Home sweet home

Did I tell you? Abby and I found our own place – a three-bedroom in East Boston for only $625. I don't know how we convince this guy that even though neither of us has a discernible job, we’re reliable enough for a one-year lease — or, okay, I do know — we just pretend that Abby is still working at Glad Day and make sure Sean answers the phone to vouch for her. And then, of course, there's my highly successful freelance graphic design career. Too bad I can hardly get QuarkXPress to do anything more than white letters on a black background, but of course our new landlord doesn't need to know the details, right?

            Truthfully, I think you just liked us and wanted to give us the place. He said he was just like us at our age, and I didn't even realize this guy was gay until he said that. Kind of scared me to think of how someone kind of like us could become a middle-aged realtor with swept-back hair and a lumberjack body living on old money row on Commonwealth, but anyway we got the place and it's gorgeous. It's the ground floor in a really old building on the side of the hill and all the floors kind of slant diagonally.

I take the master bedroom with a whole wall of closets, and Abby chooses the super-skinny room at the front because it's darker, so she gets the hallway closet too, and then we have a whole extra room for my desk and books and boxes and Abby's makeup table. I guess it's my makeup table, I mean it goes with the dresser set, got it in Providence before long I left for $55, can you believe that? It's got orange drawers with a white countertop, and yes we have office carpet in the bedrooms but there’s lovely black-and-white checkered linoleum in the kitchen and dining room, and even a living room up front with hardwood floors. Although that room is completely empty at the moment, waiting for, waiting for — something. For now we keep the shutters shut, but they only cover the bottom part of the windows so the light still comes in

            Did I tell you about the little rubber plant I got at Home Depot when I was getting spray paint for the radiator? Yes, I've decided not to paint my bedroom this time since the off-white isn't so awful, but I'm going to paint the radiator fluorescent pink and silver. But the plant — I put it on the kitchen counter, and already I feel excited like we've moved in. I mean we moved in a month ago, but I can finally feel it.

            And yes, in the dining room that is a table from Au Bon Pain. Honey, I’ve bought plenty of salads at Urban Pain to deserve a nice black metal patio table, right? Sure, it was a bit tricky to get in the car, especially driving through the tunnel at 3 am with the trunk open, but honey it was worth it. So worth it that we went right back and grabbed two chairs – figured we better do it right away, because my car is making some scraping sound on the asphalt now so I don't think it's going to last much longer, and it's not like we were going to take those chairs on the T, right?