The poem opens with the speaker on the phone with a possible landlady, wanting to rent a room in a boarding house or an apartment. The lodging appears to be adequate: it is not overpriced, the location is not inconvenient, and the landlady does not reside on the premises. However, the speaker fears that he will get the wrong idea from the description of the house and refuses to rent to anyone who lives with parents. This implies that the speaker has already been misled by similar appearances before. He goes on to say that he is tired of running after women who do not want anything to do with him. It seems that his situation has become too common to warrant further discussion with the potential tenant. At the end of the conversation, he announces that he will go look at other places if the first one fails to interest him. This indicates that he is looking for something particular in a place and that he has no intention of renting any room in which he does not find what he is looking for. As for the location of the house, it is not specified. We can assume that it is in London because that is where the speaker calls from. However, we cannot conclude much else about it. For example, it may be an apartment in a large building, it may be a single room in a private house, or it could even be a cave or a tree trunk where he sleeps each night.