(no subject)
So I called a phone number on Craigslist about an apartment for rent in the East Village. There wasn't much info about the roommate or the room, so I figured I'd just call. It ended up being a forty-three year old Italian guy who was a French professor who was living in his living room and renting out the bedroom. He took to me right away, saying that I had a very relaxing voice and that although he had received over two hundred emails, he was ignoring all of them, and that he didn't know what the fuck was going on and that people were crazy but I seemed like a nice person and did I want to look at the room?
He went on to say that if I was his roommate, he would not hit on me, "unless you want me to, and if you wanted me to I would do whatever you say, because I love women!" Clearly this is not a most appropriate situation for me, so after speaking with him a few minutes I tried to extricate myself from the conversation. He agreed with me that maybe this would not be an ideal living situation and we politely hung up.
Or so I thought. Later that night, walking home from work at midnight, I got a call from an unfamiliar number. It was, of course, the Italian guy, Frank, and he immediately just started talking. First he ran through his now-familiar "people are crazy, and I do not understand it" diatribe, and then we discussed ethnic differences and his deteriorating marriage. As Frank ran through his list of problems I realized that I had some things that I really needed to talk about, too, even though I had no idea who this fucking person was or why he was calling me. So I explained to him how I had just moved to New York, and how I was from the Midwest, and I didn't have a job, not really, but that I was a theater person, of sorts, and a writer, maybe, and I was pretty confused but that was probably ok, right? Then I realized that I had relationship things of my own to figure out and that since Frank had so freely discussed his relationships with me, I began to discuss my own. I figured he might have a good insight into the mindset of older men.
Soon I found myself lying on my bed, saying things like, "I don't know, what do you think about that?" and before I knew it, an hour and a half had passed. So this is the state of low-rent real estate in New York: we all need a cheap place to live, but, apparently, we all need someone to talk to even more.