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.