So, I’m moving. I don’t want to talk specifics, because there’s still a chance my future apartment could fall through up until Friday afternoon at 3, and I’m allowed to be superstitious when it suits me. But the point is that I told my landlord I’m moving out, and she’s already showing the place to other people, so whether the new place happens or not, I won’t be living in my current apartment come December 1st.
I could be living in a storage unit. Or in your apartment! Luckyyyyyyyyyyy.
My decision to move came about pretty weirdly and accidentally. One of my co-workers was interested in buying a place but was constantly out of town to visit clients, so another friend and I went to see a fancypants condo for him. And then I went to see another fancypants condo with him just for fun. He wanted a roommate to take his second bedroom, and it was assumed that another of our co-workers would move in with him, but then that guy decided he didn’t want to be tied to a lease, and I found myself casually mentioning that I was interested.
With NYC condos and banks and lawyers being what they are, it was unclear for a couple of months whether or not he’d actually get the place, but I started informally packing some things up just in case. I questioned my friends about proper techniques in breaking the news to my current roommate, and they seemed to think that living for four years with a boy you’re not dating is freaky and that he should take the news like an adult even if I did it by peeing a note on his bed. But, you know, finding an apartment in NYC is way more annoying than finding an apartment anywhere else, so I felt bad about leaving him to fend for himself, even with 30 days notice. Especially since he’d been quietly living with his parents in Queens before I convinced him to move out and shack up with me lest I have to move in with a stranger when my college boyfriend moved back to Ohio.
In the end, I went to Ohio myself at the end of October and wanted to make sure to give him that 30 days, so I took the coward’s way out and wrote him an e-mail. (I’m rarely home, and he never responds to calls or texts, so I wanted to make sure he got the message.) He wrote back very civilly and said he’d decide by the 31st if he was going to stay or go himself.
In a perfect world, he would’ve stayed. Even at $1800 per month, we have a deal on our 2-bedroom, 900-square-foot apartment, and it would’ve been totally easy for him to find someone to take my place. Our neighborhood is arguably the trendiest in NYC, so people pay crazy prices for apartments that don’t have necessary things like living rooms. We have a living room, a kitchen that fits a 10-person dining table, and bedrooms that aren’t the exact same size as our beds. Plus, then I could leave my unwanted stuff behind and not worry about having to paint over the navy-blue-with-gold-trim paint in our kitchen.
But he texted me on the 30th and said, “Let’s get out of this dump.” So I started coming home to pack and have probably spent more time with him in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. He, of course, has packed absolutely nothing and still has no idea where he’s going to live. One night I asked him, “Are you sad to be leaving this place?”, and he said, “Actually, I am.”
Which is funny, because he’s been complaining about our apartment SINCE THE DAY WE MOVED IN. It doesn’t have enough windows in the living room, his bedroom isn’t perfectly square, he wishes we lived in Greenpoint instead, the restaurant across the street has bulletholes in the window, our own kitchen has a bullethole in it. NO BIG DEAL, right?
The moral of the story is: I’m a dreamboat of a roommate and have great taste in apartments, so quit pretending like you wanna move out.
