And then there was that bathtub in my first apartment. That tub was the principal reason I chose that apartment. It was December and I was 20 and I finally moved out. I don’t really know which was the straw that broke that camel’s back but I finally left.

My new landlady, I think her name was Dianne, interviewed me in her fine home. The prospective apartment was underneath. It was a basement apartment but it had windows at the top so there was some natural light. Dianne had nice things. She was a middle-aged woman. She had raven-black hair. I think she was a lawyer. She liked me of course. By all evidence I was disciplined, smart, and not terribly social. Not the kind of social that would inspire late night parties anyway. And she said she preferred boys to girls as tenants. I think she preferred boys to men as well. There had been a girl in the apartment who apparently had dropped out of school. That is how the room was available.

And even though it was a basement apartment it was quite nice. But the clincher was that fine tub. You had to climb up into it. And it was giant. Twice the size of a regular tub. And it even had water jets.

I didn’t meet my roommates until I moved in. One was dating a director’s daughter and he was never home which made him a great roommate. He was, for example, never in the tub when I wanted a soak. In fact, my two roommates only ever used the shower; I don’t think they ever used my tub. Which suited me swimmingly.

My landlady smoked pot every night. The smell came down through the radiator in the kitchen. She also left her Christmas wreath up on her front door until April.

Besides the bathtub, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the roommate who was home, Andrew. Andrew was a political science major. He liked tea. And he made coffee in a Bodum. You can’t dislike someone who likes tea. In the kitchen we had a glass-top table and four chrome chairs with lipstick pink leather upholstery. Andrew and I would perch ourselves on top of those chairs and talk through the night. About Star Trek, about school, about girls, about, Andrea I think it was, the stupid girl who had left me her room and how she had thought that it was called “Old Timer’s” disease and not Alzheimer’s and how she had failed to seduce her professors.

During Slack Week — officially called Reading Week, but nobody called it that, and nobody read –, during Slack Week, when everybody else went off to someplace hot to drink and party and generally debauch themselves, Andrew and I made our own Slack Week in our apartment. He bought a SAD light (the kind of light that reproduces sunlight for persons with Seasonal Affective Disorder) and I bought bottles of Malibu Rum, that boozy crap that smells like suntan lotion, and we rented beach movies.

Everything in my first apartment was delightful; but especially that bath tub.

SS