Air Mattress Energy
Six months ago, my sister and I got priced out of our apartment, and I moved into my friend Hayley’s place in Brooklyn. We were working at the same store at the time, and she’d heard I was looking for a new spot. She told me I could stay in her roommate’s bedroom for a couple months while her roommate was gone for the summer. It would give me some time to look for a more permanent situation. Two weeks before I moved out of her apartment, Hayley and I started dating. Now, after staying at my buddy’s place for the last four months, I’m splitting an apartment with my sister again.
So I was excited to give my girlfriend, who months ago was just a coworker, the tour of my new place over FaceTime. I’d never been excited to give a FaceTime tour of anything. I don’t think she was into it either. But I was.
I think this came from a place of, “Hey, person I love! I know this apartment isn’t as nice as yours, but check it out! I’m totally capable of renting my own place! Sure, if a coworker I have a crush on offers to let me crash at her apartment for a couple months, hell yeah, I’ll do that. Not because I’m desperate, though. I’ve got my own shit going on, too. Look, here’s my room. What do you think? Notice how it’s not my buddy’s living room, but rather a bedroom that belongs to me. And if you look closely, you can see that the bed is in fact a real bed, not an air mattress. So yeah, just wanted to point that out. Real bedroom, not a living room floor. Anyway, here’s the kitchen!”
When I first moved in with Hayley, she was only working at the store on the weekends while she got her own business going. Occasionally we’d both have a day off, and we’d drink coffee in her living room and talk. One day we played war, the card game. We talked about hands. She has a book about all the different kind of hands that people have and what your hands say about your personality. I don’t think I believe in any of it. It’s fun, though. We laughed a lot that day. I remember it was beautiful outside. We were sitting right next to the big windows in her living room. We drank a lot of coffee.
I think that day basically sums up why I was stoked to show Hayley the new place. Yeah, it’s not as nice. It doesn’t have the big windows. We just moved in, and I’m lazy, so the bed’s not on the frame yet. It’s just sitting there. It’s a bed with air mattress energy. Give me a few more days. The room will eventually look way better, I promise. Honestly, when I’ve got some coffee in me, I’m pretty proud of it. Coffee does that. Makes you proud of shit you maybe shouldn’t be proud of. Whatever, who cares? Hayley’s gonna come see it tomorrow.