The Apartment*

*True story of Al Zimbler’s life as it appears in his sixth short story humor book MORE DATING AND MATING SECRETS OF SENIORS AND OTHER HUMOR SHORT STORIES.

My first apartment wasn’t a full apartment, just a bedroom with kitchen privileges, which my wife and I rented right after we got married a year after the end of World War II. Why take that kind of place? Well, I and millions more men and women had just been released from military duty serving Uncle Sam. World War II was over, and millions of us were now rushing home to get married to our boyfriends or girlfriends. The lines at City Hall were long for those getting their marriage licenses. The problem? Where were we going to live?

Most of the returnees had lived at home until at age 18 they were drafted into the military. At 18 you had no money and couldn’t afford your own apartment so you lived with your parents. Now newlyweds wanted their own apartment after marriage. There weren’t any available.

My wife was a nurse at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago, and an older married nurse had an apartment and offered to rent us one bedroom and bathroom plus kitchen privileges. A bedroom with a bed, a dresser, and a closet to store our clothes. We grabbed it. It was a two-bedroom apartment, with the other bedroom occupied by the older nurse and her husband. The apartment was over Capitol Laundry. Every morning at seven the washing machines and dryers started up below the apartment so sleeping late was not an option.

Our bedroom was something special. It didn’t have a regular door to provide us privacy. Instead, it had a wooden frame that ran on a rail on top of the door. No lock. We moved the door to the side to get inside or when leaving. Our own bathroom was directly opposite from our sliding door.

Now, this story being about sex, I have to tell you that, as newlyweds, having sex in that bedroom was difficult. Number one, when we came home at about 5:30 p.m. we had to stay in that room until the couple finished dinner and washed the dishes before we could enter the kitchen. Most sex involves some sort of noise, so it’s pretty difficult having sex when there are two diners about 20 feet away from you. I was very careful to not even pass gas if I ate the wrong kind of foods for lunch. Trying to get up early, like 6 a.m. before the couple arose or before the laundry started operation, was one way of having sex, but again, using the bathroom every morning at 6:30 a.m. was a little suspect.

I just asked my wife to read this story to see if I missed including anything important. She said, “We were lucky they didn’t ask to leave because we were having far too much sex and it was interfering with their nightly rest.”

Oh, for those good old days.