The Great Apartment Hunt of 2009 is over. I signed yesterday for a gorgeous place in the Fenway, and move in on the first.  Whew.

I can't believe it's been nearly three years here at the Orphanage.  What happened here?  Was I renditioned?  How did I end up at Seven Hills? Was I drugged?  Why was I incarcerated for three years?  Do I need a lawyer?  These are just some of the burning questions I have in these final days before my release.

I was remembering some of the inmates who've come and gone in my time here.  Everyone seems to come nowadays right out of a bad break-up — in fact, it would probably be more accurate to call the place "Heartbreak Hotel" — and, to a one, they've met someone while living here (though not someone who lives here), have begun dating again, and left with a lover in tow. 

Alas, not me.

And I have a feeling if I waited for that to happen, I'd be here for the rest of my life.  I've done a fair bit of dating around in the last three years, but nothing too serious, which suits me fine.  I mean, it's not a requirement for release, it just seems to speed up the process. 

And don't get me wrong, The Orphanage is OK as a kind of dilapidated way station on the road to bigger and better things.  It's surprisingly motivational to hit bottom.  But because the rent is sweet and the location can't be beat, it's easy to get mired here.  It's not rock bottom, see.  It's more a sort of mucky layer of sludge before you reach rock bottom.  It's sort of soft and slimy, but it can suck you in —


Winters at the Orphanage are the worst, which is why I wanted to get out before the first frost.  The old Victorian is drafty, dark, and cold — we're talking Dickensian cold here.  Often it's colder in the house than it is outside.  Add that to the Dickensian grime of the place.  I guess if the characters who inhabit the Orphanage were more Dickensian, but the truth is lately it had begun to seem a little like a bad '80s sitcom.  I mean, the Orphanage is not BBC-grade.  It's not Showtime or HBO-grade.  It's not even Fox-grade.  We're talking UPN or The WB here.  We're talking Blossom or Saved By the Bell. 

We've all met people who think they're "way out there" but who are so dull and ordinary it's almost criminal.  But they need you to play along, which you do if you have to for the sake of convenience.  I'm talking about the kinds of people who are always saying "Well, you know me... I'm way out there!" before revealing something like: "I could just eat ice cream all day!"  They preface every statement with a warning that whatever banality they're about to utter is going to be so wacky, so zany, so totally off-the-wall, you almost feel obligated to oblige them with some sitcommy response.

Some people just don't do reality, and more power to 'em.  But heaven help you if you ever try to have an actual conversation with them, because as horrifying as it is, there doesn't seem to be an actual person in there to talk to.  There may be a cartoon that wants to be real, but scratch the surface and you find Scooby Doo.  I'm not sure if it's a problem of socialization, acculturation, or what, but the least people like that can do is not be so demanding that others stick to their shitty sitcom script.  Barring that, please feel free to write me out of it. 

Because it's time for my own spin-off.  Time for my "Joey". 

But I didn't want to be too hasty making my next move, either. I looked at places with anywhere from one to four roommates, with anywhere from two cats to three dogs, in neighborhoods that ranged from mild to wild.  All the rooms I saw were small, of course, with rent ranging from $550 to $800 plus utilities (and in one case biweekly maid service). 

Most of them were fine, but the timing was off.  Because I'm doing tenant-at-will at the Orphanage I couldn't just find a place and move in the next week.  I needed as close to a month in lead-time as I could get to give notice and avoid paying rent at both places for an overlapping month.  It's kind of a weird space-time, worm-holey thing, but trust me, I only had a small window of opportunity to get out of this place and into a new place without throwing away a month's rent somewhere.

The "interviews" were interesting.  Some of them were easy — with an immediate rapport — while others were slightly more like interrogations.  Since all of this was from craigslist ads, I can understand a certain degree of caution, but when you've been chatting amiably with someone for an hour and a half, which was the case the other day, and the last question they ask you is if you've ever been incarcerated, it shakes your faith in your polished presentation a little.  I mean, I could have said something really weird, but I didn't.  At least I didn't think I did.  Maybe something zany, but cut me some slack.  I just came from Saved By the Bell. 

I think you can usually trust your instincts.  I knew I wasn't going to like a couple of the inmates at the Orphanage right off the bat, but you take the good with the bad and just hope you don't get shanked. 

The last apartment I saw, the one I just signed for, was far and away the best of the bunch.  In a brownstone on the Fenway.  Huge, airy rooms with impossibly high ceilings.  A real cook's kitchen. Two working fire places.  A balcony.  An actual bathtub.  A park across the street.  My garden five minutes from my front door.  Museums and Symphony Hall a ten-minute walk away.  And on and on and on.

My room is a monk's cell, with a little window at the very end, high up on the wall, but the common space totally makes up for it.  I'll be sharing the place with one other bloke and a golden retriever. 

But before I get to all that, there was a process.  I met my potential roommate, let's call him Jake, at a little cafe around the corner from my school, where they know me.  I felt like that'd be a point in my favor, even though he was the one who suggested meeting there. I mean if people know your name, and they're not screaming it in terror as they run from you — I'm thinking Godzilla here — then it's probably a good thing, or at least not a bad thing.

I got there on time, about ten minutes before he arrived, and got a bowl of homemade butternut squash soup and a chai latte, because I think it's always a bad move to meet someone for the first time when you're all caffed up. Because that's when you really start babbling scary shit.  Get a double espresso in you, and it's like you're speaking in tongues.

He was very much as expected.  Sporty and confident.  The kid with the cute girlfriend and the golden retriever, excited to teach elementary school.  The kind of guy you could totally see at SeanCody.com in his "first threeway with Trevor and Trent".  You know: clean-cut, all-American kid.  Nice.

We talked a little about the place, about ourselves.  It wasn't like pulling teeth.  We seemed to see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.  I was a still working on my squash soup, and asked him if he'd tried it here before.

"Soup has got to be my favorite food!" he gushed. 

He seemed really into it.  I thought, wow!  I'm in!  And I was off.  I mean, I can talk about soup for hours!

"When I lived in Hungary," I told him, "we had it all year round.  They have cold fruit soups in the summertime."

His reaction was visceral.  He sat back and gave me a look.   

"No," he said, emphatically.  "I think of soup as something that warms you up inside."

There was an awkward silence. 

I'll admit I was at a loss.  It seemed a little strident.  If he had simply said he only liked hot soup, or couldn't imagine cold soup, but he seemed to be questioning the very existence of it. 

Thanks to the calming effect of my chai latte, I did not burst out in tongues (or in pidgin Hungarian — which is essentially the same thing), but wagered even he wouldn't be able to resist my Hungarian cold peach soup.

But, hmm, do I have some kind of soup nazi on my hands here?  Well, even if so, no problem: Seinfeld I can do. It's infinitely better than Saved By The Bell, that's for sure.