Five Great Things About Living with a Boy

1. His lack of skill in the kitchen, combined with his hatred of doing laundry has inspired the agreement between the two of you that you will do all the cooking and his laundry, if he cleans the entire apartment and does the dishes. The glory of this is that his idea of cooking is making Top Ramen and the occasional sandwich when he’s drunk. It is not a difficult commitment to uphold. Not to mention the fact that you love cooking and would do it anyways, so it’s like getting a clean apartment for nothing. And as a feminist, but more so a generally lazy being, you refuse to serve him, which he cannot oppose without coming off like a chauvinist and an overall douche, so he respects it. It’s so sweet. Plus, while you’ve never had any real disdain for cleaning up in the kitchen, there is something utterly gratifying in sitting on the couch drinking beers at 2:00 pm with the dog, Gatsby, and often his friends (who all moderately worship you for your lasagna, your remarkable taste in music, and your ability to consistently outdo them with crude jokes while baking cupcakes) or yours (who all think it’s hilarious), while he does the dishes.

2. He automatically relinquished the larger of the two bedrooms, rationally knowing that you, a. have more stuff, b. take up more space, and c. would bitch about it endlessly until the six month lease was up (in a cute way). Also, you get the better shelf in the bathroom closet and don’t have to worry about him swooping your favorite t-shirt or mascara.

3. He is great for lifting, carrying, reaching, and moving things. Sure, he’s scared of spiders, so you’re the one who catches them and puts them outside, but he carried your cal king mattress all the way from the car, through the narrow-ass stairwell, to your bedroom. He brings your beach cruiser up the stairs after the two of you grocery shop, and never objects to getting a bottle of wine down for you from the liquor cabinet (which, with your short appendages, is just out of reach on tip-toe, the biggest flaw of the apartment, thus far). When he comes shopping with you, he carries your clothes around until you go to the fitting room. He doesn’t get mad when you refer to him as your purse.

4. He does not get emotionally overwhelmed and take it out on you. He is understanding when you get nervous before hosting your first Democrat party at the apartment and drink half a bottle of wine to calm down, rendering you too drunk to attend to the first guests who showed up an hour early, and so he makes small talk and tends to them for you while you get ready.

5. He ditched class to drive you to San Francisco last week to see your best friend and The Sounds, and meandered around the city for hours so that the two of you could celebrate her birthday and dancedancedance. In spite of mocking him excessively for his intramural flag-football games, he gets excited when you show up. He lets you mess around with his hair when he gets out of the shower, even though he never leaves the faux-hawk up. He gets drunk and compliments you, unlike girls, who get drunk and talk shit. He reads your favorite books at your suggestion, and sometimes the two of you stay home and watch Wes Anderson movies instead of going out. He reassures you when you are contemplative without making you feel like a dumb bitch. He makes you laugh when you are mopey or pissed with his stupid antics and jock stories. Even though he complains about looking homosexual, he still takes Gatsby out for walks, pink collar and all. He doesn’t get bitter when you tell him that your dog is more masculine and sexually secure than he is, and that Gatsby is straight but not narrow and that he should try to be the same.

An End and A Beginning

So this is it; after two years of paying $800 a month to share a glorified box with an ill-matched classmate, eating bland and unseasoned food, enduring one-ply toilet paper, being ordered and enforced by peers with an ego problem, and showering in flip-flops for fear of strange foot fungi in the communal showers, you’ve moved out of the dorms. No more overly chatty RAs who don’t get the hint that they should leave your room so you can continue enjoying your Tuesday afternoon cocktail (though you are underage and therefore not permitted to have alcohol in the building), no more nervous breakdowns in the hall and dealing with everyone else’s issues, no more assholes running around at 4 am when you’ve got three exams and a paper due in the morning, and no more being that asshole running around causing all sorts of debauchery and mild acts of mayhem when everyone else has midterms, for that matter.

The dorms are great for teaching you how to live with other people. Not just by forcing you to live with someone else in a room the size of your bed back home at your parents’ house, but by forcing you to be in constant contact with others at all times. So when a boy walks into my room when I’ve got bras hanging from the bedposts and boxes of tampons lying around, they’ve got nothing to feel uncomfortable about. However, after the first year of becoming comfortable with the natural order of growing up, girls actually carrying their own condoms, slutty underwear, and having to walk across the lobby in a towel to get to the only shower in the building that doesn’t make you feel like you’re in one of the special showers at Auschwitz, you wise up to the fact that all that the dorms really are is an overextended sleep-away summer camp where everybody’s excited to stay up all night and have sex for the first time, and since you lost your virginity the summer before sophomore year of high school, it gets old quick.

You decide you’ve had enough. You plea with the parentals that you’ve grown and changed and are ready for the responsibility of paying bills and cooking your own meals. You tell them that the dorms are disruptive to your studying habits, and that you’ll be better able to put all those glorious genes they gave you to work in your own apartment. They are unconvinced. Somehow, though they don’t actually know that you were smoking weed everyday and drinking away your hangovers before morning classes, they still think that living on campus will somehow make you a more studious person. But they love you and are, in the end, rational beings (really you just bitched about it enough that they gave up).

Thus begins hunting season. Finding the perfect roommate, apartment, and bedspread become priority uno. You imagine how amazing it will be, and all you want is art on the walls and music playing all the time. You choose to live in the best part of town, willing to make the commute from midtown to campus, promising yourself you will ride the bike you haven’t bought yet to not only look badass, but to actively live more eco-friendly (it’s hard to live green in the dorms, when everybody and their mother decides to leave lights on and tv blasting at all hours and the bin for recycling outside is always either overflowing or being rummaged through by bums). But the hunt is not what you expect: it is, in fact, much harder to find a legitimate two bedroom that allows dogs (the reward your mother promised you for quitting smoking cigarettes for a year) and isn’t on "Democracy Alley," which would be far more accurately described as "Ghetto-Ass Creepy Alley" (thank you, craigslist). You persevere. You find the perfect place, one of six apartments in an old Victorian with a shared balcony and a free standing tub. It is glorious and you are in love. You are approved and ecstatic. You take off for a two week trip Greyhounding up the east coast with your best friend knowing that upon return, you will move in to what could quite possibly be your dream apartment. However, as all beautiful things fail, you receive a call while you are across the country, informing you that one of the tenants has decided to stay, and therefore the apartment is no longer yours. It is out of your hands and utter bullshit. Things are not looking good. You are bitter but keep looking.

Somehow, when your roommate told you he doesn’t care about the aesthetic of the apartment, and that you basically had free reign over picking the place, you did not anticipate being the only one searching to find somewhere suitable in the god awful heat of Sacramento summer. But you do not let it get to you and keep coming back until that fateful day. You find it. Sure, it isn't as charming as the first one, and it's on the wrong side of the freeway, but the tiles are teal, the balcony's made for entertaining, and there's a faux brick fireplace in the living room. You sign the papers, and at last, you are ready to move into your first apartment, your first attempt at really living on your own.