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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 2007)
3& iustiout SEPTEMBER 21. 2007 32 eatmgiout eating|out eating ¡out eatingiout eating |out eating |out FRESH & HEALTHY SERVED DAILY Home Sweet Homeshare Living the adult dream, circa 21st century 8233 N. Denver St. • 503-517-0683 • www.e-santhai.com Restaurant A Full Service Bar Mon-Fn 11 am-1 Opm. Sat, Sun Noon-1 Opm w hen you are young and imagine your future life of coupledom, you might picture yourself and your lover living in a house with a white picket fence and a dog. But rarely do you fantasize that when you grow up and find that special someone you will be sharing a household with him or her and another adult of random origin. This brings .us to the modern condition of city living. More and more, adult home sharing is becoming the only realistic way for people to “get by” in popular American cities. Finding a third (or more) wheel to live with in this situation is a challenge for a couple who may or may not have already figured out their own groove. For a gay couple, this situation could be trickier to establish. The wife and I decided to stop paying rent around the time our landlord insisted that he wasn’t selling our place, even though people were showing up at our door asking to take a look around. I had been paying rent for 13 years, and the thought of investing all that money in a place of my own became very appealing. But the dream took a turn when, after we found a charming, affordable place, we realized we needed to rent out a bedroom to make the monthly mortgage. Serendipity—a natu ral resource in Portland—brought about the arrival of a good friend from out of state looking for a place 6th ash breakfast & lunch Our lesbian dog has a boyfriend. 503 230 0463 Restaurant e Bar Where Triends meet Tor good food and wine in a relaxed atmosphere. Life is Good Sunday - Thursday 4-1# pm, Friday - Saturday 4-11 pm 8051 SE 13“ flve. at Spokane in 503^233-4613 Sellwood to live simultaneous with our closing. She was every thing we could have wanted in a housemate: mellow, fun, female and queer. As luck—or life, if we’re being honest—would have it, our friend/tenant recently got accepted to a school in the opposite quadrant and decided to move closer in. Although the wife and 1 mourned, we realized that long commutes are not only bad for the environment, they’re bad for one’s mood. So we wished the lovely lady well and began the arduous process of finding someone new. How do you advertise what you're looking for (i.e., mellow, fun, female and queer) without coming across as discriminating, close-minded behemoths? Our modem condition spawned a fabulous tool with Craigslist, which we used to search for another cultural creative in safe, anonymous cyberspace. We decided to post in the typical singles ad style— us: queer female couple; you: easygoing, employed, no pets, queer-friendly (but hopefully queer). We couldn’t imagine living with a guy, although a gay guy, we admitted, “would be different.” We could see BY MALKA GEFFEN living with a straight girl, but another dyke in the place just seemed the way to go. After a week or two of responses from 18-year- old straight boys, we modified our minimum age to 21. One had a girlfriend living in a nearby college dorm, which translated to “There will be two of us living with you, thanks.” Another claimed his queer-friendliness with a simple "1 lived in San Francisco.” We did meet a few nice women (straight and queer) who thought we lived too far out. Another handful of respondents set up times to meet and never showed. We changed our ad once again to include our home’s location and a request that all interested parties Google the hell out of it before responding. We also put up a photo of the room, the house and our adorable dog. This brought another round of e-mails, including one that surprised us. After getting our hopes up and dashed over women who couldn’t commit (sounds like my early 20s!), we found ourselves reading an e-mail from a straight guy with a dog. The only ( other guy we had serious ly considered up to this point was a trans dude from Massachusetts who wouldn’t be arriving in Portland for another month. This guy admitted to not fitting our ad’s description (he had a pet after all) but assured us he’d be a perfect fit. Intrigued—and a little desper ate at the tail end of the month—we invited him and his pooch over. The guy is quiet, sweet and a bit of a loner. The dog—an Italian greyhound half the size of our basic, brown mutt—presented as very friendly. So friend ly, in fact, he greeted our little girl with some futile mounting and humping that didn’t annoy her as much as it annoyed her lesbian moms. Seeing a bare-chested man in my home will take some get ting used to, and no longer will 1 be able to stum ble downstairs in my skivvies to pee in the middle of the night. But having this particular straight male energy around is like a touch of cayenne in our lesbian household stew. With each new day of this arrangement, 1 watch the dogs play and thank the stars we were “gay, but not narrow.” © M alka GEFFEN has plenty of room in her head. Fill it by e-mailing malkageffen@gmail.com.
