I recently moved in with two women after living alone for more than a year. Going through the process has made me realize how low my standards are for food and neatness.
When I'm seeing someone it's much easier to set aside time and energy to think about things like what to have for dinner or making sure you have time at the end of the day to relax and not feel stress. I love food and am especially fixated on cooking. I look forward to the nights when I have to grocery shop and have no idea what to buy. Wandering around the aisles thinking about what might be created from everything waiting on the shelves has always been a secret pleasure. Doing it with someone else, or just knowing that improvised planning will be for a fond someone adds to the mischievous allure.
Going out to dinner is its own separate sport. Choosing a kind of food to settle on for the evening is like picking out what kind of clothes to wear in the morning. You can rush through it, or spend an inordinate amount of time trying to conceive the perfect fusion of function and newness. "What do you feel like?" we ask each other.
When I'm on my own, all that thought disappears. Food becomes one of the lowest priorities in my list of daily necessities. The first day in my new place I realized what a dope I looked like sitting down on a Sunday night with a dinner of potato chips and a couple of tomatoes.
When I don't have to think about anyone else, my ability to feed myself is stripped down to pure functionality. When I lived in LA, I went through an extended phase of having canned beans and spaghetti sauce for dinner. Perhaps it’s a sign of gradual sophistication that I've now moved onto canned beans sautéed with onions and dumped onto couscous. This is a slightly more elaborate variation, but it can be prepared mindlessly and repeatedly.
It's ugly though. One of my roommates compared this concoction to pig slop the other night.
My standards for neatness are also remarkably low. I'm more than capable of leaving dishes in the sink for a whole week, and my hamper is usually a Vesuvial overflow of socks and underwear. I've never clocked how long I could go without changing my bed sheets, but I know it's a long time.
My only real defense for this slovenliness is that I work a lot. I work ten hour days, then come home and do more work, writing side projects, pitching stuff, doing research, trying to build a website for my short. I wouldn't be doing any of this, I don't think, if I was seeing somebody. I work so many extra hours because I want to increase my station somehow, to become more than what I am.
That's not an impulse I have as strongly when I'm with someone. I am content. All those pressing needs about career and expansion turn into appreciation for all the small moments in between; an evening spent thinking up something new to do with a mushroom, or sitting together on the couch listening to a record and talking.
These are all joys that could just as easily be enjoyed alone, or with a friend. But I am loath to let myself indulge in them at the end of the day when I am left on my own. I do sometimes, but those times are rare.
When you're young and have no idea what to do, you lean on people for guidance and perspective, a gentle push in the right direction. The older you get the more you realize no one can finally make those choices for you; we all have to become our own essential critics. This the one true mark of a bachelor, a willingness to undergo sloth and filth for the sake of a life lived with a party ball and an interesting CV.
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