Tuesday, 08 November 2005 | Pet cemetery

The first place we looked at was close to perfect. We didn't know that of course, because it was the first, but we both had a good feeling about it. It was enormous and old, on a street lined with brownstones, and near trains/friends/park/shops/nighttime. My initial reservations about it seem so dumb now: what will we do with all that space? the block is kind of quiet. the bathtub is an ugly color. it seems kind of adult to have a laundry room.

We did apply for it, and just as we were learning to fully appreciate it, we were passed over due to some last-minute broker/landlord politics. By that time I'd become so optimistic about the place that I'd already considered how to give directions to our housewarming party.

Weeks later, after inspecting a string of shrug-inspiring alternatives, we gave a broker $500 as a down payment on an apartment that had a pet cemetery in the backyard. (It also had a lone carousel horse propped up against the fence and a large disco ball tied to a tree.) The pet cemetery didn't even make my list of cons.

To be fair, the inside was almost exactly what we were looking for, and the landlord clearly loved his property. Also, his attachment to his many young dead pets is kind of endearing, I guess. Anyway, we were seduced by his intensity and developed an immediate crush on the apartment's built-in shelves and bay windows, momentarily forgetting that neither of us actually likes the location.

Our doubts cropped up in the form of uncertain questions to each other as soon as we walked out of the broker's office. Within five blocks of his place, our desperation for the apartment was replaced with secret dreams of self-defeat, which was the only way we could hope to get our $500 deposit back. (by the way, we did it. we lost!)

Every apartment we've seen since then has been attractive in some way but always lacks something important, like charm, or a nearby subway stop, or closets, and we find ourselves trying to talk ourselves into a place by making weird concessions. Each time it goes roughly the same way: I take photos of every corner, we verbally arrange furniture and discuss pros and cons, and we ultimately decide to hold out for the apartment that needs no discussion, and rather just announces itself.