strike that

housies

I have two housemates. We are all right now, at one thirty-six on this fine Saturday night, sitting in our respective rooms in front of our respective computers. Earlier the house was empty. But now Brad is working on a paper and Jamey is watching Sex in the City and I am blogging. Which is about as telling as any single moment in our house could be.

There are other moments. For example: Brad cooks a giant skillet of fried rice for the week, and Jenn, lured by the smell of browning onions, appears just in time to snag a plateful before it is stored. Or: Jamey wakes up early on a Sunday morning and takes the whole blue-bagged New York Times, Sunday magazine and all, to the Red & Black Café.

I love my housemates. I don’t tell them this, because Jamey grew up with all brothers and he misreads the intentions of just about anything spoken by a woman. And Brad is a business student. But I think they are marvelous. I love Jamey’s stories and Brad’s quirky humor and the music that floats out of their rooms, and their boy bathroom products. I love the ease of how we share space, where the fridge gets cleaned and the floors get Swiffered and the recycling gets sorted, and we’ve never once had to talk about it, who should do what and how often. We each do the things we like, and sooner or later we do the things we don’t like. We all seem equally tolerant of when it’s later.

Brad moved here from Seattle for business school, and he mountain bikes, and he’s a mystery. Because he reads bulky textbooks on economic theory but then he recognizes Nina Simone on the third note. He doesn’t volunteer much. My understanding of Brad is mostly conjecture. Whereas my understanding of Jamey comes from what he tells me, in long animated riffs, on the porch or in the kitchen. Not from the actual words, though, because he’s too smart and neurotic to let those go uncrafted. More just from the crafting.

Things appear daily in our house that are meant for sharing – furniture and bowls of candy and issues of the Economist – and each gives me a very particular feeling of fortune. It’s the same when I come home and the front door is unlocked, or when I have news and someone’s at the table. The world is less scary for this constant reminder of the good people in it, and it’s the way I wish, in my liberal heart of hearts, that the whole thing worked: I made cookies, you bought milk. You shut off all the lights. I know you got home safe.

posted by tortaluga @ 2:34 AM