In one of his concert movies (Delirious or Raw, I don't remember) Eddie Murphy did a bit about why sex is so good at the beginning of a relationship. He said, actually? it's not. It's a lie, a mind trick, and not to be fooled. He says any sex is going to feel great at the start of a new romance for no other reason than you haven't gotten laid in awhile. And that it gets worse with time. If you've been alone for like six months, a couple of sloppy kisses and two minutes of missionary would seem like the best sex you've ever had. He compared it to handing a starving man a single, stale cracker, how he'd nibble it down and exclaim "That's one Goddamn delicious cracker! Is that a Ritz cracker? Goddamn best cracker I ever had. Can I get another one of those?"
I've been thinking about Eddie's lesson in relativity during our recent apartment hunt, and the move that followed (there's a connecting thread there somewhere, in my mind). We have no way of knowing if our new place is objectively good. We're still reeling from the PTSD brought on by the years at our previous shit hole. I walk around here like Darryl Hannah in Splash, marveling at the all the shiny accouterments in the human world. Working locks and buzzers! A building entryway that doesn't have piss and garbage and broken appliances and lurking criminals! When you turn the knobs in the shower...warm-water-comes-out. No shit. Ditto for the sinks. And when the water goes down the drain it just disappears into a magical other dimension, instead of accumulating in a bucket kept under the trap. Each room has a door (we did not have to provide), and the kitchen has cabinets and appliances in it (we did not have to build or fix). There is not a single gaping hole leading to the apartment upstairs or downstairs. And the only time we've heard peep one from our neighbors was when they stopped by during the move to introduce themselves and welcome us to the building, if you can stand it.
We're having a hard time adjusting to this level of luxury. Everything around here is so damn... functional. We lay awake at night waiting for the shoe to drop --what'll it be? roaches? mice? what, is it haunted? Anyway, if our new place is actually a stale hunk of Matzah and I've simply been starving too long to tell, I don't care. Tastes like chateaubriant to me.