My Couch Surfing Cousin

Now he’s no longer bar hopping, he’s couch-surfing with me. Arriving recently for the start of his first year at George Washington University’s Law School, he’s looking to find shared accommodation convenient to the law school at 21st and H Streets.

To keep from going cool cousin to pain in my ass, I’ve sent him to Craigslist, the excellent Housing Maps (a Craigslist/Google mash-up) and the Washington City Paper classifieds, all the best palces to look for apartments in DC.

While he’s looking, I’m showing him the big-city lifestyle of Washington DC. A recent tutelage was the Black Cat’s Red Room Bar. There, my cousin and his friend gang signed their youth.

Yes they are both under 21 and the Black Cat marked them as such with a big black “X” on each hand. Don’t they look cute with their gang signs? My co-workers sure think so. Labeled “dreamy” by the fellow youngling at my work, he was quick to learn the pleasures of DC women that night.

He is still learning the pain of housemate hunting. He is still in my house, still on my couch, still homeless. He sends out emails, he goes to open houses, but yet rejected he is again.

I know you know this pain, the pain of looking for a place in DC. We’ve all been there, and hope not to be there again. And we all can at least image the how a month on a couch ain’t good for family relations.

Hopefully soon I’ll get him from couch-surfing cousin to rent paying housemate.