Room For Friendship

It's a curious thing to me what people think there is or could be between two people. What I mean is that in a community such as mine where just about everyone knows everyone else to some degree, it's interesting what the reaction is when someone finds out that two people are roommates. The way they respond would make it sound like the two are a couple and not merely sharing an apartment. This comes up plenty considering few of us are doing so well that we can afford to live alone but not so well that we are married or have live-in significant others of some kind.

In the two years that I lived with the guy who got me into all the improv and all, people never failed to be incredulous when told that he and I lived together. I guess it seemed that we had so little in common that we were bound to clash too much to peacefully coexist. It's true that there was some discord, but probably no more than the usual. For announcements of other groupings, the surprise was of a different nature, and more seemed to reflect a belief that it would be better known if true but was eminently possible.

Also there were the roommates who were known almost exclusively as a single entity. Where one is, the other is presumed to be or people are disappointed. It can get so severe that where there are two longtime roommates with distinct powerful personalities, they can still be confused with one another- one being called by the other's name accidentally, you understand. It's a thing ripe for the uncomfortable humor becoming so fashionable these days. Almost more interesting still is when such venerable roommates split up amicably. It's hard for people to process, and the news takes months to fully make the rounds.

What I've gotten into is a different sort of arrangement: roommates who are not known to the bulk of my friends. In time they will surely become firmly entrenched and supplant me in popularity, but for now they are neither of the first group I describe or the second. Where so many of my friends are concerned, they are instead the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that Churchill spoke of. When they become known, it will be very interesting where public opinion comes down on the likelihood of our having come together.