Love and Popsicles

Apartment hunting is a lot like online dating. You start with essentially two lists: necessary attributes and ideal attributes. On the first list you put things you can't live without - two bedrooms and a dishwasher, say, or a college degree and blond hair. On the second list you put things that will help you decide among those that pass your initial screening process - does it get plenty of light? is it close to a park? will my friends like it? does it laugh at my jokes? As you sift through the choices online, you flag the ones that look interesting and send a brief email expressing interest and asking to arrange a meeting. Maybe you include a little about yourself in the email, a little joke maybe, to make yourself stand out from the crowd, or maybe you make do with a simple, flirtatious wink.

Then you wait, impatiently, for a response. You check your email obsessively to see who's gotten back to you - some of the ones that sound promising never respond at all, while some of the less promising ones reply immediately and want to make an appointment for this afternoon. You diligently mark down all the appointments in your calendar, being sure to note a few pieces of relevant information about each. And then you're off, scrambling all over the city from appointment to appointment, introducing yourself, trying to sound charming and desirable, asking all the right questions. You tell the same stories over and over, crack the same jokes. Before long, all the people and places you will start to blur together, and if you don't start taking notes soon you'll get them mixed up later - was this the one with the weird crack in the bathroom? was this the one with the brother in Minneapolis?

If you're the type who makes quick judgments, if you're comfortable going with your gut, then you'll quickly decide to commit to just one apartment/person as soon as it feels right, maybe even before you've visited all the ones on your list. Sometimes this will lead to great happiness, but often your enthusiasm will fade quite quickly, as soon as it becomes clear that the drawbacks - the things you hadn't considered or had willfully overlooked in the first rush of excitement - are, in fact, quite severe. Sure, it's really cute, but it's also really, really noisy. Yeah, the view is astounding, but it's a bit cramped in here, and what's with all the mirrors? But by then you're committed, and you can't wriggle out of your predicament without a lot of pain and heartache on both sides, and possibly a lawsuit.

It's far better, to my mind, to take your time with these things, to make as many appointments as possible with as wide a variety of places/people as you can find. Get an idea of what's out there by going after something that's obviously out of your league. Dip into the bottom of the barrel and see if you come up with a gem. Don't stick too closely to your lists of necessary and ideal attributes - you might be surprised at what you're willing to do without (a dishwasher, a nodding acquaintance with the nonfiction works of David Foster Wallace) when all the other stars align just perfectly.

The problem with this second approach, of course, is that it's not entirely in your hands. In both apartment hunting and dating, you have not only to worry about whether the object of your desire will desire you in return - maybe your credit's not good enough, maybe you're not tall enough, maybe you have a history of breaking windows and shoving beer bottles into walls - but you also have a very ill-defined set of time constraints to deal with. Some of the people you meet are looking to have their needs filled immediately, some are, like you, meeting a number of different people and then making their own decisions about whom to offer themselves to among the pool of applicants/suitors, some are looking to move much quicker than you are (often because they know they can't compete with the others on the market), and some are possessed of a serene confidence that if you don't want them, someone else will. This dance can be a tricky, even maddening one, especially if you're someone who likes to take your time and explore all your options before making a commitment - by the time you convince yourself that this one is the one, someone else might have snatched it up. It pays to be deliberate, but try not to be too deliberative.

Last week Kate and I went to Nashville to undertake the apartment-hunting equivalent of speed dating. We had roughly 40 hours in town and 10 appointments, all of which were made by me in the days immediately preceding our trip. We ended up seeing 14 different apartments, almost all of which would have been suitable, but only one of which was perfect. One was in a high-rise condo building with a breathtaking view all the way to Arkansas and a swimming pool on the roof, but the apartment was much too small. One was incredibly, stupidly cheap - virtually free, really - but it was pretty shabby and in a boring area. Several were perfectly fine - good area, plenty of room, all the necessary amenities - but we just weren't feeling a spark. And then, on our last appointment, with a guy who'd already shown us three other properties he owned and had decided to show us one last one that he was currently renovated, we fell in love.

The apartment was completely gutted - no floor, no kitchen, no bathroom - but we knew it'd be perfect. We just knew. It was in an old house, a tri-plex, in the 12 South neighborhood of Nashville, within walking distance of the corridor of stores and bars and coffee shops that line 12th Avenue and not far from the buzzing student areas near Vanderbilt and Belmont, across the street from a beautiful park (beyond which is a community garden), and mere steps away from a gourmet popsicle stand. That's what I said: a gourmet popsicle stand. Which we subsequently visited - I tried the blueberry chocolate chip and Kate had the cucumber chile - and declared to be just as amazing as we expected it to be, and maybe a little bit more. The house itself met all of our essential criteria. The rent is good, pets are allowed, there's plenty of parking, plenty of light, plenty of space, a basement for storage, and all the rest of it. There's also a fireplace, high ceilings, funky angles, and a great, weird front door. (I wish we'd taken pictures, but we didn't.)

So we signed a lease, we paid a deposit, and we have been assured that the renovations will be done by the first of August, or at least a few days into August. I'm optimistic that everything will be as promised, but I still feel a slight twinge of apprehension, given the current state of the place. We are, after all, putting a great deal of trust in someone we've only just met to fulfill the promises he's made to us, and we've already got a lot invested - both monetarily and emotionally - in a successful outcome.

Which also makes this a lot like dating, but with significantly higher stakes. I'm thinking, of course, of all the popsicles in my future if this thing goes all the way.