living

moving in, moving out, you're a big boy now (1966)

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We hugged in an IKEA showroom six hours before I was due at the airport. I’m scared, I said. We laughed into each other’s necks. We were deathly hungover, on slightly steadier footing after gravy-soaked turkey sandwiches at a Brooklyn diner. Still, I felt certain that one horsey whiff of a Swedish meatball would put me over the edge. The staged furniture gently vibrated. A man sat with a computer on his lap and a work call in his ears. He was sitting in a chair in a room full of chairs. Six friends surrounded a kitchen island, chatting. There were empty wine glasses in front of them, which were never full. Everything had a price tag. Playing house in the Scandinavian superstore. A dream world, just as strange as my reality.

I would be out of the country for a week. When I returned home, I would find baggage, boxes, a set of four new IKEA glasses, and a man I had been dating for three months. My new roommate. Roman. My first love, late spring. Five years together, two years apart, on a fledgling journey of rekindled devotion. Getting back together was never inevitable. Those years apart were neither a mistake nor an intermission. We were growing up to save ourselves, not each other. We saw other people. We became true friends who would always view the other as one of the best people in the world. We cultivated the space of talking every week, not every day.

The day after Christmas. We startled each other by confessing dreams of reviving our romance. Truth was, no one had ever loved us the way we loved each other. In the new year, we chose to embark on a relationship that was at once intensely familiar but necessarily new. We never deluded ourselves that our story could be casual. It’s Roman and Charlotte. We are the major leagues. The day we got back together, he was my boyfriend and I was his girl.

We’re older now. We’re fools in love. We’re scared. I’m scared of losing my freedom. He’s scared of losing his space. These are parallel fears, but not the same. Before we broke up the first time, we were cats in a castle, passing each other occasionally. Licking our wounds in secret. This time, we are making a promise to abandon our precious privacy and lead lives that are truly intertwined. We decided it was time to brave cohabitation for the first time.

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I’ve always thought that to live with a lover endangers the stability and sexiness of any relationship. It threatens a companionship to the point of repulsion. It complicates the Rilkean pillar of cultivating two solitudes that protect, border, and greet each other.¹ You inevitably see too much. Please, hurry, leave me, I can’t breathe.²

Roman recently asked a friend if her live-in partner ever gives her the ick. Her response was immediate and chillingly detailed. Before getting into bed each night, he rubs his feet together like a raccoon to brush off any crumbs or other detritus.

Roman and I fear the ways we will inevitably disgust each other. We are people. People stink and snore. They bleed from the nose (him) and eat microwave nachos before bed (her). We don’t want to move to the suburbs and let our love become unremarkable.

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You’re a Big Boy Now (1966)

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For now, Roman and I have been living in my apartment. My introduction to New York, the first abode paid for with my own money. My home since I was 22. The residence that has become me, personified.

The week he moved in, we watched Francis Ford Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now. In it, a young, nerdy Bernard leaves his parents’ overbearing Long Island nest to brave the thrills of Manhattan. He becomes enchanted with Barbara Darling, an eccentric, narcissistic older woman who acts as a crooked mother and hot-and-cold lover. After their first night together, she invites him to move in. He eagerly arrives with his possessions overflowing in his arms, hanging up a painting on her wall and propping up a photograph of his mother. Moments later, she screams:

Get this junk the hell out of here. What do you think you’re doing? Moving in? What do I need a klutz like you moving in here for? You dumb cunt. Now I don’t want to see you hanging around, or bothering me, following me around places. You understand?

Bernard scampers back to the street. From her balcony, she coos for him to come back.

You’re all Barbara has in this cold, cold world. Barbara needs you. Baby, don’t leave me now.

He slowly, shamefully drags his feet back into her arms.

In truth, Barbara does not need Bernard. Her home is complete without him, full to the brim with her clothing, artwork, doo-dads, and history.

It looks a lot like mine. Through three roommates and four years, I’ve been the dominating aesthetic force. When my other roommates added their contributions to the common space, I always viewed it as a discontented compromise. A rug that I found tacky. A painting that I thought too large. I disliked having other people’s towels in my bathroom, other people’s boyfriends on my couch, other people’s smells in my kitchen.

I need to learn to share. I’ve been delighted to discover that I have found Roman’s taste to be additive, and his presence to be a comfort and joy. Still, I know we need a fresh start. Roman deserves to live in a place where he will not be a tourist, but a co-founder.

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These changes in my life are unspeakably good. To avoid getting too sentimental, I try to remember the ways my apartment has betrayed me.

That first soupy summer, without air conditioning, when I sweated my nights into my mattress. Things falling off the walls, broken glass. When my roommate kicked the garbage can and a mouse sprang out. More errant water bugs than I’d like to count, extinguished with pots and pans and primal screams. The cockroach that bit my leg while I was meditating. The broken oven and the four-story, four-block schlep to the laundromat. The sounds of the East Village waking me up at all hours. Drunken students, brawling boys, a recurring character who wailed like she was dying. The enormous purpleyellowandteal Run-DMC mural visible directly from every window. The time I was drenched with dirty water spewing from the bathroom ceiling.

Oh, but I’m still allowed to mourn. It was mostly great. Candlelit parties. Best friendships forged through tiny martinis and the promise to kiss-or-be-killed. Stoopside conversations with my landlord, a chainsmoking Italian named Flavia. Quiet mornings at my book or my journal. All my little words. Midday baking adventures. Constant renovations. A complete home, built from a collection of little scraps. Something where there was once nothing. In a month, the walls will fade to white. To dust it shall return, becoming the repository of someone else’s history.

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Our new home will be beautiful, too. Change is good. We are holding close and letting go.³ He is the oak and I am the cypress; we grow not in each other’s shadow.⁴ We are living with each other, not for each other. We are living.

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Farewell, 198

1. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.

2. What’s an Insecure Tea post without a Mitski shout? First Love/Late Spring.

3. Another nod to Rilke’s Letters.

4. In reference to The Prophet by Khalil Gibran.