“I have never met your roommate. Do you have one?” one person would say.

“You never talk about your roommate so I never thought you had one,” a coworker once mentioned.

And in response, I only say as if most people never entered my foreign world, “That’s the way it is.”

In the late summer of 2006, I decided that I could no longer live at home. The excitement of the city and the potential serendipity was only there…not caught in the suburbs 25 miles away. So after 2 months of failure from being set up with a roommate to interviewing for room shares, I decided that I wanted to find a place on my own terms.

Out of all the roommate flakeage and disappointments, I decided that I couldn’t keep interviewing. I wanted it my way. On craigslist, I wrote a simple ad:

Looking for a roommate or room

I described myself—my so-called long hours, my preferences (I did not want cable TV), my budget, my living style. Then I waited.

I got a response from a place in Glen Park. Then a 30 year old African American male. And a few people who were relocating across country sight unseen. Then I got an email from a 26 year old guy who was in a similar situation as me, living at the parents’ house locally, but wanted to move to the city. He picked me up from work and we had a quick dinner at Dolores Park Cafe.

My most important question was What are your pet peeves?

I said mine was an empty toilet roll paper and time left on the microwave. He said that he wanted the toilet seat cover down.

At the end of the dinner, I remember saying like one might say at the end of the interview, “We’ll be in touch.”