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copyright ©1999-2003 |
About the second week, it
began to smell like there was a small rodent slowly rotting away in the
bathroom. I quickly learned
to control my gag reflex, but it took me longer to figure out that
hinting indirectly about the bathroom’s stench didn’t motivate
anyone to clean it. I’d spent too many years in the female bubble and was
having trouble figuring out the new system.
When I lived in a houseful of
girls, if someone left their dishes sitting out for too long, we would
do them ourselves and hold a grudge.
If we were mad, we’d say something like, “I can’t believe
there are crumbs all over the counter already, I just cleaned the
kitchen an hour ago.” Usually the comment was directed to the wall and
accompanied by a scowl and violent sweeping at the morsels with a
sponge. Rarely did your
roommate miss the not-so-subtle hint.
After the fact, we’d spend hours listening to each other
complain about the roommate who was eating all of the peanut butter or
never helped take out the recycling. I spent my entire life in a
female bubble and dealing with the complexities of it all was second
nature. But now it was time
to deprogram. My next lesson involved food.
If there was something in the fridge that I wanted, I had to eat it.
It was a mistake to expect that it would still be there later.
The word “leftovers” did not exist in my roommates’
vocabulary. We ate
everything in one sitting or it was not considered a meal.
For fun we cooked and ate,
read, drank beer, went camping, played Frisbee and picked up on girls.
If girls came over to the apartment, no one freaked out about it.
Except me. There was
never any squealing, gossiping or overanalyzing, unless I was the one
doing it. Before long, we all worked
together like a makeshift family. If
it was your turn to clean the bathroom or do the dishes, you did it.
If you slacked, someone called you on it without worrying that
you would be offended or complain behind their backs later.
You knew at all times what people were thinking about you, if
they were thinking about you at all.
Silence was perfectly okay and did not mean that anyone was
secretly mad at anyone else.
Best of all, there were no confusing dirty looks or catty
remarks; it was just three months of simple, refreshing honesty. Boys were no mystery after all.
Just a few months ago, I moved
into another house full of girls. There
are no smells to report yet, and I have already learned how to tune out
the hiss of the hairdryer in the morning. For fun, we go on hikes, read, drink wine, giggle and chat.
When my roommates take off, they leave colorful notes with smiley faces
telling us where they have gone. If
we go out, we usually spend some time putting on a little make-up and
snatching clothes from each other’s closets.
I’m back in my old sphere
only now, if someone’s crumbs really bother me, I tell them so.
My whole life in a female bubble and it took me three months
living in a house full of guys to discover that girls have cooties too;
they’re just really damn good at hiding them.
o ---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home. |
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