He Says Potato, I Say What The Fuck Are You Talking About?

Baroy and I connect on some very fundamental things and on a very personal level. But sometimes, when I look around this house, I wonder how we ever found each other, much less came to live together.

We both have areas in our family room that are designated as our offices. The area he chose is in the darkest, windowless corner of the room. My desk is situated between a wall with two windows and another that has our double french doors (each with 15 small panes of glass), and has not only a light overhead, but a lamp behind me. And I still complain abour it being too dark.

We rarely watch television together any more, because he keeps the sound up at decibels levels that I consider assaultive, while I need it so low that the padding of the dog's paws as he walks across the floor can make it difficult to understand what is being said. My greeting to him almost every morning, as I come downstairs while he's listening to Air America, is "Could you turn that down, please?" If it were up to me, even dance music would be kept at a whisper. (And I wonder where N gets his "sensory defensiveness"--his tendency to put his hands over his ears whenever there's a lot of noise around him?)

Baroy opens the windows in the living room to let the cool air in no matter what the temperature is outside, and likes to run a fan in our bedroom even in the dead of winter (whatever that means in Los Angeles). I am a heat seeker, and will pump up the thermostat in the house and then STILL insist on putting a fire in the fireplace.

He dislikes coffee and beer, my two favorite beverages. I could live on pasta and cheese; two foods he absolutely despises. (Imagine trying to cook for a man who eats neither pasta nor cheese...nor cream sauces, nor avocado, nor yams, nor pretty much every other thing I love. It's hell, I tell you. Hell.) Our refrigerator might as well have lines of demarkation for 'his foods' versus 'my foods.'

He likes action-adventure movies; I like documentaries. He likes 60s doo-wop and show tunes (gayest stright man I've ever met!); I'm a child of 70s rock (Rush, anyone?), though I've mellowed in my old age a bit.

I know these are all superficial things, but sometimes--after I've walked through the house turning on lights, shutting windows, turning up the thermostat and muting radios and TV sets--I just have to shake my head.

It's a good thing I like him, that's all I can say. And I'm sure he'd say the same about me.