Another love story
7 years later, @ Burning Man
Looking for an apartment in San Francisco is tough. It’s tougher when you are a lanky brown guy with a funny accent and no credit history.
For two weeks I had been living at a cheap hostel that turned out to be very different from the photos on their website. Its hallways were filled with an icky odor, vagrant souls, and broke European backpackers. Loud parties and shouting matches were abundant. A dreadlocked middle-aged man in foul-smelling woolen garb claimed he was the chef, constantly insisting I sign up for the communal meal plan. Oh, and someone broke into my car smashing the rear window! So I was eager to find a decent place to live.
I had already declined an option in the Fillmore. My would-have-been roommates were college-dropouts and proud potheads. That didn’t bother me so much. Then I went to see the place, and someone was shot dead on the same block that same day! I had reasonable survival interest.
Then I said no to two attractive girls who wanted to share a townhouse up in Buena Vista. I’d like to say that I feared the threesomes that would have ensued. But really, I wasn’t sure if I was cool enough to room with a DJ and a fashionista, both of whom I was falling in love with.
After all this, I arrived at my latest Craigslist find. A converted attic in a townhouse in up-and-coming Nopa. I knocked on the door and there he was: Ben.
The first thing I noticed was his good posture. Having just graduated in computer science, I wasn’t used to people with good posture. In fact it took me an year of living with Ben to realize that he was actually shorter than me. He walked with his chest up and always wore a confident smile. “Come on in! How are you?”
The second thing that caught my eye was a book on the coffee table next to the doorway. I burst out, “Catch-22, that is my favorite novel!”. To this day Ben claims that he set up the book intentionally as a litmus test, which I passed with flying colors. For all I knew though, I was just was thrilled to get a break from pretending to know how to small-talk.
A new graduate like me, Ben seemed to know what he was doing from the get-go. He had curly dark hair, a spring to his step, and impressive biceps from hours of pumping iron at the college gym. He took me around the house while we talked about the joys of graduating, having real money, people bizarrely trusting us with jobs, and girls.
The last stop of the tour was my would-be bedroom, at the narrow rear end of the attic. The room was tiny, barely larger than my coffin-sized college dorm room. One look and I declared “I’ll take it!”
To my surprise, Ben agreed. He picked me over an overly enthusiastic Apple engineer and a big-breasted brunette from Texas who he was very much interested in. I was pleased.
After some lease-signing details, I was ready to move in. At the time I had no idea of everything that was to come. I didn’t know that I was going to get shit-faced with Ben and throw up all over our house that very night. Or that Ben was going to become my partner in crime, my partner in business, and my life-long best friend.
I was just glad to be done with the hostel. That dreadlocked chef with the dirty fingernails couldn’t even cook.