Communal living: Four witches, one apartment.
Ξ October 16th, 2007 | → | ∇ General |
I live a very interesting life. I’m gay. I’m a witch. I practice magic. I’m studying to be a pagan priest. I’m the president of a non-profit religious organization. I like my sex kinky and violent. I write software for a living. I live with three other witches in a four-bedroom apartment on the North side of Chicago.
Communal living has been on my mind a lot lately. It started out about a year ago. My close friend George moved to Chicago. Because we are close I offered to let him stay with me in my apartment for a while. He took the living room, I kept the bedroom. It was a bit snug, but there were no issues. Fast forward a few months. My friend Elizabeth was coming over to visit with us more and more often, her relationship had turned sour. It was clear she needed to get out.
George and I moved her out of her apartment and into ours in a hectic late-night move near the end of March this year. Now, this meant my little apartment was suddenly very cramped. Picture three witches, one bathroom, and one bedroom. We laid our beds out on the floor of the bedroom, moved the TV in there, and moved everything else into the living room. We slept together, sharing our living space constantly for two months before we were able to find an apartment to move into together. We quickly learned that we were not able to go to bed together. If we didn’t stagger our bedtimes we ended up talking, laughing, tickling, throwing things, and generally causing a sibling-like raucous late into the night.
Finally, we moved into our current four bedroom apartment. For a while we were calling it ‘House of Altars’ because being witches, and having a lot of space, we realized that there were a LOT of altars in the apartment. At the moment I count 16 (that’s four a person, and several of them are communal). Eventually we renamed the place Ceann Widhe (Gaelic for ‘Destination,’ pronounced con-wig-he).
A few weeks ago, our fourth bedroom got filled when Josiah moved in. This brings the count up to three gay witches, and one bisexual witch. One bathroom. One big kitchen, a large living room, and a large study. But we have our challenges. We’ve all had to learn to be a little more neat, a little more respectful of everyones space. We share most things, and we have dinner together at least 3 times a week.
We all have interesting lives. George, Josiah, and I are all active members of the Brotherhood of the Phoenix, Lizzie is becoming active with a local womens group. All of us are kinky to one degree or another (you should see the bruises we occasionally come home with).
I’m going to try and post some of my thoughts about how we make all this work in the future. It will probably be a common theme for me to write about, as communal living is becoming more and more a part of my life. It definitely isn’t for everyone, but I think everyone should consider it an option.
