My New Roommate

So I started a new job this week in New Haven, Connecticut. Because of the not-quite-commutable distance between New Haven and Northampton I am now living five nights a week with a roommate I have never met. It was a Craig's List dealio, and on paper it has worked out great -- the place is super-cute, close enough to work to walk and far enough that the walk might actually translate into a leaner, meaner me. The weird thing is, as I mentioned, that I am yet to meet the woman I am living with, as we made our agreement by phone and she is currently visiting her family in Ohio.

So let's see what I've gleaned from living two days in a stranger's home. First, her family is from Ohio, though I find it curious that there is a "Don't Mess With Texas" sticker on her filing cabinet. The mystery woman is exceedingly neat, a fact that makes me slightly nervous seeing as how I'm not so much, really. She has a cat, I'm told, yet there is an eerie paucity of cat hair hanging about. She is currently a PhD student at Yale in American History and she has (and I'm not being facetious here) a fascinating collection of books, mid-twentieth century odds and ends -- magazines, prints, antiques. According to the e-mail she sent me with dining suggestions, she was a restaurant critic in New York at one point in time. She'll, no doubt, be appalled that I have sullied her refrigerator with a jar of Miracle Whip, but then again maybe she'll appreciate the retro-kitsch of processed foods invented in the post-WWII era). She has an enviable sense of style, based on the fun furnishings and the MTA NY Subway shower curtain. This woman has an obvious fetish for skin care and beauty products -- the bathroom is filled with all manner of lotions, shampoos, soaps, etc. Now, of course, I could just be underestimating the average straight woman's fascination with these kinds of products, but I know enough about stuff you smear on your face to know that this stuff isn't cheap.

I also know that she went to Brown and yet is a blonde (the tell-tale sign being the special schmancy shampoo for blondes I spied in the shower this morning).

Oh, the pressure! I don't know if I'm cool enough to share space with this mystery woman.