The 'mating game

Hey, baby, live here often?

By Nina Willdorf

I AM AN adult. All my friends are adults. Many have children. We all have interesting, responsible jobs. We are thoughtful. We buy adult things like furniture and new tires, and we refill the ice-cube tray when it is empty. We send thank-you cards to people who have done something nice for us. We take vacations to exotic locations. We clean up after ourselves when we are visiting our many adult friends. We help them make dinner. We take out the trash. We are adults, and that is how adults behave.

When we adults go home to visit our parents, something inexplicable happens. In the time it takes to drive up the driveway to the family home, we morph into the petulant, ennui-filled, self-centered, uncooperative teenagers we once were. We sulk. We tsk and roll our eyes. We shuffle our feet. We say things like "I'll do it later." We get annoyed if we have to lift our feet when Mom is vacuuming under the couch, and we get positively pissy if she insists on vacuuming the rug between us and the television set.

If I had to identify the actual age to which we revert, I would guess that it's about 15 -- the age at which you are old enough to know what you want to do and too young to do it. Mom and Dad have the car keys, and they're not telling you where they are.

A FRIEND of mine has the worst case of "You're Not the Boss of Me"-itis that I have ever seen. Away from parents, he is a fairly mature adult, capable of running a household, making appropriate clothing selections, returning videos, and having lengthy and involved telephone conversations.

But the minute he gets within earshot of either parent, he is reduced to a slumpy-shouldered slacker-boy who answers his mother in monosyllabic grunts and wouldn't remove a plate from the dining-room table if it were on fire. At 35, he still brings home his laundry whenever he visits. He drops the bag in the living room, kisses his mom on the top of the head, and then heads back out to visit friends. She does the laundry while he is out. When he comes back, he drinks the milk right out of the carton, eats the last bit of ice cream and puts the empty container back in the freezer, and, needless to say, does not refill the empty ice tray before putting that, too, back in the freezer. When his mom complains that she doesn't see enough of him on these jaunts home, he says, with complete sincerity, "You never want me to have any fun."

In the interest of fair play, I must confess my own sins. My father, who grew up on a farm, does not believe in heating. He believes in sweaters. And ever since I can remember, my siblings and I have been begging him to please turn on the heat because it is very difficult to use a knife and fork while wearing mittens. One morning, I awoke to find a thin layer of ice on the water in the toilet. We took to turning up the heat surreptitiously when he wasn't around, then turning it down before he got home. But he always knew we had done it. (Perhaps we were betrayed by the healthy pink glow that had returned to our faces and hands, clear indication that blood flow had, at least temporarily, been restored.) He would explode in a tirade, first against us personally for walking around in T-shirts and bare feet and having the audacity to complain about being cold (which is exactly what we were doing), then against the oil company to which he would not be sending one more goddamn penny of his hard-earned salary, then finally against the moral corruption in this country that had bred an entire generation of people who were so undisciplined and weak that they needed to live in a house the temperature of a goddamn greenhouse in order to survive.

I still walk around in T-shirts and bare feet and turn up the heat. He still tirades. This battle has raged on across three decades. There is no indication that either side is prepared to compromise, let alone give in.

THIS PHENOMENON is ridiculous. It's immature. It is embarrassing to see. It is even more embarrassing to participate in. And yet, all my friends and I are powerless to stop it. It is, I believe, one of the traits that define the human species.

If I were a psychologist, I might speculate that this strange occurrence is the result of years of ingrained behavior patterns. No matter how old we get, we simply lack the strength, introspection, or desire to renegotiate the delicate, unspoken contract that each of us has with our parents. We don't want an adult relationship with them. They are not our friends, they are our parents, and we want them to act parental. Therefore, we subconsciously perpetuate the dynamics that were in effect at the . . . yadda, yadda, ibbidy, ibbidy, blah, blah.

Understanding the underlying causes of this and doing something about it are very different things. All the psychological mumbo-jumbo in the world isn't going to make it go away. The only thing that is going to make it go away is for each of us individually to realize that we are now old enough to take control of our immature urges. We must pull ourselves out of the old ways of relating to our parents and start behaving like the fine upstanding adults we are when they're not around. I, for one, plan to do just that, as soon as my dad stops being such a big poopyhead.

I USED TO think that finding someone to shack up with would be the biggest challenge of my 20s. But I was overlooking something big, something that's proven a bit more elusive: finding the shack itself. What do you do with love if you don't have a place to do the lovin'? Want to have romantic dinners? Well, a kitchen might help.

In my experience, getting a date has been nothing compared to the difficulty of finding an apartment. And these days finding a mate tends to take a back burner to my primo concern: finding a roommate.

My traumas, I've found, are pretty familiar. In her new book Sex and Real Estate, Marjorie Garber points out that homeowning -- the way we feel about our property and the language we use to discuss it -- mirrors sexual relationships. Of course, she's talking about serious real-estate action, like buying a house. But if a mortgage is like marriage -- or at least like monogamy -- then the quest for a roommate is like dating: a big pick-up scene that replays itself every year as leases turn over.

I've found the rituals to have an eerie similarity. You wait anxiously by the phone. You hear someone whine, "All I want is a little space." The emotions, too, follow the same breakneck trajectory: the rush of anticipation, the discovery of gross incompatibility, the wash of disappointment, and the optimistic return to the fray.

The great annual roommate hunt spawns canny seekers who learn tricks, just as pick-up artists do. Anyone who wants to score that sweet sunny bedroom -- or just plain score -- learns how to sprinkle his or her personal biography with key phrases. The phrases, after a while, become rote.

My friend Emily recalls talking to one potential new roomie. "I assured her that I wasn't looking for a new best friend [see #2, below]. Plus, I'm not even home that much [see #3]," Emily says. "But now, I realize that all I do is hang out at home with my new best friend."

"I really meant it," she insists, laughing. "But now we're proving ourselves to be complete liars."

Even if she'd lied on purpose, it wouldn't have been so unusual. In fact, it would have been more or less necessary. Desperate situations (Portland's housing market has a 2 percent vacancy rate) lead to desperate measures. Just as you must learn to translate "EIK," "HWF," and "cozy," roommate-seekers must become facile with the standard assortment of sporting half-truths. It's like a game; when they say "bright and sunny," you say "work hard, play hard"; when they say "easy parking," you say "respectful of personal space." I mean, why share that you enjoy clipping your toenails in the kitchen? Or that you're prone to raid the roommates' shampoo supply? These things come out sooner or later anyway.

Just as some lucky couples meet when they bump into each other at the coffee shop, sometimes the roommate connection just happens. "We just sat around and talked about what music we listen to," says Cleve, describing an interview with a potential roomie. Meanwhile, he gleaned what he could from scoping the place out during the "apartment date." "I could see that he was neat by looking around," he says, "and I was complaining about my roommates' being messy, so I knew that we were on the same wavelength." They really hit it off, and now Cleve is moving in with Jake.

But not everyone is as lucky -- or suave -- as Cleve. Self-salesmanship is a fine art. One that needs to be honed just so.

Here's what I've gathered to be the standard repertoire of shit-talking apartment-hunting pick-up lines used from coast to coast.

#1. I'm neat but not anal.

Translation: I'm messy but not dirty.

This is supposed to make you sound like a low-key but eminently responsible addition to the household. In reality, "neat but not anal" is often just a nebulous shade of grungy. To my former roommates in San Francisco, a group of pseudo-arty types straight out of Vassar, it meant dishes in the sink, but no roaches. It meant "My room is a mess, but I close my door." Or "I [the neat one] spill Hot Tamales on the floor, and you [the anal one] pick them up."

#2. I'd like to hang out occasionally, but I'm not looking for a new best friend.

Translation: If you have cool friends, I'd like to hang out with them too. If you are cool, I want you to be my new best friend.

This is a classic fence-sitting maneuver. You can't say "I'm looking for a new best friend." And, as Angela points out, "If someone said, `I don't ever want to hang out with you or talk to you,' you'd think they were a freak." So what else can you say?

#3. I'm not at home very much.

Translation: I'm not at home between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., i.e., when I'm at work. Otherwise, you'll find me at home.

It's like the Rules. In order to convince the potential roommates of your appeal, you first have to establish just how little time you want to spend with them. You have better places to be -- more underground parties, crazier rock-star connections. They're not even worth your time. Buh-bye.

Appealing, non?

#4. I like an occasional drink but I'm not an alcoholic.

Translation: I reach for the bottle as soon as I cross the threshold, but I never pass out.

No one wants to live with a prude, but a drooling boozehead who prays to the porcelain god each evening isn't exactly a prime candidate for the spare bedroom either. Striking that balance, being acceptably alcoholic, is key to working this line -- or, shall we say, this lie.

#5. I live by the mantra "Work hard, play hard."

Translation: I work during the day and, if I'm not too tired, hang out with a few acquaintances once or twice a week.

Angela has had her fair share of people write this one in e-mails to her. "What does that mean?" she asks. "It just sounds like a Nike ad. So they're never home during the week [see #3] and then on the weekend they're drunken fools [see #4]? No thanks."

#6. I don't watch very much TV.

Translation: Only Survivor, Dawson's Creek, The West Wing, and Behind the Music. But really, that's it.

If anyone were even listening at this point, this is pretty much what he or she would hear: "When I'm not working and playing [see #5], or being out of the house all the time [see #3], or sucking down cocktails [see #4], you can find me drooling in front of the TV. That is, if you can find me at home.

"And hey! Are those your Hot Tamales on the floor?"

Nina Willdorf is looking for a new best friend. She can be reached at nwilldorf@phx.com.