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Here is someone who will not only be honest with you, but whose love for you is so great it can withstand looking up your nose. Then they go right back to loving you like it never happened.
    It’s ironic that Everybody Else—to whom you owe nothing—is spared having to see what’s in your nose. Asif
they
deserve better. But your partner, the very person you love more than all others, gets to look right in there and investigate personally. That’s
their
little privilege. One of the many bonuses for signing on for the long haul.

Don’t Look
at Me,
I Just Live
Here
    W hen you decide to share a home with another person, a lot of thought goes into finding the specific home you intend to share.
    When my bride first moved into my apartment, it didn’t work for either of us.
She
felt she was getting, at best, half of a place, and
I
, who was doing fine by myself, thought, “Hey, what happened to the other half of my place?”
    It turns out, a house is like a bed: When you’re getting along, it doesn’t matter how small it is; and if you’re
not
, all the elbow room in the world ain’t going to help you.
    But still, you’re sure that somewhere out there your Dream House awaits.
    A lot of times, when you go to look at a potential home, there are people living there. It’s still
their
home. And I love walking into a place that already has Food Smells going. Those soupy, cakey, meaty smells. I don’t even want the food, I just want the smell.
    They should make a
spray
for people who don’t cook: An aerosol can that, for seven bucks, makes the whole place smell like pot roast. Or you could have a fumigator guy come in every three months.
    Doorbell rings. “Who is it?”
    “Pot roast man!” And he sprays around the house.
    “You want me to spray the bathroom?”
    “No, that’s okay.”
    “How about under the sink?”
    “Okay, maybe just coffee and cake.”
    It’s hard to reject a house without feeling like you’re rejecting the people who live there; these nice people who are eating dinner while you investigate every nook and cranny of their home. You walk around the house, look in their closets, touch all their things, then look them in the eye and say, “You know what?
No
” And walk away.
    In essence, “This house is good enough for
you
, but we’re gonna try to beat it.”
    It’s hard. And you always walk through the place imagining a life that has nothing to do with reality. Planning things you’ll never do: parties and soirées with tantalizing guests and performers from other lands. “This is great. We can have a dance floor
here
, a cocktail area
there
, the orchestra can set up near the receiving line …”
    And then you move in and spend the rest of your life eating corn chips out of a bowl in front of the TV.
    “What happened to the dancing and the waltzing and jugglers and cocktail pavilion?”
    “I thought we were someone else. My mistake.”
    Because in real life, you’re always in one of three places: the kitchen, the bathroom, or the bedroom. There are only three things to do in life, and that’s where we do them.
    W hen you actually move into a house, you learn quite quickly how little you know about
anything.
    Day One, the guy comes to turn on the electricity. He asks me one question:
    “Excuse me, where is your main power supply?”
    Right there, I was stumped. First question as a homeowner, I had nothing.
    “I don’t know. It’s probably outside. Did you lookoutside, because I think I saw it there earlier.… Okay, I’m going to level with you, sir, I don’t really know what a main power supply looks like. What is it? Is it a big thing? Maybe it’s
inside.
It’s definitely either inside or outside, I know that. Tell you what—why don’t you
find
it, and that’ll be your first little job.…
You
find it, I’ll
have
it. That’ll be what I do. You find it and do certain things with wires that I don’t understand, and then I’ll give you more money than you deserve. Is