Alone at last.

Jake moved out Tuesday night, but came back and cleaned the place (!) Wednesday, which was big of him.  It's a shame he kept his light under a bushel of dog hair for the last six months, but better late than never I always say.  If you can't leave a good first impression, leave a good last one.

The new roomies are moving in tonight.  Which left me one night of bliss. I basically passed out from the sheer excitement of it all by half-past nine, but it was wonderful to be able to pass out anywhere I wanted in any state I chose without another living soul to bear witness.

One of the new roommates — I don't know if it was Chang or Eng — dropped by in the evening, thankfully before I crashed, to pick up the keys, which Jake had left on the counter.  Although she — let's say it was Eng, for the sake of argument — has my number, all the arrangements were, oddly enough, made with Jake, who served as go-between.  I'm wondering if he will continue to be their liaison, or if I can talk to them directly about kicking in for toilet paper.

I think part of the problem is we just got off on the wrong foot. 

The situation, the way it all went down, was predictably aggravating, and points to exactly why I can no longer do the roommate thing.  My postdoc friend, Gabriel, just moved in with a roomie, and discovered they were getting one for the third bedroom from New Jersey.  Some guy the guy who had occupied the room before who Gabriel didn't know had found some other guy nobody knew to take it.  In New Jersey.  Like, at a truck stop or something.

I gather this is normal for studenty types in Boston, who will stuff as many warm bodies as possible in a tiny little Beacon Hill apartment —- it's almost as much fun as those telephone booth stuffing competitions in the '50s...


— It doesn't seem to much matter whose crotch ends up in whose face, does it?  Well, I hope by now y'all know that's not how I roll.  I'm very selective when it comes to crotches.  And I've never just moved in somewhere without having a nice long interview with the prospective crotches in question. 

And frankly, I don't think I'd really want to live with the kind of people who would move in without expressing any interest in who they're sharing a bathroom with, no matter how hard-up for housing I was. 

And I basically told these bitches as much. 

So anyway, Eng dropped by and I happened to be home.  If I hadn't been I'm sure I would have gotten a call from the Jakester.  Although, actually, when we couldn't find the apartment key and Eng tried him on his cell, he didn't pick up.  A minute later when I called he did.  I'm sure he thought I was calling to beg him to come back, the star-crossed lovers that we obviously are.

Turns out when he left the flat he popped the key on the ledge above the door — he must be practicing his standing high jump, because I'm sure that was an impossible height for him.

I retrieved the key for Eng, and was about to send her on her way so that I could do my Risky Business dance when she asked me about the key to her bedroom.  I said I didn't know if there was one.  I wasn't aware that there was.

I didn't really catch the insult until later.  And then I was even more sure I didn't want to live with the kind of people who not only don't care to screen their prospective roommates beforehand, but then also assume the worst of them afterward.  By all means, lock your bedroom door.  It's so much easier to live in terror of your roommate than to take a half an hour before you commit to take the room to chat with him.

And let me tell you, if I were a furniture thief with a fetish for the kind of cheapest, most craptacular, made-in-China Ikea-reject home decor that's stacked in the foyer at the moment, I would be creaming my pants right now in anticipation of the ultimate heist.  But, alas.

Whatever I may have thought of Jake, he had a smashing bedroom set. 

You think I'm being a little judgmental?  Well, I'm not the only one.

I had my laptop out on the dining room table and some stacks of papers I was going through when Eng came by for the key.

"Oh," Eng narrowed her eyes, surveying the scene. 

"You work out here?" she asked crinkling her nose in what I assumed was disapproval.

I said: "yes, sometimes I do come out of my cell."

"Oh," she said, with a little grimace.  "Mmm."

Oh, we are going to have such a grand time!  I had hoped Jake would help me usher out my roommate days, and I suppose with this little coup de grâce, he has.