what is the word

To de-stress from looking for roommates all day, I paid my first trip ever to the Gotham Book Mart at lunch time. I had a terrible time trying to choose anything & actually I walked out empty-handed. I was torn between Orlando, which I've never read, & Virginia Woolf's diaries, which look fascinating. I felt drawn to the diaries but foolish about buying them, since the only Woolf I can remember reading (using "remember" in its loosest sense) is To The Lighthouse about ten years ago. Christ, I never even saw The Hours. I liked the idea of buying them both & reading them concurrently but neither copy was used so they were $15 each. Anyway at the moment I'm in the middle of Claudius the God, the complete stories of Grace Paley & A Remembrance of Things Past of all things. I felt very Geoff Dyer-like when it struck me that the only reason I was looking at books at all was to avoid reading A Remembrance of Things Past altogether.
Back at work & new-book-less I started harmlessly flirting with the male applicants to whom I must deny my apartment because of my roommate Joel's self-hating bias against men. I loved this one who replied:

Yeah, I thought as much. Never been as penalized for being male as when I started looking for a room. All the best apartments are female only. Oy.

Then I said:

wow, im really sorry to hear it. in defense of boys, i think they are great!

This was quickly followed by an email from him casually asking if I wanted to "chat" sometime along with a link to his web site, the front page of which featured an extremely dorky headshot of an actor I assume is him. Right. I deleted his email & got back to business.