When selling a home, it’s your responsibility to be well-informed and calm. You have to accept that your life is going to be completely dismantled for the foreseeable future. Showing your house is the equivalent of doing a stand-up routine while having a gynecological exam. You know your abode, its details, what its worth. Hopefully you know what its strong points are, and even more hopefully, there aren’t any serious drawbacks.

The selling side of real estate might be like a sixth grade dance, but selecting a place to live is more like the sixth grade. You know nothing, but you think you know everything, and basically everyone seems to be lying to you. I’m in the market for an apartment in Manhattan, in case you couldn’t tell from my cynicism and exhaustion. One more Carrie Bradshaw reference on a real estate website and I’ll pluck my eyes out with a pair of stiletto heels.

All I really need to be happy is a couch to sleep on and a shower. Extra bonus points if I have a TV to watch the Yankees and the news. Lights help, but I learned in Portland that I can live fine without them. When looking for an apartment in New York, however, everything sounds awesome. You see photos of tastefully decorated residences and read the paragraphs that broadcast that the space is a "steal," a "gem," a "bonafide oasis in the middle of it all." You see the smiling faces of the realtors in their glossy head shots, you imagine yourself dancing around in boy shorts to Joy Division in the kitchen, you start calculating how much it would cost you to call that place home.

I suppose it’s much like Internet dating. You overlook how grainy your potential date’s photos are, you ignore the way they spell "innerests," or the fact that they list "makin’ $$$!" as a hobby, because you’re tired of spending your nights in a threesome with Anderson Cooper and Jack Daniels. Or maybe there are no red flags at all in your potential mate’s profile, but you show up at the agreed-upon meeting place and discover Gary Busey’s doppelganger with a penchant for UFC. Apartment hunting is like that. You quickly learn the importance of semantics. "Cozy" means more snug than Mariah Carey’s girdle, "retro" means that the appliances resemble those in the Overlook Hotel, and "charming" or "unique" means the layout is completely baffling and dysfunctional. It is an exercise in glossology. As a result I wound up learning that I am not the kind of person who maintains their poker face well in situations of disappointment. At nearly every open house I found myself battling my face.

One potential apartment had a "patio" on the website. In reality it had a ledge that would only be useful if I listened to too many Cure albums while reading The Bell Jar. Another was "convenient" and "close to everything," which meant that it was on top of a rundown thai restaurant and down the block from a very bridge-and-tunnel friendly nightspot. And although I love apartments with character — one of my favorite previous pads was a $450-a-month set of privacy-free, miniature rooms in a four-person share, whose lack of solitude and space was made up for with a slate walk-in shower — the idea of having two walk down two unnecessary sets of stairs to go to the bathroom in a studio that’s randomly been converted to a quasi-triplex doesn’t appeal to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really complaining. It’s fun to look for apartments in New York, hell, it’s unbelievable to think that I’m in New York again. But it is a little bit excruciating to be searching for a place to crash when the house you’re living in has sold in record time. The couple that’s moving in is pregnant and excited. Which means I’m starting to get itchy and dusting off the suitcases. They bought a house that was, to me, completely awkward. Between the random additions both my mother and the previous owners constructed, the hodgepodge of 1960s built-in fixtures and modern refinishing, not to mention the absolutely unsightly furniture that fills every room, it would not be my first choice in places to locate my ventricles. But they put a bid on a "spacious," "lovely Colonial" that had "great flow." I understand the word game, ’cause I played it from both sides.

Just as with a singles website, nothing is perfect. No matter what seems to be your dream-come-true place or person, there are going to be drawbacks. He leaves the seat up or you discover pubes in your favorite lavender soap. She cries during phone commercials and pouts whenever you wear your favorite baseball cap out to dinner. An apartment can’t truly have it all. Even if your living space is actually big enough to actually live in, you’ll discover that the shower has the water pressure of Larry King’s stream of piss. Your bedroom might be large enough to hold a bed and a desk, but it’s a five flight walk-up with no laundry in the building and a pug next door who barks every time the wind shifts.

My standards weren’t that high to begin with, but as the showings went on I began to kind of hate those brokerage firms’ websites, with their wide-angle-lens photos and lipstick-on-pig paragraphs. I understand why they do it, and I understand why they get away with it even more. People need places to live. There’s usually a level of desperation when you’re looking for a home, especially if your renting. Realtors need to get bodies moving through those rooms because, even if the apartments don’t deliver beyond their Internet-born seduction, you’re gonna have to make your bed somewhere. I just wish there was a level of integrity, but I should know from my job that, in marketing, you need to apply words like a fresh coat of paint.

Drop me a line, maybe I’ll invite you to my housewarming party, if I ever find a place to live. AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.

Some other takes on the meaning of real estate:

Realtorspeak: A language that may need translation.

A witty "Real Estate Secret Decoder Ring" by a real estate savvy Phoenix resident.

A woman in Los Angeles writes about her experience putting meaning to words.