The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: We got an idea for the L Word spinoff! Plus: Who Would You Rather? The Closer or Saving Grace?
DISPATCHES
posted 6/27/2003
ALVY
We live together, we sleep together, we eat together. Jesus, you don't want it to be like we're married, do ya?
ANNIE
How is it any different?
ALVY
It's different 'cause you keep your own apartment. Because you know it's there, we don't have to go to it, we don't have to deal with it, but it's like a . . a . . a. . . free-floating life raft ... so we know that we're not married.
— from Annie Hall
In New York, high rent is the catalyst for cohabitation among those who should
know better. This is how the madness typically begins: you get involved with
someone; soon you can't get enough of each other. Nights spent alone — although probably healthy — aren't as fun. You start going back to your apartment less and less. Hers is larger/cleaner/closer
to the subway. Eventually you're only going home
to pick up your mail.
promotion
You are now paying the better part of a thousand dollars
to store a bed that's hardly slept in and some clothes you hardly wear — your
six most regularly worn outfits have been transplanted into your new squeeze's
closet. Being young and/or just out of college, you don't have much money, and
your roommate smells atrocious and never buys toilet paper and you had reservations
about him from the start anyway and realize that if you move in with your girl/boy you'll have
several hundred extra dollars per month for fancy dinners, crazy nights out,
spontaneous gifts for each other and fun weekends away and soon you're looking at each other over a wonderful post-shagathon Sunday brunch and listing reasons why living together makes sense.
I mean, you kind of are anyway, right?
Neither of you are going anywhere any time soon, right?
You're tired of eating Ramen noodles four nights a week, and this way you can pick up the check once in a while, no?
It'll be like a sleepover party every night, right? And it's fun to play house! For a while, at least.
Before you move in with somebody, a number of criteria have to be met — kind of like when an EU country wants to adopt the Euro as their currency.
Until suddenly, and often permanently, it isn't.
Back up for a minute. When you were a child, your parents handed down a set of rules that were absolute. You learned not to use a metal knife to fish a burning bagel from a toaster; not to accept candy from strangers through trial and error. But parents know that dishing out specific advice to their adult children is like apologizing after a fender bender; admitting their liability for the car crash that is your life.
A scene from my life, January 2000:
"Lisa and I are breaking up," I told my parents over the phone.
"Well, where are you going to live?" came their concerned reply.
"Oh, we're going to continue living together."
"Oh. [silence] And how are her mom and dad doing?"
I suppose that living with an ex is one of those trial-and-error situations. Perhaps it worked for someone once.
Lisa and I had been living in her parents' New Jersey basement for about a year. This made the transition to our own place seem less daunting. But when the time came to cut the apron strings, I freaked. When I voiced some concern about us shacking up, adult-style, in a tiny Manhattan apartment, Lisa pooh-poohed my fears: a refurbished one-bedroom on the Lower East Side was going to be tiny, unless you were a paid-up member of the House of Saud. And the rent was decent: $1,500 per month, to be split three ways among Lisa, her parents and myself.
Before you move in with somebody, a number of criteria have to be met. Sort of like when a European country wants to adopt the Euro as their currency. Sometimes rules get bent, and countries whose GNP relies solely on the tanginess of their feta cheese sneak in.
Yes, my relationship with Lisa was Greece, and the Acropolis began to crumble almost as soon as the Schleppers truck pulled out of sight. Once we were outside her parents' home, we discovered that I was a neat freak, while Lisa had a laissez-faire attitude toward dust bunnies, a devil-may-care attitude about doing the dishes and no discernable logic re: flushing the toilet. Yet if I forgot to bust out the Tilex immediately after showering, I'd find myself in a world of hurt. Sure, it sounds trivial now, but at the time it was all-consuming. By Halloween, I was plotting my escape. I wasn't on the lease, so legally, nothing bound me to Lisa and the Lilliputian apartment, but she was broke and the thought of making her parents fork out another $500 per month because of a bad call on my part was making me sick to my stomach.
I told her that I would be staying at my buddy Frank's place, gathered my things, and headed out toward Coney Island. It was an hour away, but I felt emancipated, relieved, reborn.
I got a phone call from Lisa a week later. She expected me to pay rent until the lease ran out, in eight months' time. This was a total expenditure of $4,000 at a time when, after taxes, I was only making fifteen. "You wouldn't saddle my mom and dad with that, would you?" She guilted me back home. It was February.
We were living out the proverb about making your bed and having to lie in it. Although the phrase, "I'll sleep on the sofa tonight" was often bandied about on Attorney Street, I think it only happened once. Sleeping apart seemed more symbolic than practical: it would be utter madness to create two sleeping areas when one already occupied 50% of the apartment. I think we only had sex twice, very early on. As Lisa pointed out, I had chosen to end the relationship. Apparently, choosers can't be beggars either — at least, not successful ones.
As for ground rules, many things didn't even warrant discussion. Sleeping outside the apartment would hurt the other person. Bringing somebody home was out of the question. With no sex occuring between us, Lisa and I resigned ourselves to seven chaste months. But after only a few months of purgatory, I got a reprieve. I was able to move out with a garbage bag of clothes, a butterfly chair and slightly less dignity than I went in with.
A little over a year later, I fell into a similar situation,
but this time, Natasha was moving in with me. My infatuation, combined with her
having nowhere to live for the summer, led to us moving in together after
dating for less than a month. Gradually, my requests to maintain a non-smoking
environment fell on deaf ears, and our resentment of each other had plenty of
time
to fester
on the forty-five minute subway ride to extreme northern Manhattan. After things
had been rocky for a while, we agreed to find separate places. I had learned
my lesson
from the Lisa episode — sort of. Natasha and I had made a contingency plan
for a cleaner break, but would one of us have bailed out sooner if we had had
somewhere else to go?
From sharing my stories, I've discovered that they weren't unique. Countless young urbanites have cohabitated with an ex-love interest, and plenty of my friends were ready to deal out sympathy and understanding. The variety of their stories was staggering.
Apparently,
some people need to hear their ex being banged
silly in the next room before they get a better sense of
their own boundaries.
Julie, a statuesque blond, has been
a
friend
of
mine
for
a
couple
of
years. She broke up with shy, gangly Rich
more
than
a
year
before
I
met
her,
but
she always referred to him as her best friend. Not in a "we used to go out, so
I
have to give you precedence among my friends in name only" kind of way, but
in a "we still hang out, get dinner, watch HBO on Sundays and he's the first
person I'd call in a jam" kind of deal. They had dated for three years and resisted
the urge to shack up the entire time. But when Julie was evicted when her building changed ownership, she moved in with Rich for solace. Within three weeks, Julie was laid off from her dotcom job
and Rich had slept with a co-worker. A calamitous end to their living situation was also
the
end
of
their
relationship.
After two years, Julie forgave him — "I think that we just weren't right for
each other romantically" — and they became close friends. She was moving
into Manhattan and was looking for a roommate. Rich thought New York would seem lonely if they weren't in the same neighborhood. So they moved in together.
I dropped by Julie's place soon after she moved in.
Even as a two-time shack-up veteran, I was taken aback by the lack
of privacy in the place. The whole thing was the size of a subway car: two adjoining
rooms separated with a sheetrock walI. But Julie was oddly sanguine. "It's
been hard, but I much prefer him as a roomie to a boyfriend," she said. "I still
enjoy all the good things, like hanging out, but I don't have to deal with the
lackluster sex life. He had the smallest penis ever, and he was crap in bed.
We
basically
are
friends
with
benefits,
only
the
benefit
is that we don't have to hook up anymore."
In a similar and ongoing story, Stefan, a tall, suave
friend
of
a co-worker, made an amicable split with a girlfriend. As a romantic relationship
was out of the question, they decided they could live together as Oscar and Felix.
Unlike Julie and Rich, Stefan and Sam never ruled out the possibility of "going
back to the well," as they called it. "It only happens a few times a year, usually
after we get back from a party, where we've been drinking," says Stefan. The
pair had signed a twenty-four month lease (a huge commitment to make with anyone),
and
neither
of
them
wanted
to
give
up
the space. But
treating each other with kid gloves is proving to be a burden. "Only 'limited
flirting' with other girls is allowed in front of her in public, and because
we
share
friends, it's a hindrance," sighs Stefan.
The
more people I spoke to, the more I learned about the malicious,
two-way headfuck.
I thought the Draconian-but-necessary rule against bringing new hook-ups back
home would be standard. But it seems that others have slightly thicker skin.
Apparently, some people need to hear their ex's new squeeze being banged silly
in the next room before they develop a better sense of their own boundaries.
Veronica, a raven-haired, twenty-one-year-old divinity student, concurred that
the stress of cohabitation was primarily caused by the presence of new players on the field. "My ex is
not jealous at all, and I'm not very, so we didn't think it would be a problem," she
says. "He was dating this one girl, Claire. It was hard for me, but bearable — she
was respectful." But when a new alpha female appeared, trouble followed. "Ugh,
Mandi! It freaked her out that we lived together, but then she started freaking
out on him if we ever even went to get a drink. She was always in my house shooting
me dirty looks.
"She'd try and be raunchier than me in conversation. She'd sound like she was having a seizure every time they did it. Me and my other roommates would have to walk past his room to brush our teeth and we'd stand by the door and act out what we imagined they were doing to each other. Then it just became annoying. I even contemplated throwing water on them in the same way you'd split up horny dogs."
The worst part, says Veronica, was watching her old flame
be rebranded to fit his new girlfriend's needs. "Living with him, I had to watch
this change up close," she says. "I had to be reminded that the guy I had had
this amazing connection with, both as a friend and a boyfriend, was being squashed.
He and I did Europe like you're supposed to when you're twenty years old. But
now she wants to go to Europe too. On a cruise. Like old people! And
those
nails!
Those
big
fucking
red
claws!"
Veronica admitted that she did push back a little. "I used to steal condoms from his room and leave IOU notes. Inordinate amounts of condoms. Then I started dating a new kid and stopped. I was hoping that he'd ask why, and I'd get to mumble something about my new beau needing a 'different size,' but it never happened."
Luckily for me, mind games didn't really factor into the demise of my relationship with Lisa. But the more people I spoke with, the more I learned about the malicious, two-way headfuck.
Kirby and Eric, both twenty-eight-year-old guys, dated for only three months before moving in together: "I know, I know, lesbian cliché," sighs Kirby, a lanky moptop fond of shrunken Oxford shirts. Kirby had spent the summer in Eric's Rhode Island hometown, where they met and eased into a living arrangement under the guise of it being "just a summer thing." (This seems to be a pattern among the people I spoke to for this article: living together starts as a temporary arrangement that grows too comfortable to break out of.) When Eric scored a job in L.A., Kirby jumped at the chance to join him. "We hated California and moved to New York after a month," he explained. "We were in love and getting along really well as roommates, and I figured that if we could survive the move to L.A. and back, then we must be a pretty invincible couple."
This was the first of many mistakes.
"After about a year, I slipped into some sort of passive zombie housewife coma," says Kirby. For him, cohabitation became a chore when Eric became controlling; he dictated everything from what music could be played to how the apartment could be furnished. "I mean, I wasn't allowed to put a picture up, but would he get rid of the regulation arm-wrestling table?" says Kirby. "Or that fucking ass-shaped, mirrored coffee-table? No!"
Living together with no money — and a lot of Jack Daniels — only hastened the demise of the relationship. Because he only had a part-time job and hadn't co-signed the lease, Kirby was obliged to hold his tongue during arguments. "We were both guilty of playing the "what's-your-problem?-you-and-I-are-broken-up" card when it was convenient," he says. "I'd say it to him when he caught me making out with some boy at a party. He'd say it right back to me, days later, when I would find him in bed spooning some naked guy."
Aside from a few pre-bedtime "Fuck you, I'm sleeping on the couch!" gauntlet throw-downs, Kirby and Eric continued to share a bed. But the shit really hit the fan when Kirby encroached on one of Eric's prospects at a New Year's Eve ho-down. "Eric swings open the bedroom door as I'm sucking this guy off," Kirby sighs. "He slept on the couch, but hearing him sobbing hysterically in the next room kind of ruined the mood." After that, their relationship descended into a debauched, and often violent, game of tit-for-tat. "I came home one morning ready to crawl into bed. I opened our bedroom door, and there was some naked guy — on my side of the bed, even! — with Eric's arm draped across him, waving hello." A few nights, some of Kirby's dates had to flee the premises after being doused with bourbon by Eric. An Eric-administered black-eye was the last straw, and Kirby ultimately moved uptown, imposing on a distant relative.
Who thinks near-strangers can move in together and immediately enter a domestic dream world? The writers of Dharma and Greg.
When you're infatuated with someone, the part of your brain that divides good and bad ideas shuts down. It's only resuscitated when you're scowling at each other from opposite ends of the sofa, when it's apparent that there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. You know who thinks that near-strangers can move in together and immediately start living in a domestic dream world? The writers of Dharma and Greg. It's worth pointing out that Dharma and Greg a) was a TV show; b) was a crap TV show; and c) was set in San Francisco, the country's second most expensive city. Fact: living in a less-than-ideal situation for cheap rent has always been a televisual laugh riot. In reality, you can't count on a snoopy fey neighbor in a jaunty aqua neckerchief to provide comic relief — or physical protection, if it becomes necessary.
Timothy "Speed" Levitch once said that the New York is like a massive sexual organ. (Look at a map of Manhattan and you can almost see his point.) Whether it's that or the damn rent-control laws, the city has a serious accelerating effect on the dating-to-cohabitation continuum. At the same time, it has a decelerating effect on owning property, buying cars, getting married, reproducing. Perpetual teenagerdom is common. When you're forking out half your take-home pay to live in a glorified closet, some things can seem out of reach.
Alvy Singer really hit the nail on the head, I think, when he likened the auxiliary apartment to a life raft. Once you've helped cart her stuff up five flights of stairs, and you're sweating, you look around at the scene of bedlam in your once-serene living room, and you can clearly visualize the day when it's all going to come crashing down around your ears. Maybe that's just me. Or maybe — when everything comes to a head — your relationship with the city always wins out. You set a timed trap for one relationship, so you can give yourself completely to the other.
n°
