Round Three

There are two weeks left before you are done with the semester. Everything is coming down to due dates and deadlines but somehow only Spider Solitaire is commanding enough to inspire any sort of willingness in execution. It is a struggle to write paper after paper, to try and complete one take home exam after another, to reread chapters from months ago. You are more than ready to throw in the alleged towel, but know you will not able to get through intergalactic travel or existence without it (or that stupid degree you are working for).

But all Douglas Adams references aside, you are finding yourself, though unmotivated, coming to a pleasant understanding and acceptance of how you have started to really live your life. You are contemplative with enough sense to not become overwhelmed by past and present mistakes.

It is raining, which you love. But such downpour is not without reminders of things you’ve left behind and things you are without.

You come home with thoughts and preponderance of Hume, whom you’ve been studying in one of your philosophy classes. He is an old love, from courses taken and books read long ago. Causation and nostalgia compel you to recollection— and thoughts of shattered glass lead to thoughts of wrecking balls. Your phone rings and why, speak of the devil.. But you are no longer taking phone calls from angry ex-boyfriends so you do not pick up.

Instead you call over dear friends for an execution of good times before the next two weeks of hell. There are papers to be written, but tonight you chose to embrace the glory of your apartment and the people you’ve come to love and stay in without obligation to work.

There has been a semester’s worth of parties, and there is no need for another tonight. Rather, the ones who are compelled just as much by conversation than keg stands come over and things seem to matter more.

The living room is suddenly full. You smoke a joint and listen to Simon and Garfunkel covering Bob Dylan on vinyl. You smoke your cigarettes and make your love. You drink your wine and you are happy.

You talk about your generation of codependents, how we are all compelled to be in relationships for fear of being alone, but base them on no real grounds of legitimacy, and therefore find ourselves dissatisfied. We move to cheating, instead of merely breaking up with those who do not fulfill us because, again, we’re so damn terrified of spending the night alone. Your friends are the contributing kind. You converse and take it all in. You are learning more and more of what there is to be taken from choosing carefully the ones you invite in. Platonically and otherwise.

They are understanding of the romantic disasters of the semester that you’ve endured. These are the people who are forgiving when you get caught up and do not call for weeks at a time because you are busy indulging in maljudgement with boys they warned you about. These are the ones who will always return to the apartment, to your home and to your heart, even when you are not always returning calls.

You realize you want this for your apartment always. Three years feels like a waste when you end a relationship. And coming into your own apartment right after that feels a lot like tabula fucking rasa. But it soon becomes a playground for bad ideas and trying to get over things way too fast. Single for the first time in years with your own apartment, as you learned this semester, inspires many trials and many errors. But you remind yourself that it is not who’s sleeping in your bed that really matters, but who’s sitting in your living room, listening to record players and making you feel.

Five Things that Make You Question Why You Ever Agreed to Living with a Boy

1. When you first started integrating your lives in preparation for the shared living arrangement, there was the introduction of friends not made together—an untapped source of potential everything. And oh how flattering when his friends all think you are a thing to be worshiped, how delightful when your best friends leave a bonfire with great impressions.

Fast forward through a semester of friends, lovers, and lapses in judgment and the potential is slightly less prevalent. Though Roommate is the sole member of the (heterosexual) opposite sex with whom your interactions are strictly platonic, submitting to ego boosts and consequently exercising poor choices with his best friend (a few times) has rendered you in a rather awkward position since he has decided to move up here for spring semester.

You first noticed slight shifts in behavior after a few.. ”morning-afters,” in which attempted intimacy was far more than you’d generally appreciate or expect after that many drinks, but it was not until the best friend put his cell phone charger in your bedroom upon arrival for a weekend visit that you realized the severity of the situation. You quickly make it clear that he is here to visit his best friend and not some potential girlfriend. You have roommate tell him the same. Then, best friend gets drunk and tells you he loves you (and, of course, the quotes you pick out from Palahniuk books). Hah. You call him a train wreck and tell him to sleep on the couch. He doesn’t. (To be fair, you are also drunk and slightly flattered, though repulsed in the morning.)

Roommate did not feel it necessary to inform you of that darling tendency of his dear friend to quickly discard all notions of the term “casual.” He said he’s never seen him this way but to you it sounds like excuses, excuses.

2. He refused for a while to put down the toilet seat, claiming that it was gravitationally easier for you to put it down than for him to put it up.

3. He is good-looking but slightly inept, and therefore consistently coming to you for clarification and advice regarding your gender. When inebriated, he has been known to take your suggestions not as such, but rather literally. It’s slightly precious and slightly pathetic, but for the most part inconsequential to your relative existence.

However, when, in an exercise of said ineptitude, he decidedly chose to sleep with a friend of a (shared) friend with whom he had formerly exchanged fluids with for nearly a semester, you were thrown into a whirlwind of he-said, she-said bullshit in which you truly came to question why you are living with someone with the emotional and mental maturity, and more so sexual understanding of an amoeba.

Love triangles become love octagons when everybody is talking to everybody and the boy you live with is a dipshit. God love him. But really.

4. He and his friends, upon seeing 300, decidedly attempted for the entire semester to get Gatsby to respond to “Spartan.”

5. The incestuality of dating among the same pools of friends and subsequent love interests of the people you live with is far too little advised against. You learned (the hard way, of course) that it is unwise to set up the person(s) you cohabitate with with the friends of those with whom you are moderately romantically affiliated. It is not ideal for the boy you are seeing to text your roommate when you don’t immediately respond. It is even less ideal to get texts from the girl roommate is seeing regarding her insecurities and bitterness towards his incompetencies. You find yourself a conduit for jr. high romance at 2am more than once. You feel like a translator of idiocy. You are forced to tell them it is not your issue and that you are done. The next morning the one you are wasting your time on brings it all up again. It begins to feel like an endless cycle.

Fugazi and the Colors Change

The downstairs neighbors are bastards. Yes, perhaps it was not the greatest of choices to engage in dorm-like debauchery in a two level, eight-unit apartment building, but I maintain that if you want to wrestle drunk with your friends at 1:30 in the morning in the middle of the week there should be nothing stopping you. It is reasonable to see how neighbors might disagree, however calling the police was quite unnecessary when a simple knock on the door would have been just as effective.

These are the same charming inhabitants who came up and complained about the first and only party you had twenty minutes into it. And when you took them freshly baked cookies the next day as a peace offering, they responded curtly to your introduction and apology only with "Oh;" and took the cookies and closed the door in your face.

Now there is a notice posted on your door saying that if you receive another noise complaint, you will be asked to leave within three days. Precious.

Contrast and Compare

You come home to an empty apartment after a cold bike ride without a sweater. You think bicycles can change the world. At this point you think sweaters can too. It’s getting dark too soon. Your favorite season is becoming tangible but your best friends are not here to watch the colors change. It feels like a waste.

Roommate has gone home for the weekend. He left a clean kitchen but it only feels unlived. You are waiting for a trace of yourself. It is an odd sensation. Nothing can be attributed to making you feel this way but the sentiment is there. You wish for a one bedroom at least six times a month, but now all you want is for the apartment to be full.

You don’t know how to turn on the heater so you sit wrapped in blankets with two pairs of socks waiting for someone who is not coming to fix things. It has been a long fucking week. Listening to Saves the Day is not helping. It only makes you think of old friends and things you’ve ruined.

You are tired of this stupid place. Your walls are still half bare and the bedrooms don’t feel cozy. The living room is chic but cool; you miss the warm tones of your parents’ house. You come home to a roommate instead of kin. (You hate yourself for thinking of one of your closest friends that way but it cannot be helped.)

The boy you’ve been out with three times this week calls to take you out. You politely decline. You drink too much at a friend’s apartment. You wait until you are able to drive and come home, in spite of genuine offer to crash there.

And sometimes sad songs just hit you hard. You blame it on the changing of seasons (there is much to be longed for). And sometimes you just need to get away. You have made so much for yourself here (but somehow now it doesn't feel that way).

You wish to take off but a friend’s birthday keeps you here. You call your mother and tell her you’ll be home the next day. She can tell you need her for no reason at all. Sometimes you think growing up is harder on her than it is for you. She says she misses you and the dog, and can’t we just come home tonight?

You show up for the party. After an hour girls are crying everywhere and it feels like a jr. high dance. You wonder why you stayed for this.

You return home. Real home with a real fireplace and ten acres and three other dogs for Gatsby to play with and scents of meals that didn’t come from a box. Your mother hugs you like she means it. You hang out with your grandma and family friends come over. Your dad plays the new Mark Knopfler album for you. You play Wii with your brother. Things feel right again.

You see your best friend. You go to your favorite coffee shop and your favorite park and you hold hands. Gatsby is almost happier to see him than you are. It is difficult to leave him. It is difficult to leave home.

You meet your mom for lunch before you take off. You see The Darjeeling Limited with your dad (you are only reminded that they have yet to screen it in Sacramento). He and Wes Anderson know how to make you laugh and comfort you.

You tell yourself it is natural to feel this way. You are on your own for the first time. You have lost nothing, though, you remind yourself. You are only gaining a better sense of self and forming self-sufficiency. Beautiful things come from suffering, you say. You plan to write this into the movie you plan to make one day.

You put on the mix cd your dear friend made you for your drive back. You are reminded that there are great people to return to. You listen to happy songs. You have an apartment waiting for you and walls to be filled. In a week you will wake up and nothing will feel this way.

Habit and Routine

For some reason, for the third time in the past week and a half, your alarm didn’t go off so you woke up in a sheer panic, with the realization that you have seventeen minutes to shower, get dressed, assert your ethnic hair, and take Gatsby for a quick stroll around the block. (Some of your professors are less understanding than others.)

You hop into the shower, which has unexpectedly remarkable water pressure. However, since the drain is significantly weaker than the showerhead, you end up standing in an ever-filling pool of shampoo and body wash and your own filth. It’s really quite charming.

You rinse off, get out, grab a towel, and quickly decide that it’s going to be another hat day. Some (most) of last night’s makeup didn’t quite wash off in your four minute tango with the shower so you don’t have to worry about reapplying, and proceed to get dressed.

You go to the kitchen to refill Gatsby’s water bowl. You stop at the fridge for Naked OJ, which you bought at the natural foods co-op a few blocks over, though you can’t remember which bottle has the vodka and which one is just juice. It’s a game of chance you play most mornings, but it makes breakfast far more fun.

The sink is still full of dishes and water from last night, not having magically drained from the night before when the roommate was asserting the dishes. Another lovely little perk about the apartment is that the garbage disposal doesn’t work. Never mind the fact that you complained about it the third day you moved in, but the property manager just does not have time to come fix it. However, they have managed to drop by twice now, to leave angry notices about your garbage removal habits and your lawn chairs on the roof. Sorry, of the forty-seven keys you were handed the day you signed the paperwork, none of which were you told open what, only four of them are effective. This means you cannot open any of the three doors you have to pass through to get to the dumpster. And as for the chairs on the roof, now where will you drink wine and smoke cigarettes and unwind from long days of class and napping?

There is nothing you can do about it, so you grab the dog’s leash and lead him downstairs. As you power-walk with him around the block, you are called a "hottie" for the first time since 1999 by some asshole in a lifted truck (quel supris). Gatsby pees and you make it back to the apartment unscathed.

Back inside, the roommate is up and functioning so you chat it up momentarily. You check your school e-mail in the sole corner of the apartment where you can pirate internet and then handoff the dog so that he may be coddled while you get your bike out the door. You say goodbye and Gatsby is shaking, which makes it very difficult to leave. In taking six classes this semester, you have encountered a few professors who are glorious with you bringing him to class, and a few that are less than pleased at the prospect. Thus, you only bring him to your Tuesday, Thursday classes once a week.

Out the door, Gatsby’s already made his way into the roommate’s room and is staring at you through the window. It’s hard to imagine that such a lovely, attractive little being could be so destructive. The first time you left him inside the apartment by himself, he tore down the blinds of that very window, trying to claw his was out. The first time you left him on the balcony, he managed to slip out of his leash and collar, which were legitimately attached to the door, and scaled the roof of the building trying to come after you. You came back to Animal Control about to take him away and three neighbors that will forever think of you as the crazy girl who doesn’t take care of her dog. Glorious first impression.

You head to school. You will return in the late afternoon between classes to check up on him and swoop him for evening class. You have become routined.

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.