Thirty years ago, on a balmy October day, immediately after getting the go-ahead blessing to begin the quest from my Dad, I embarked upon the search for our Boston home – some place to stay while I finished my matriculation at Brandeis University, and for the family when they visited Boston. We didn’t know then that it would be the single greatest investment our family ever made (well, I had an idea, because all the gays were then flocking to the South End, and where the gays went, the real estate market followed – and exploded).
Still, nothing was guaranteed, and on the night I visited the very last of the three options our real estate broker showed to me, the chains hanging off the door at the next brownstone over seemed a somewhat ominous sign. As I traipsed up a simple but substantial staircase of solid wood, and paused at a marble nook with a single curved stone sculpture in it, I wondered if this would be the one.
Opening the door to the second floor unit, the broker clicked on the overhead lighting, lighting the golden amber floors with a warmth at delicious odds with the suddenly-cold October night. A sad, lumpy, once-cream leather couch sat in the corner like an embarrassing afterthought, but the rest of the expanse was empty.
I wouldn’t realize what a world of difference there was between the light on the first floor of a city brownstone compared to the light of a second floor dwelling – but this was a happy discovery that would wait until years later. On that initial dark night, I slipped silently and almost imperceptibly into a space that might be home.
The broker passed into the bedroom, trying but failing to locate a light until he reached the bathroom. I stood near the entryway alone and felt for my future. A wooden built-in wet bar with an embedded mirror afforded me a quick, dim glimpse of myself; I can’t remember how I looked or what I was wearing. I recall the vague feeling of not being alone there, and there was something joyous and relatively unfamiliar in the sensation. It felt right, it felt safe, and in that moment my heart decided this was the way forward – the first steps of creating my own home.
