Are you a Needer or a Haver?

William Chadwick

By William Chadwick

Editor’s Note: William just returned to San Francisco after a few months back in his home country, England, and is looking to rent a room from a kind soul who would enjoy his company and his penchant for theater, screen and play writing.

March 12, 2010

So I am standing in the pub and some woman comes up to me and starts staring at my chest. Specifically, my left breast. In turn, I stare at her left breast. She doesn’t like what she sees, and without a word, she turns and goes off to look at someone else’s chest.

You might be wondering what’s going on by now. I’m at a roommate meetup. I found it on the really useful Meetup.com website, which has meetups for just about everything from playing sports to listening to music to reading plays.

Most of the people here are ‘Needers’, as in they need a place to live, complete with some roommates. There are not as many ‘Havers’ (those with a place looking to fill an empty room), at least at the start, and the one or two Havers who get there early are mobbed by all of us desperate Needers. Perhaps it’s like speed dating, but I haven’t done that so I wouldn’t know.

It is a lot like chatting someone up in a bar or club though: you check someone out from the front, decide to start talking to them, and ten minutes later you might exchange phone numbers and be seriously thinking about living with them. Actually, it’s worse than chatting someone up, as that doesn’t have to lead to much more than half (or a whole) night together. In this case, you could be living with the person in front of you for God-knows-how-long, unable to get away from their dirty laundry and dreadful taste in music.

On my chest I have a red sticker that reads, “William, $800, No Control Freaks.” (Yes, there is a story behind this, but I won’t go into that now.) Red because I am a Needer (this is all very well organized by Trish, who found a place two years ago but still organizes these meetups because she enjoys them). Gradually, a few more people turn up with blue stickers (Havers) that say things like “Jed, $850, Bernal Heights, no cats” and, “Julie, $1000, West Portal”. At last there is a more equal ratio, but there still aren’t many people in my price range.

There is, however, one girl who is both affordable and lives in the Mission: exactly what I want. She’s brought a wingman, or wingwoman, or whatever the female version is called, to help her spot likely roommates and protect her from scary people (they are both young, quite small and not particularly outgoing). I can see immediately that this could be tricky. I am quite confident, but if I blaze in there with a load of questions and an “I-want-to-move-into-your-home-and-you-don’t-even-know-me” attitude, I’m going to get nowhere. I make a little small talk, try to crack a joke, and then turn to talk to a couple of other people for a few minutes, before slinking back to where the two girls have parked themselves.

I wait patiently until they stop talking to someone else, and play my hand. “Actually, I’d be keen to come over and see your place and meet your other roommate sometime”, I say, trying not to sound forceful or overly keen. Don’t want to scare her. “Well we’re having interviews on Sunday at the flat. Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll let you know.”

I try not to look too excited as I type my number into her phone, but really, I’m also thinking, she ain’t going to call me. Then it’s a few more pleasantries as I try to endear myself, before moving off to look for other Havers in my price range in the area I want to live in, but there aren’t any.

In the next half an hour I get buttonholed by a guy who is nuts about motorcycles, and so is everyone he lives with, and so will I be once I have lived with them for a little while. I try to make up some excuse that his room is a little on the expensive side for me, or that it’s not near the BART, which I need to get around, but he brushes my protestations aside and insists we swap numbers and talks about how I could move in tomorrow. He’s nice, but I’m just not that into motorcycles.

Again, I am about to leave, and a pretty girl I talked to earlier, but who is a few hundred dollars per month out of my price range, asks me where I am going. “I’m going to meet some friends for dinner in the Mission,” I say. “Do you want to stay for one more drink?” I figure, what the hell, why not? We end up chatting for longer than I expected to, and she tells me that she has to be careful now about wandering around her house naked, right after saying how nice it would be for me to move into the spare room. At this point her roommate interrupts us and asks her if she might be “losing focus”. I think she might just have been. I realize that I am rather late, make my excuses and leave in a hurry.

I haven’t necessarily found a home yet, but I have got a few leads, and maybe some ideas for a new play. After all, it’s a pretty unique situation, and probably more effective than just firing things at Craig’sList and hoping for the best. I’ll go back, maybe even after I’ve found a place.

William Chadwick

William Chadwick is a young English writer who has recently moved to San Francisco from London. He has worked on-and-off in journalism for almost ten years. He is passionate about the theater, and has directed and written several plays. He is currently trying his hand at teaching English.

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