Everyone has experienced an odd living situation, right? Whether it was sharing a room with a friend when you were first thrown out into the real world to save money, or an odd dorm experience in college, we have all been there. I may have you all beat on this one though…
A few years back, my little sister Grace and I lived in a house in Boston with my best friend, Alicia, and her boyfriend, Ryan. When our landlady suddenly sprung upon us that she was selling the house, we had to find a place to move sooner rather than later, like our normal plans were. Grace was planning on moving to the North End in a few months with her college friends, Ryan and Alicia already had plans to move to Maine and I was planning on moving back to LA, but not right away. So, we all hoped that the house wouldn’t sell right away, buying us that time we needed to perfectly overlap our next living situations. But of course, the house sold faster than the newest Taylor Swift album, which meant we were screwed. Alicia and Ryan packed up and moved to Maine and Grace and I were left scratching our heads looking for a cheap, temporary solution.
We both had solid plans to move in about a month and a half so we couldn’t do anything permanent and living in a hotel was way too expensive. We got very creative with our ideas, thought about crashing on our friend’s couches, contemplated creating a “bed” under our desks at work (George Costanza style) and even tried to convince our parents to let us sleep in their RV at a national park close to Boston. We even weighed the option of moving back home to Maine and commuting to Boston every day! One by one these ideas seemed to get more and more ridiculous and no one seemed to want to take us in for a one and a half month temporary lease. Just when we thought we were totally screwed and on the verge of being homeless, we got a call from a girl in Allston (college student central) named Patricia who called me “home girl” and said she may be able to help. I loved her already!
She was occupying one bedroom of a three bedroom apartment at the time, while the college guys that lived there were home for the summer. Patricia just bought a condo and wanted to move out sooner, but since the guys weren’t coming back to their apartment until early September, she needed someone to sublet the bedroom she was subletting for a little over a month. Perfect! Well, I thought it was perfect…Grace, not so much (I think she still resents me for this decision). But she had no other choice and she wouldn’t be alone, so she couldn’t really pass it up, right? In theory, this subleasing of a sublease sounded ideal (considering it was only $200 each), but there were a few issues….
The guys who lived there kept all their stuff there while they were home for the summer, including the stripper pole in the living room and the rotting food in the fridge. They weren’t the cleanest frat boys in the world so we literally sat on towels on the couch (they didn’t have cable so we watched movies on our laptops) and found slices of moldy limes in between the couch cushions almost daily. Another issue? Since we were sharing a room, we were also sharing a bed every night…of course we slept in sleeping bags on top of the bed, which forced me to think I was having a slumber party every night with my kid sister. The best part? We were A.) convinced that there was a hidden web cam somewhere, and B.) were given fair warning by Patricia that the guys may come back a few days earlier than we expected. So Grace and I were constantly aware of every noise in the house and anytime we got home from work, we nervously crept up the stairs with a big, “HELLO?” Looking back, it makes me appreciate any living situation that I have been in since. I told Grace that we would laugh about it one day and as I chuckle to myself thinking about it, I still don’t think she has laughed yet….
