Life is full of changes. Changes are full of new challenges. And when my grandmother makes crepes, they’re usually full of ricotta cheese. But my grandmother doesn’t really know what a crepe is. Thankfully, she still knows what a chocolate chip cookie is. All of this is important because it was with a box of my grandmother’s cookies that I began the next step in my life: apartment living.
Goodbye dorms. Goodbye communal bathrooms and the funny feeling that someone on your hall is using your toothbrush when you’re not looking. Goodbye shower shoes and that sense of dread that when you come out of the shower in your towel, the janitor will be undressing you with his eyes.
Throughout my Wesleyan career, I have been in search of a normal housing situation. My freshman year was spent sharing a room with a libertarian with a diet consisting solely of raw imitation crab meat and a tendency to become aroused by conservative literature. In the fall of my sophomore year, I lived between an undersexed RA who got some sort of gratification by giving me frontal wedgies before he went to bed every night and an over-sexed dance major. I spent my spring in Scotland with Anatoliy Nikolaevich Kurmanaev, a Russian fashion model who attributed his last two break-ups to his high standards of vaginal hygiene.
Coming into this year, I needed someplace nice and quiet, where I could accidentally fall asleep on the toilet at 3 a.m. without being judged. Somewhere I could finally call home without feeling weird. For all practical purposes, I finally got what I wanted. My roommate is absolutely lovely, my hall is quiet and for the first time in my life there isn’t a garbage truck making sure I’m up by 6 in the morning.
The only problem is that my apartment is trying to kill me.
This is that whole “change is full of challenges” thing I was talking about earlier. Normally, moving into an apartment, one expects these challenges to be rather simple inconveniences or something of the like. No one actually expects their apartment to put the fear of God into them. I shouldn’t have to wear a snorkel when washing the dishes or religiously cover my genitals when operating the microwave.
This sudden fear of my apartment stems mostly from the oven. It’s an old oven and in my experience, old things come in two types: Benign and Evil. Benign old things are like your grandfather; they’re simple, practical, and smell faintly of Ben-Gay. Evil old things resemble an old homeless man who, drunk on cheap cider at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, thinks it is a good idea to sneak up behind you and kick you in the head because he claims your mother has frequent immoral sexual liaisons. (If you’ve never met an old man like this, spend a day in a public park in Edinburgh and you’ll know what I’m talking about.)
I’ll admit I was initially charmed by my stove’s buttons and lights, naively believing I’d been blessed with a Benign Stove. I quickly learned differently. Shortly after moving in, I discovered the stove was unplugged. I pulled the stove a few inches away from the wall and lying on top of the counter, feet dangling in air, I managed to seize the plug and stick it in the socket.
What I neglected to notice were the exposed wires on the plug.
Once the shaking subsided and I no longer felt it necessary to lay in the fetal position, I realized I had an Evil Stove. I give the thing a wide berth these days. This was only the beginning though; the apartment is slowly turning against me. My bathtub is surprisingly slippery and the water temperature of the shower seems to fluctuate solely to trick me into scalding myself. The drawers like to close on my fingers and the cabinets like to swing into my forehead. I don’t know what I did to offend the apartment gods, but I’d better apologize soon.
But maybe I’m making this sound worse than it actually is. In fact, I’m sure I am. I’m a whiner; it’s what I do. I genuinely love my apartment, even if I run the risk of a rice pudding-related accident. In fact, just the other day I had an epiphany. It was late and I was hungry. As I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, I could hear amorous sounds coming from my roommate’s bedroom. As I sat there in the dark, spoon in hand, I wondered: Do you think they can hear me eating cereal?
And that, my friends, is what it feels like to have a home.
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