Leading Economic Indicators: Sexually Unfrustrated Jack Tripper

Is Norman Lear still alive? If so, he should start working on the pilot because it’s a sit-com waiting to happen:

It’s an impressive space they live in, and one that is decidedly “grown-up” for a neighborhood teeming with party-loving youths who share messy apartments four or five to a lease. They have two floors. High ceilings. Terrace off the master bedroom. Brand-new everything, including granite countertops in the kitchen. By any measure, their domestic life is one that any young couple living in New York City would envy, with the exception, perhaps, of one small detail: They have a roommate.

His name is Juan Carlos “J. C.” Villars, and he was sitting on an adjacent couch with his legs kicked up on an oak-colored coffee table, a stubbly faced fellow in a dark blue dress shirt and jeans fiddling alternately with a set of hex head wrenches and a controller for the Nintendo Wii.

Mr. Bronstein, 31, a marketing consultant in dark-rimmed glasses (you might also remember him as a former editor-at-large at FHM magazine, or from Road Rules season four), and Ms. Hoge, 27, a pretty event manager for Lincoln Center who wore her brown hair clipped up, said that they couldn’t imagine ever not living with Mr. Villars, 32, an engineering project manager — even if, one day in the not-so-immediate future, marriage and kids entered the picture.

“We talk about not moving, and we talk about not imagining J. C. leaving,” said Mr. [Jake] Bronstein, who’s been close friends with Mr. Villars for more than three years, longer than he and Ms. [Kristina] Hoge have been dating. “So I think, by transitive property, that all adds up to getting married and still staying with J. C.”

“We’ve joked about it, and none of those things seem like a reason why we’d wanna get rid of him,” Ms. Hoge said with a laugh.

“I can’t even imagine how I’ll ever get there, quite honestly,” Mr. Bronstein said. “How I’ll ever get beyond . . . this.”