one thing i’m definitely looking forward to when we get back is getting our own place.
i’m 33, and i’ve spent the majority of my adult life sharing apartments with other people.
my first setup was the all girls dormitory at mcgill university. the building was pretty big for a dorm, and i lived in the “new wing”, which meant i was lucky enough to have my own room, but unlucky enough to live in what was essentially a small walk-in closet. desk, cupboards and bed were all built into a space approximately 8 feet wide and 10 feet long. i enjoyed the privacy, but the environment didn’t do much for the major depression i went through.
after my first year, i moved into a flat with my friend elisabeth. it was a peculiar little setup, with one large bedroom, one small, and a living room just long enough to fit a couch. it wasn’t a bad starter pad, all in all, and it helped that my flatmate spent most of her nights at her boyfriend’s place. of course, that also meant that her dirty dishes piled up until they began to mold. and trying to fit three people in to watch television (my 4″x4″ black and white telly which got exactly 2 english channels) when he came to visit was practically impossible. also, it was on the first floor an my bedroom window looked right out onto the alley, which meant i was woken up by the garbage trucks going up and down in the mornings. still, i felt really grown up because we had a subscription to the montreal “gazette”, and grocery shopping for myself was such a novelty. at the end of the school year, we decided to get another place, and signed a new lease together. unfortunately, over the summer i decided to drop out of school and move to new york, irreparably severing my friendship with elizabeth by leaving her in the flatmate lurch. bad jen, i know – but i was young and stupid and in love.
my next flat was a place in new york city where i moved to live with my fiancee and new british best friend. i found us a place in a quasi-dodgy area of town, which was cheap, newly done up, and had a skylight. we were on the fourth floor, and had access to the roof (only discovering the stairs *after* some scary clambering up the rusted fire escape). the skylight leaked, the fiancee was chronically depressed and unemployed, and we were constantly broker than broke – paying for groceries and cigarettes with subway tokens at the local bodega. our entertainment on friday nights was getting stupid with a 40 oz. of malt liquor and a nickle bag of weed up on the roof, looking out over the east river at the manhattan skyline. my friend shelley and i worked long minimum wage hours at domiciliary care, and we had no furniture save a doubled over mattress serving as a couch. we invented games around who could find the cheapest macaroni and cheese at the ghetto supermarket. we were poor. but hell, we had so much fun, we didn’t care at all.
after that lease ended, we moved to a more upscale neighbourhood, to a much bigger flat. but to afford it, we had to bring in more flatmates. four bedrooms meant that at one point in time, I was living with 7 other flatmates. we called our place “the real world” apartment, and there were constantly vodka parties taking place in our living room. we *still* had no furniture, but we spent hours doing “the bus stop” to old diana ross albums and gallon jugs of cheap white wine. the finacee was still unemployed and depressed, and i was working 50 hour weeks at a home for troubled teenagers, whilst going to n.y.u. full time. so while everyone else was having a never-ending party, i was hiding in my bedroom trying to bang out 10 page papers at all hours of the morning. not to mention that the walls were so thin that at any given point, I could hear three other couples having sex… while the fiancee and i were having *none*. bills never got paid, and the phone was continually getting cut off. i ended up getting one of the first generation of cell phones, that I locked so no one else would run up the account. but we had some amazing, zany experiences – like the time we all decided to make homemade candles, or the fact there was a fur men’s thongs on the sofa, a replica of a pierced nipple stuck on the wall, and a freezer well-stocked with good russian vodka. it was wild fun and hell, all at the same time.
after a year of the party house, the fiancee and i finally moved into our own place. it was an ideal neighbourhood, with all the conveniences directly outside our front door (chinese, bagles, coffee shop, pizza, post office, movie theatre, bakery, subway station, and 24 hour corner store – all within a two block radius), gorgeous prospect park across the street, and (the holy grail of new york apartments) rent stabilised. In the four years we lived there, our rent increased by $20 every year. it was tiny – we learned to store everything *vertically*, and our kitchen was so small that sitting in the middle, i could open both the oven and the fridge on opposite sides. but it had unbelievable amounts of character. we painted the walls with murals and did the tin ceiling with stars. it had a bedroom with (the second holy grail of nyc apartments) closet space. we added a dog and a bird to the two cats, completing our menagerie. we had great landlords, and wonderful neighbours. we had a roof to hold summer parties on, and left our door open at all times. it was an incredible little community, and i have never felt so at home anyplace as the idyllic four years i spent at that apartment. too bad the (now) husband was still unemployed and depressed…
… and so we moved to boston.
where we had what became our first real “house”. it was the first floor of a two-family house, with two bedrooms, giant living room, foyer, a separate dining room with built in china closet, a large kitchen with dishwasher and pantry, front and back porch, back yard with garden, and space galore. I loved that house – i became a regular fixture at the hardware store for diy projects. i grew vegetables and barbecued. i mowed and weeded. i oiled the woodwork and re-installed the original french doors. we had a car, and a washing machine, and a canoe. i *loved* that house. the upstairs neighbours were friendly. i shoveled the walk and took out the rubbish bins. i was domestic happy homemaker.
then i got divorced, got a new roommate (who was fine, but seemed to think the bathroom was self-cleaning), hellish new upstairs neighbours… and the shine quickly came off the place.
so i moved to london. i gave away the blenders and couches and all the accoutrements i’d manage to accumulate over the years. i wept as i threw out the cappucino machine. i put all my clothing in two large suitcases, and moved into a cute little flat with a woman i hardly knew. she was great – really sweet and nice – but her taste in men sucked. i didn’t know anyone, so i never went anywhere. i spent days holed up in my room, smoking out the window and listening to music. which wouldn’t have been so bad except that eventually her boyfriend was practically living with us… and the too-small flat became absolutely tiny. i got tired of hiding in my room listening to them fight or have sex in the bathroom or both. i owned nothing. i felt like a prisoner.
then along came j. and within 4 weeks, he’d asked me to move in with him. into a huge two bedroom flat, situated directly above a car dealership (!) it was all windows and light, with a two balconies and two bathrooms. it was kitted out in “bachelor minimalism”, with a community of friends parked directly next door, and i came with almost no baggage. our first flatmate was a – a dim witted girl with a penchant for ruining stuff thoughtlessly. cigarette burns in the couch, pint glasses used for paint brushes, etc. she also had a particular knack for inviting her sketchy friends around for drinks just after j and i had scoured the house. she seemed to think that being home infrequently meant she didn’t have to clean anything more than her dirty dishes, but she paid her bills on time, and had a large beanbag that was perfect for some impromptu saturday afternoon delight in the living room.
this would soon prove to be a huge advantage (the paying bills, not the beanbag!), for our next flatmate (another a) has become what we call “the lord of the manor”. a little background: we considered just keeping the flat to ourselves, but realised that would mean saving an extra £3000 for our trip. meanwhile our neighbour had a bandmate who was looking for a place, and all seem to fall into place. our new flatmate, A, *used* to have a full time job, until he got sacked for calling in sick a few too many tines. a called in sick because he was hung over nearly every morning. a has slept in doorways on the street when he considered getting home too great an effort. a lost his job a full 5 months ago now, and has been living on money his parents sent him. a is 30-something years old, and can’t manage to get out of bed before afternoon to find a job. a recently applied for benefits because he can’t be bothered to seek out gainful employment. a has his breakfast around 4pm, dinner around 2am (invariably fish, which stinks up the house in the middle of the night), stays up until 6am, then heads to sleep just before we awake. a has, to my knowledge, not gone on a single job interview since his unfortunate (but not altogether unpredictable) sacking. a seem to have forgotten that the first rule of job-searching includes getting out of bed before noon. a is a full grown adult who seems to think he should claim the dole because he’s too lazy to get a job and who may be going home to south africa because he’s unable to get it together enough to secure a steady paycheque. a sleeps all day, watches telly all night, gets spaghetti sauce everywhere (and i mean *everywhere*), has cleaned the bathroom exactly once since may, and is an all around lazy loser. every evening when we come home, we ask what the “Lord of the manor” has been doing. more often than not, neither of us has seen hide nor hair of him. difficult to find work when you’re holed up in your bedroom all day!
it will be fabulous to have our own place.
Like this post
lent, pancakes, shrove tuesday, pancake tuesday, mardi gras 
kerryn subjected us to the dvd), both of which make the 
