Tuesday, 09 September 2003 | Rent

I buy one semi-decent used car per month, or at least that's what I spend to live by myself in Brooklyn, New York, in an apartment and neighborhood that I like. Unfortunately, my landlord(s) want me to purchase one really nice used car per month, something I suppose I could manage, assuming I eat cereal for dinner every night and spend my Friday nights drinking store-bought beverages and listening to the music of the ice cream truck in the street float up to my window.

Tomorrow morning I'm supposed to meet with my landlords, so that we can reach an agreement as to what my commitment is and how much it's worth to both of us. Or. Tomorrow morning I must convince my landlords that, each month, my apartment is really only worth one dented discolored car with radiator problems and no fifth gear. (Though I'm terrible at bargaining.)

Being on the market again is something like what I'm told of online dating—it's trying to access something 3-dimensional and complex that's flatly described in a pair of exaggerated sentences. Once you meet it, you discover the details that were left out, the flaws that will be difficult to ignore: no closet space?

I just want to curl up in the comfort of the place that's been mine for almost a year now, the one I had to win from a sleazy broker, the one whose superintendent broke my mail box, the one that squirts small rodents out of impossibly small holes in the floor, the one that has a constant Puerto Rican party raging on a street that's being slowly gentrified, one Converse-wearing twenty-something at a time. I knew that I liked my place, but I didn't realize to what extent, until I thought I might have to give it up. And one year isn't long enough to forget what a pain in the ass moving is.