If you’re looking through a newspaper for either an apartment or a soulmate, chances are you’re not going to find much worthwhile.
I lost a third apartment yesterday to “an earlier application” (though I admit this time I actually believe it) and let another promising lead evaporate today. What’s strange is that as I am more deeply in the market for rentals, I’m finding that the pursuit of a decent apartment and a significant other are fraught with similar pitfalls—problematic conformity, lowered expectations, and of course, dealbreakers.
Unlike the glossy-covered books of listings akin to the trendy bump-and-grind clubs, Craigslist is the neighborhood singles’ bar of rental listings, a casual parade of random availabilities that while skewing away from the primped uniformity of managed properties is not itself immune to them nor does it discriminate against the ugly duds turned away elsewhere—namely, it’s where I’ve been looking most often. Between that and a professional (I’ve been in contact with real estate agents, though not matchmakers), I’m optimistic that by 30 June—a scant month—I’ll have scaled what I didn’t think but am quickly realizing is my preposterously high standard.
Condominium developers like fashion magazines are almost comically misguided in their impressions of what a young, affluent professional (such as myself) appreciates. Substance before style please, and no, having a hot tub doesn’t count.
My personal taste errs towards the eclectic, the urbane, and occasionally a little dangerous, grounded in an understanding of the pulsating collective unconscious of streets and neighborhoods, from which one has learned, of which one has enfolded into their style the manifest affectations of that pedigree. Hardwood floors and exposed brick of Victorian rowhouses and poured concrete of Bauhaus apartments reflect the kind of dignity borne of travels and tragedies which I prefer to the passing confidence that comes from fresh paint or new shoes. Carpet is for suburban girls.
Ethically, moreso than environmental responsibility, I value a sense of economy (and naturally, the former extends from the latter) and compact simplicity. Can we agree that the kitchens of efficiency apartments would be better served by compact bottom-freezer refrigerators than the 18 cubic-foot baseline that Americans observe, that better use of the full-size space with the water hookup below the counter will be made with a ventless washer-dryer than an automatic dishwasher? That closets need not be a meter deep? That lighting that is not itself architectural be recessed?
And while it seems contrary to my aforementioned ethics, I favor flourishes of rococo aesthetics in equal measure (if only for their distinct contrast to functional modernity), and I abhor fluorescent lighting, compact or otherwise—liken it to my preference for a woman who regardless of whether she’s a smoker isn’t above having the occasional cigarette. Sometimes, wrong is beautiful.
I hesitate to choose a residence for its community amenities, I avoid dating women for their social affiliations, and I wish both would stop their respective advertising of such. I crave the challenge of the expectations that come with high ceilings.
Above all things, I desire a sunny outlook—that the lenses and portals through which one glimpses the world passing are trained not on the dumpsters and the detritus of civilization but on trees and sidewalks and public spaces and people making do. That within is not merely warm and well-lit, but that the hottest days seem cooler. I’ll still travel and try to snatch memory from the sky, tucking it away in long-exposure photographs, in the company of someone about whom I could write a novel. But I want the walls where I hang those pictures to not be the cheap eggshell of rental-unit white, the desk where I draft the manuscript to face someplace more inspiring than the construction of ruins in waiting.
Above all, deft aplomb.
For all of my life, I’ve been fortunate to have a roof over my head—this recent stretch reminds me that there are lessons one can only learn when they have nowhere to run when it’s raining.
Add your comments