Brian - part 2

After I graduated from university in ’92, I finally found a job in NYC. Coincidentally, Brian also got a job there, so we decided to be roommates. He was living in a NYU dorm room, which they rent out over the summer, so we split that for a few months. When the school year started, we moved to a tiny place in alphabet city on the lower east side. There were drug dealers out front, and the fire escape had a metal grate over it, with a few broken bars where someone had broken in before, and a bullet hole in the window. Brian had the tiny bedroom and I had a futon in the living room. After a year in this, we found a much better place in Brooklyn on 12th street, and 5th ave, in Park Slope. That was a big 2 bedroom in a nice safe area, and it still only took me ½ hour to take the subway to work in the morning. We lived there for a couple years, but were starting to have disagreements and getting annoyed with one another, very similar to if you were living with a sibling.
Now the year before, Brian had been dating a girl, Karen, who was into jazz dance, and for something cool for them to do together, he signed up for a package of beginner ballroom dance lessons at Arthur Murray. Unfortunately, he and Karen broke up before they could take more than one or two of those.
That summer (’97, I think), Brian and I took a road trip to Montreal with Caroline and Denel, two friends from university. Brian was looking for someone to use his dance lessons with, so he tried to get Denel to come stay with us and take the dance lessons. Eventually we worked it out where she could come live with us and we would provide room and board, and she would do all the cooking and cleaning. Of course, it helped that she was 3 years younger than us, blonde, pretty, and an aerobics instructor.
So, to avoid friction, Brian and I worked out ahead of time that neither one of us would try to date Denel, because that would cause very bad problems, and a lot of resentment. So of course the moment she moved in that went out the window.
more to follow…