Life in the suburbs is supposed to be either a bucolic, upwardly-mobile American fantasy or a simmering cesspool of repressed sexual frustration and emotional warfare. Your view can probably be predicted by whether you enjoyed American Beauty.*
The truth, of course, is that's its neither, even if you are a homosexual such as myself playing happy household in an anti-gay state like Virginia. Some neighbors are friendly, some are distant -- same as the neighbors in my last D.C. apartment. Although, I have to point out that in Falls Church I no longer have any Tina-dealing neighbors upstairs setting things on fire and causing hordes of firemen to burst through my door at 6:00 a.m.
Not that I harbor any resentment.
No, these days the primary impediment to enjoying my happy home comes from Nature herself. Last year it was a frantic effort at bailing water when God decided that he needed to punish our cellar with a Flood of biblical proportions -- I'm surprised I didn't find a little ant Ark tossing atop the waves. Then, cast from their subterranean abode by divine retribution, the six-legged creatures decided to make their new home upstairs with us, setting off a massive ant influx the likes of which have not been seen since the 1970s.
Then this past weekend, at about 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, I woke up when I realized Cavin was no longer in the bed. When I got up to check, I stuporously realized the bedroom felt like a walk-in freezer. Naturally, our furnace chose to conk out during a record-breaking cold spell on the hardest day of the week to find a repairman. Cavin had been warming himself by the open oven -- obviously, they didn't have all the Saturday morning cartoons and safety PSAs in 1970s Saigon.
There are times that I enjoy entertaining the idea of condo living, where such fiascoes are taken care of by a competent and eager staff. Then I remember that condo living with Cavin would never allow me to continue my pack-rat, book-buying, audio-visual equipment hoarding existence. So God can throw whatever plagues he chooses at us -- frogs, locust, insanely anti-gay constitutional amendments -- but it makes no difference to us. We live where we live, dammit, and that's not going to change.
Well, at least not until we can afford a bigger place in a better neighborhood. Priorities, you know.
*For the record, I detested it.
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