David Davis
an interlude on living together
This weekend, my boyfriend helped me move into my girlfriend’s apartment. I’ve lived with partners before, but swore it off after last time, when I shared a cozy one-bedroom with someone who did not like me—and made sure I knew it—for two years.
“It’s because you didn’t have a room of one’s own,” joked Liz, with whom I’ve lived as lover and roommate in a few different permutations over the years. Liz probably invoked Woolf because we talked about her when she and I met in college. Along with Angela Davis’ autobiography, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America, A Room of One’s Own awakened real thinking for me, giving me words and concepts—like patriarchy, white supremacy, and class struggle—to express the political scaffolding of the world I lived in, ultimately shaping how I understood myself as an adult. I became a feminist shortly before meeting Liz, and a dyke shortly after. Classic stuff.
While I no longer strictly identify with feminism or dykery, their afterlives have led me here: to a shared apartment in Brooklyn with Jade, her cat, and a few other gay people. Although I now claim to think it was inevitable, both of us spent the majority of our almost-five years together declaring that we would never do this—live together—because Jade, too, has a dirtbag haunting her misspent youth.
Despite our well-earned distrust of heterosexist notions of family-building, I think Jade and I are handling all this pretty well. We talked about it a lot beforehand: our fears and anxieties, our preferences and hopes, and what the exit strategy would be if we couldn’t make it work. We both certainly stand to gain from this arrangement: less time and effort spent traveling back and forth; cheaper rent (this one’s for me); more manageable distribution of housework (this one’s for Jade, since I work from home); more socialization for her cat, Marcus, whose agita manifests in very annoying early-morning wailing; and more time together in an increasingly fearsome world.
But for all the advantages moving in together presented, I was hung up on the sacrifices it would require, particularly the ones having to do with my privacy, freedom, and various fantasies of independence. Without a mile between us, how would Jade and I negotiate visits from my boyfriend, Nes? Would I feel resentful if I couldn’t host trade whenever I wanted? What if I lost my mind because I couldn’t be completely alone literally whenever I wanted, as I could when I lived by myself?
Notice that these sacrifices only belong to me. I was well aware that Jade would have apprehensions of her own about moving in together, but they didn’t feel real until she laid them out. She isn’t dating someone else currently, but what if she eventually does—would I cramp her style? Would she feel smothered by having someone living and working in her apartment? With me in the adjoining room, when would she have the chance to let her hair down and be a “goblin” ?1 Learning how and why Jade felt protective of her space made me feel less protective of mine. I don’t think I’m a perfect roommate, but I do sometimes forget that not everyone—especially my best friend—is out to get me.
The true tests of this experiment won’t come right away, I don’t think, but it’s safe to say so far, so good. I feel lucky that Jade wants to live with me. Every time I feel vulnerable here, in someone else’s home, I remind myself that it’s just as vulnerable, maybe more so, to invite someone in. I’m not sure I could have done it.
I think Jade likes it, too. Over the past few days, she’s been saying stuff like, “Wow, I can’t believe you really live here!” and, “I should book a session with my old therapist just to tell her.” It’s nice when surprises are pleasant. Sometimes, in the pleasantness, we find that they weren’t even surprises to begin with.
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As far as I can tell, this means eating a snack in bed with a t-shirt on, which Jade and I do together most nights, anyway.