; a "genuine" Dunkin' Donuts rug; a bed; an IKEA bookcase; nine vintage chairs; a computer; a digital camera; a taxidermy alligator dressed as a waiter; an Astroturf sample book -- don't satisfy your every taste.
"I love my things so much," Mr. Boyle said. "This is just the only way. Parting with all these things will be genuinely hard. I cry when I break a mug. ... I'm unbelievably materialistic. Materialism -- people use it as a dirty word, but I don't. I love things."
The complete detachment from his comforts, Mr. Boyle hopes, will force a discovery. "Not to sound too Dr. Phil-y," he said, "but this is so radical, I can't think of a better way to force yourself to learn something."
"There have been previous incarnations of this idea," said Jenna Woginrich, a college friend. "He used to say he wanted to get an old Studebaker and drive around the country with a dog. You know, the whole Steinbeck thing. There were days in college where he said, 'Let's drive to the Grand Canyon and back.' So I wasn't surprised about the trip. But he's such a wonderfully materialistic person; he uses a lot of things to define himself. I was surprised that he was willing to give up his stuff."
Mr. Boyle has lived in Pittsburgh for six months and worked at his current job -- which he doesn't wish to name, but which he doesn't hesitate to criticize -- for three. He knows he is creative, but beyond that, Mr. Boyle has no idea about career ambitions. His family lives on the other side of the state. His aunt has agreed to care for his cat. He has no significant other, no children. He is, by his words, "directionless."
The yearning for the cross-country trip arose after years of thinking about it. The wanderlust first struck him as a seventh-grader in Langhorne, Bucks County. Finally, the fear of not doing it outweighed the fear of doing it. Once on the road, Mr. Boyle wants to combine both the tourist stops and the out-of-nowhere adventures. He'll stop at the Grand Canyon. And, to hear him imagine it, maybe "I'll sit down in some small-town diner, and have Mavis tell me a story about the town, how they make doorknobs down the road, and maybe that's their claim to fame."
Only a few items will remain in his possession, post-auction. He's saving a hanger from an abandoned shoe factory where he and his friends used to break in. And he's not letting go of the old tangle of melted nails, pulled from the rubble of a general store in Lancaster that burned to the ground. Those things, spared entirely for sentimental value, along with the station wagon, spared for everything but sentimental value, will represent Mr. Boyle's net worth come May 1 -- his target departure date.
"I hope to realize something in the 180 days," he said. "Maybe that time can change something in me. But even if I discover nothing, at least I had 180 days where I did exactly what I wanted."