I Miss My First Apartment and Having Roommates

Living with friends has its advantages.

Me with my roommates in my first apartment in New York City.

On Sunday night, I had a vivid dream: I dreamt that I was living in my first apartment in New York City after college.

In May 1998, I moved in with two of my high school best friends. I was so eager to begin this chapter that I skipped my college graduation to start my new life in New York City immediately.

We lived in a high-rise building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, above what I think was initially a sporting goods store and eventually became a Banana Republic; across the street from a movie theater and a Papaya King hot dog stand; a block away from the subway in one direction and a classic New York City diner in the other; and within a few minutes’ walk of Central Park, countless restaurants offering every type of food imaginable, and an array of bars, including Manny’s Car Wash — a surprisingly cool blues club for our uptown area that seemed to belong in a much cooler downtown neighborhood.

My two roommates and I split a one-bedroom apartment that had been converted into a two-bedroom, so one friend paid more to have her own bedroom, and my other friend and I shared the second one.

There are obvious downsides to having roommates and the inevitable imbalances: who cleans more, who takes out the trash and remembers to replenish the toilet paper, and who empties the dishwasher versus who just takes out the one plate they need. Then there are the additional challenges of sharing a bedroom with another person, and sharing one bathroom between three women.

I’ve lived with several roommates throughout the years, and in my first New York City apartment I remember having fewer roommate skirmishes than usual. This was possibly because we were already close friends before moving in together, and probably helped by the fact that for most of the time we lived together, they worked corporate jobs during the day and I waitressed at night, so we each had the apartment to ourselves for significant portions of time.

But for me, the pros of living with roommates there far outweighed the cons.

This has been on my mind, I think, because the election results have prompted me to reflect on one of the biggest ailments in our society: isolation and the lack of community. This is a factor that’s likely contributing to our culture of extreme polarization, and self-reliance and self-interest to a fault.

So in this very vivid dream earlier this week, I was back living with my two high school best friends in our cozy, communal apartment on the Upper East Side. Waking up the next morning, I could still picture the apartment’s layout and remember the feeling of living with friends. This inspired me to think even more about the positives of having roommates — and the value of community.