Two Men and a Me

When I arrived in New York City two summers ago, I moved in with my first two male roommates.

We shared a pretty fantastic three bedroom/one bathroom in the East Village. It featured a spacious sitcom-esque living room with a foozball table, man-approved big screen television and full Rock Band. My bedroom actually had a closet and a lot of the walls were exposed brick (a hot commodity in this city that I don't totally understand but now prefer). Best of all, it included the company of two strapping young lads who were as entertaining as they were informative. In the short six months that I lived there, I learned quite a few interesting things about the other gender.

Some realizations were predictable. They whole-heartedly belived that sinks full of little hairs after shaving are self-cleaning. They found it very apropriate to keep a towering pile of magazines on the floor near the toilet. And they never ever put the seat back down.

I know I was a pain in the butt too with my eight different shampoo bottles balancing on the edge of the tub and extra long hot showers.

Truth is, all of these standard gender misunderstandings never really got to me because, when I wasn't almost falling into my toilet or stepping on wet Maxim Magazines, it was a pretty delightful living situation.

The boys often let me, virtually friend-less at the time, tag along and even pointed out the best places to eat a falafell at 1:00am or get my eyebrows done (long disturbing story). I accepted their TEVO choices: Ultimate Fighter, Modern Marvels the Sci-Fi Channel, and they made fun of mine: Project Runway, The City, The Bachelorette.

Victor, our resident gym rat ('cause Lord knows I wasn't), would give me a hard time about eating a slice of pizza or anything fattening, while I called him out on his peanut butter-tuna fish-flaxseed sandwiches. Yes, peanut butter with tuna fish, because he obviously wasn't getting enough protein from the 2-ton jugs of protien powder above our fridge.

Amir and I were happiest eating sandwiches on the couch while watching HIMYM and poking fun at Vic.

Both boys kept tabs on my love life and made honest suggestions.

"You should slut up your Halloween costume a bit." or "Feel free to wear you underwear around the house. We do."

Despite my current fabulous living situation, I often miss my first six months in the East Village. Sharing a bathroom with two guys, not so much.

The boys and me plus random blonde chick.