Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
|
Looking for vacation homes to rent in Florida to spend time with your friends: fun, amusing to imagine staying at a home that you could in no way afford, mostly emotionally uplifting.
Looking for homes in Florida for a parent to retire to: depressing, houses either look like the meth dealers are still hiding in one of the closets or they look like a hotel room you can't wait to never see again, prices make no sense as some really terrible houses miles away from anything worthwhile are five times as expensive as beautiful houses right on the wa....oh, right, because the meth dealers need their privacy. This is equally as frustrating as looking for housing in Boston, except the houses are somehow even worse. Some of them are just pictures of random palm trees that say "Are you interested in touring the house?" Clearly these are traps that vampires use to make more senior citizen vampires.
0 Comments
Comrade: We have mail from the landlord. Should I open it?
Me: Sure.Is it about the annual bugspraying? Comrade: (sends photo). Landlord: Thank you for your continued tenancy. We have checked out ledgers, and wanted to inform you that you have earned a credit on your next month's rent. Provided you pay your July rent on time, you can deduct $3.03 from your next payment. Me: BRING BACK THE GUILLOTINE!!!! If Clint Eastwood movies have taught me anything it's that power corrupts. Say you own property. Say you own a lot of property that you, maybe don't like to to do anything with. You're too important to fix your tenants' appliances, or return their calls. Shit, you own property damnit. Thirtysomething buildings worth.
When a tenant calls to let you know that a city worker has, in the course of repairing the road out front, accidentally severed the power cable to your building, you don't have to answer the phone. You own property. But when the tenants give your phone number to the cops and the electric company, well, you figure you'd best get there before they get one of their fancy tools to break into the basement on their own. And aren't you a great person for finally doing your job? Now, you've always known your tenants have no power. When the winter was its coldest, and a fuse blew in the basement, and the tenants called because they had no heat, and no electricity on one half of the apartment, you sit back in your nice, heated, house with your trophy cunt, and drink, and bask in the knowledge that you own property. Oh, sure, you could hire someone to manage your properties for you, and they could solve your tenants' problems, but, the thing is, you're a lying shitbag, so you have problems trusting other people because you assume that they, too, are lying shitbags. So you wait three days until it's convenient for you to drop by and flip the breaker in the basement that you refuse to give the tenants keys to. What are they going to do? Complain? You own property. But now the city is calling you, and the electric company, and there are police involved, and not because of your tenants but because the city made a mistake, and they are trying their damndest to fix it. So you show up in a reasonable amount of time, and you chitchat and exchange pleasantries with the working class people and your tenants. You are a little impatient because your trophycunt is in the car, and she's angry because the little people and the law are intruding on her baby eating time, or whatever it is she does when she molts her trophy skin and lets her true demon form out. You don't have time to remember everything your trophycunt does, you're too busy owning property. But the city and the electric company are taking too long, and you're too important to stick around. And when a tenant offers to lock up the basement as soon as you leave, you decide that isn't good enough, so you lock up the basement and leave. Here's the problem: in an effort to be kind to the tenants, the city placed a generator next to the building to supply them with electricity, and the city doesn't want to lose the generator, so they've parked people next to it to make sure the generator isn't stolen, vandalized, or whatever it is people to do with massive generators. The generator is turned on around three pm, and will be kept on until the power can be connected. And, hey, at eight o'clock, they city and the electric company are ready to turn on the power, cut the generator, and go about their merry way. But you're so busy owning property and being important that you don't feel it necessary to let them into the basement. So the generator, the city employees, and the electricians sit on the street collecting overtime. How bad would your luck have to be for the deputy mayor to show up on his motorcycle at 1AM and start asking why the project that should have been finished at 8pm is still going on? Pretty bad? What if he's there and discovers that the neighbors, not your tenants, but the neighbors have been complaining about the noise? What if he's there and discovers your illegal advertising for one of your many side businesses posted on the front of your non-commercial, residential building? What if he's so pissed that you've refused the city and the electric company entrance, that he decides that first thing in the morning all of your important property is going to be inspected by the city, the fire, and the water departments? Is karma that much of a cunt? Oh, yes. Oh, yes it is. Tomorrow morning, you'll realize that you have to reimburse the city for the overtime the city employees worked. And you'll be fined for refusing entrance. And the inspectors will probably hear a lot of complaints from the tenants about you not ever fixing anything, or returning phone calls. You know, those things that property owners are supposed to do. In short, you will have a miserable fucken day. And I will be laughing very very hard. I think no one has called me out for the way I've been overusing cunt lately, because they understand why it's such a foul word for me. I give it the same vitriol that lesbians give ballsack, and bisexuals use dignity. Just one of those things that has no use in our daily lives. I mean, I haven't seen a cunt up close (not counting my landlady) in a number of years now. And while that number isn't nearly as large as I would like, it is greater than two, which is a start.
I try and only use the word in the company of people who will understand me, or on The Internet, which is just a bastion of tolerance. I understand why some people don't like it. I don't like when people use the word retard as an insult when they mean stupid. I don't mind if they use retarded to describe someone who is slow moving due to a weight dragging behind them, or someone who will be late for work because construction retarded their progress, but stupid people are just stupid. And cunts are cunts. This week I am calling her a cunt because she called me while I was in the pharmacy across the street. She had blocked her number, and had I not been expecting a call from someone whose number I didn't know, I wouldn't have answered the phone at all. But I did. "Safey, this is Cunt. Do you know what the date is today?" "Excuse me?" To be fair, I probably sounded a bit rude, but I know a lot of Cunts, and I was not expecting any of them to use me as a phone-activated calendar. "Do. You. Know. What. Date it is?" "The...tenth, I think. Which Cunt is this?" "Safey, if it's the tenth, why don't I have your check?" "I put a check in the box on the first." Late the night of the first, but they never check it until the second or third, anyway. "We don't have it." And, here, perhaps, I should have been diplomatic, and said I'd look into it. But, here's the deal: for the last four months, she has told me that she hasn't received my check. And each of these prior months, it's turned out to be another of the roommates' checks that she hasn't received. She has been wrong four consecutive times. In fact, the only time I have ever been late with a check was the first month when I had my mother send a check to her. Unfortunately, Cunt isn't Cunt's real name. It's an alias. She probably pissed off the wrong sort of people before she married into money, and she has therefore changed her first and last names. I don't mean she changed her last name to her husband's, I mean she changed it to the name of the fancy car she hopes to one day own and use to run over small children and poor, elderly people. So, since her fake name isn't on the mailbox, the check was returned to my mother. Eventually. First, the tenants upstairs held onto it for a while. At any rate, rather than taking the diplomatic route, I said "Are you sure it's my check this time? You keep telling me you haven't received my check, and it ends up either 1.) your husband has it, or 2.) you have mine, and are missing another roommate's." "You should know whether or not you wrote me a check." She said, which I did know, and which I hadn't given any impression of not knowing. "I DID write you a check, and left it in the box. Are you sure you didn't lose it again?" A couple of months ago she'd lost two of my roommates' checks (they were in the same envelope), causing mass chaos when she told the two roommates whose checks she'd already cashed (mine, included) that she didn't have our money. At this point, I was nearly back at the house. Hoping that she and her husband would be in the driveway, so I could talk to them face to face. They were not. "Hold on." She said. "I'm not dealing with this retard." I thought she had put the phone down after the hold on and was addressing someone in whatever circle of hell she was currently being flogged in. I was wrong. "Hi. This is Cunt's Husband." Cunt's husband said. She had called me a retard. While I was within earshot. Deliberately while I was in earshot. And now she was going to try and Good Cop me with her doormat husband? "Look." I said. And before I could really vent my anger, he interrupted. "I'm going to check and see which check we're missing when we get home, but I think it's yours." "Well...I'll go check, myself. Either way, I'm going to write you a new check. If you find the old one, cash them both, and I won't write you a check for July, because I'm tired of your lousy bookkeeping." "I'm sorry." He said. It's a phrase I imagine he mutters in his sleep. Especially when Cunt saws off and re-attaches his head with her teeth. "You should check with your roommates, and see if one of them hasn't paid us yet. I know we're missing one check, and I think it's yours." I entered the house, where Byrne was sitting on the couch. My bad mood was very apparent. "One of my roommates is home, the others should be back in a couple of hours, I'll check, and call you back." And I hung up the phone. According to my electronic bank records, it was my check that hadn't been cashed. So I called back Cunt's phone. She answered. "Give me your husband." I said. She handed the phone to him. "Hello?" "Yea, I checked my bank statement. You haven't cashed my check. But I definitely put it in the box on the first, before one of my other roommates, whose check you've already cashed." "Could you write another one and leave it in the box? The one out front." And here, I refrained from saying, Oh, you mean the one I've been using every month since last October? "Yea, I called the place the other day." FULL OF SHIT! FULL OF SHIT! "And they finally got the part in. I don't know how long before we get it." Probably the day we move out. "I'm thinking of calling the Better Business Bureau." "Me, too." I said. "It's been five months. Also, I don't appreciate being called a retard by your wife." Silence. "Yea, okay. So, the money will be in the box tomorrow?" "Tomorrow night, probably. Or Thursday. I've got a busy week." It was the first of two days off for me. "Ok. Well, thanks." And, as I hung up the phone, I said "What a cunt." Hoping he hadn't hung up yet, or, better yet, had handed the phone back to his wife. See, when I'm calling someone a cunt, I'm using it as an insult the way a chipmunk might use the name teeth when he's annoyed by an obnoxious beaver. Sure, a lot of people have teeth, but beavers are just so...teethy about their teeth ownership. And this is what my cunt landlady is like, picking up the phone with her gigantic vagina, and using it to queef the word retard at anyone who doesn't bow in awe at her enormous, enormous cunt. Instead, opting for "Sure. And while I have you on the phone, when are you going to fix our washing machine. It's June." Our washing machine having been broken since February. On my way home from work, I saw two dozen or so people sitting in the bleachers around an empty baseball field. The lights were on, but the dugout was empty, and the field was bare. I thought of you. Waiting for some sorted adventure, some ridiculous snatch of conversation. Any sign of entertaining life.
I went outside, a few minutes later, and there were a few people playing underhand softball. Does there really have to be metaphor everywhere I look? See the game is going on, whether people are watching or not. And people are always watching, whether or not they can see the game. And existentialist metaphor is so dated and boring. Would you like another cookie for your cache? I've been not seeing Sora, and Zach, and an assortment of other supposedly interested parties (I'm not calling Sora or Zach supposedlies...but the rest of them) for months now. The kind of people that obsessively call or IM or e-mail saying how much they want to see you, but none of them have any interest in actually hanging out, they just want you to pay attention to them. Attention and interest are such dissimilar similar words. Interest accrues, attention wanes. The crowd shows up expecting some sort of show or game, but they're easily distracted by other passing shinies. I am tired of games, of faked interest, and attention seekers. This is why I've been macheteing people out of my life. Weed friends. A good way to fall out of friendship with me: e-mail me a link to your suicide note. Don't explain why you are depressed, just mention chasms and blackness and voids and pain. Forget the fact that my first ex actually killed himself, whereas you are just an attention seeking bottom feeder who will call the next day as though nothing was wrong. Threatening suicide is like posting an ad for gay sex on Craigslist. You can't chalk it up to a phase, or drunken experimentation. It's something you either really want, or you're an asshole for doing it. Typing of assholes, this morning I repeatedly woke up on the right side of the bed. It's what was going on around the bed that was wrong. I was having a terrible reaction to a fairly mundane dream, the first time. I woke up to the sound of my landlady's voice outside my window. She wasn't yelling, but she wasn't having a pleasant conversation, either. By the time I got my clothes on, and headed out to the driveway, both she and the upstairs neighbor she was talking with were gone. I was asleep for another two hours when I had another frustrating return to consciousness, and I heard someone pounding on the front storm door (it didn't occur to me until just now that we have no storm door to our apartment, the upstairs apartment has one). I heard her voice again, and waited for her to come in without calling me, so I could take my bad mood out on her. But she didn't come in. As she walked through the driveway I heard her say "I usually hate coming here, but this time, I feel pretty good." And she did her obnoxious twitter laugh. Was she coming to FINALLY fix the washer that broke down in February? Perhaps, install the dishwasher she promised would be set up by Labor Day 2007? Of course not. She was gone when I was calm enough to walk outside, where a police officer told me he and an electrician were cutting off power. As you can probably guess by this post, it wasn't the power to our apartment. "Do you live in Apartment A?" He asked. "Nope." "It's not your unlucky day, then." And he smiled. "Cruella Deville over there," and he pointed to where the landlady's car had been "doesn't like you, though. She thought we were here to cut the downstairs power." I'm really glad I don't understand what goes on in her head. What sort of game she's watching behind those eyes. I am not having a very good day. I am on the outer edges of sick, which means I'm not coughing as much or as heavily, but I'm still not overly well. Unable to sleep, I headed to Allston to run some errands. I vaguely remembered getting slightly frustrated at work yesterday, and rearranging the racks so that they were alphabetical, as opposed to "in complete chaos". I also remembered leaving a note that may have sounded meaner than I intended, so I stopped in at the store, just before it opened and talked with my coworker. All was peace and blah.
Since she had to run some errands, I stayed and watched the store for a couple of hours. What I wanted to do when I left, was put on my headphones and listen to relaxing music on my way home, but there's been something wrong with my Zune for the past couple of weeks. I've been too busy to find out exactly what. It runs fine. The computer software runs fine, but the computer stopped being able to recognize the device. I figured there was something wrong with the cable, so I went to Best Buy to buy a new cable. Which, of course, is not sold on its own, but in a pack of adapters, for a total of $40. I bought the package. I decided to take the bus home, instead of the T, because there's a stop just in front of my house. But. Of course, but. There has been construction in front of our house for several weeks, possibly months at this point. Recently, the construction ebbed away from our house, and down the block. Today, it's flowed back. So the bus had to take a detour, which even the driver seemed surprised by. Fine, it's a nice day for a walk. Well, as it turns out, the new cable doesn't help things. So I call the Zune people, and the very nice lady at customer service runs me through the same list I went through myself when I checked their support webpage. Everything appears to be in working order. Which means I have to wait for them to send me a box to put the device in to mail to them to have them repair and mail back. Which will take an undisclosed amount of time. I also got some annoying family phone calls, nothing awful, but little stresses that I will try and help remedy. So I got off the phone, and decided to take a relaxing hot shower. I joked to myself that the hot water wouldn't be working. That would be funny, and annoying at the same time. But the water was perfect. I stepped in, pre-rinsed, put some shampoo in my hair and...TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP on the bathroom window. The fuck? TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP. I turned off the water, put on my towel and went to the window. A slightly heavyset guy in a suit and tie, surrounded by four college girls are on the other side of the window. "The keys don't work!" I shook my head. Nope, they were still there. I threw on my pants and t-shirt and went to the side door. I am pretty much too angry to even type what transpired. The guy was very nice. We were very pleasant to each other. The bottom line being: the landlady is a psycho. I have the day off tomorrow, and I'm going to see a lawyer about what my rights are, and whether I can withhold rent or sue her for any of her actions, something I never had to do with the previous landlady, because she was just crazy, not a negligent, greedy, lying sociopath. I want to make her life as difficult as she seems to want to make mine, and my roommates'. I love being home, sick, and listening to the landlady out and out lie to prospective tenants.
"It comes with a completely functional dishwasher and disposal" that we never bothered to install, so they're really just here for decoration. "There's a washer and dryer" that have been broken for a month, that we've refused to fix because we are entirely too busy. "I'm pretty sure heat and electricity are included in the rent." What? No. We've been paying those bills ourselves. Oh, dear. So, a prospective tenant just asked me some direct questions about the apartment, and I appear to have, very nicely, contradicted what she said. I did not, however, say anything negative about them. Which, I think, shows that I'm growing as a person. All I said was "I apologize for the dishes in the sink. My roommates are kind of messy, and the dishwasher hasn't worked since before we moved in. And, for the pile of laundry, but the washing machine broke a month ago, and they haven't got around to fixing it yet." "Are the landlords nice people?" Hold back. Hold back. Don't say anything awful. Don't tell the truth. "I think so. I've had limited interaction with them." was as diplomatic as I could be. "Would the place be cleaned thoroughly before we moved in?" "God, I hope so, for your sake. I know my room will be taken care of." "What about the furniture?" "Excuse me?" "Would the couch be cleaned and such?" "Uhhh, this is our furniture. The apartment comes unfurnished. I mean, the refrigerator, the non-working dishwasher, the non-working washer, and the dryer were here when we moved in, but everything else is ours." "Oh. I thought the ad said it came furnished." Gnashing of teeth, cracking of knuckles. "You must be thinking of another apartment." Every day since I picked up the last of the money she owed me, my landlady calls me.
Hi Safey. This Landlady. I want you call me. I can not open window. You I think open window when you live here. I need you show me how open widow. It very important. Please call me back. I can't explain how happy these messages make me. I've been saving them. I'm thinking of making them mp3 files and listening to them when I'm having a bad day. Cause guess what, Landlady, your windows are not my problem. I laugh at your windows. I throw imaginary rocks in their general direction. I laugh when the imaginary broken glass tinkles. And then I laugh at the word tinkles. Tinkles. Oh, I'm never, for the record, calling her back. tinkles There is too much distance between fingers and keyboard. Between clock hands and ticks. There were too many e-mails in my inbox to even look at. I'm not ignoring you, I'm overunderwhelmed. Been mentally playing hackeysack with my former landlady's head.
September 1st? 2nd? One of the first post-living in her house days, she agreed to meet me at 9 to give me my deposit and the money I had paid her in advanced rent. Nine came and went. Nine thirty came and went. One of the new Chinese tenants (all the new tenants are Chinese) came downstairs and asked if she could have some of the furniture I was leaving behind. So I helped her carry them upstairs, and lamented over Landlady being late. "She...she crazy. I no trust. And she not in Boston now. She in DC." "What?" So I called Landlady, "Hi (Landlady), this is (Safey), I'm at the house waiting for you." "Yes." She said. "I be at nine." "It's ten fifteen." "Yes. I be at nine." "Nine o'clock when, (Landlady)? nine o'clock tomorrow morning? Nine o'clock tomorrow night? Nine when?" "Nine. Yes. I be at nine." This is when I started to doubt the whole "I no speak good English" routine. According to the new tenant upstairs, Landlady is just as crazy and hard to understand in her native tongue. I hung up having no idea when she was coming back. My guess was the ninth of September. But she called during the next Thursday shift to complain about some of my stuff still being in the basement. "You gave me until October to get my stuff out of the basement." "Yes." She said. "But today Thursday." I gave up. "Fine. Look, I'll borrow my boss's van, drive over and pick my stuff up after work tonight. I will be there at nine. You should be there to give me the money you owe me." "Yes. I be at nine." "Nine o'clock, tonight, you will be at the house to give me the check?" "Yes." "Not September ninth, or in nine months? Tonight? Nine?" "Yes I be nine." So, after a full day arranging comic books, flirting with hipster nerds, and dealing with family madness, I picked up the comic bookmobile and drove to my house. She, of course, wasn't there, but I started moving the shit that I'd left behind. A box or two of my own stuff, but mostly stuff from Divine, Celeste, Sir Trick, Sora, and the previous tenants, who never moved all their belongings out. I was just about finished when I heard lots of Mandarin being spoken by a familiar voice. "Landlady?" I shouted. She did not respond. But I saw her walk out to her car. So I ran up the stairs to where she could see me. "Do you have my check?" "You couch need move." "Excuse me? You said I should leave behind some furniture for the new tenants. I said I'd leave the couch, the computer desk, and the bureau. I gave the bureau and the computer desk to the people upstairs. So all that is here is the couch." "It too big. Need move." "I can't. It doesn't fit through the doors." And it's true. Someone busted the double doors at the front of the house, and the couch is too big to maneuver through a single door. Still, Landlady's husband, two of the upstairs tenants and I tried to move it out. Unsuccessfully. They addressed each other, and me, in Mandarin the entire time. Yelling at me in a language I don't understand. What I did understand, and what they came to understand, is that the couch wasn't going to get outside until the doors were fixed. Which was not my fucken problem. "Ok. Well, I can't do anything about the couch until you get the door fixed. Please give me my check." "You have, I think, stuff in basement." "Yes. I am moving it out now. There's two bags left." "Last tenants leave too much stuff. Too much. And I fined for throw out. I no want fine again." "(Landlady), there are two bags downstairs, you have watched me moving my stuff into a van. Give me the money you owe me so I can move out." "Ok. I write check while you move bags." Fine. I went to the basement, picked up the bags and walked to the van. When I came back, she was gone. No check. I left a note on the door, telling her to call me when she read it. I called her phone a number of times. Two days later, she e-mailed me Hi, because when I am home you are in work. It's hard to meet. Do you mind to give me your address and I can mail you a check( that may be fast than we meet). I minded, and told her as such. She pretended not to know what I meant. The walls of my old apartment were not at all like a beautiful woman. And neither was the woman who owned it. Knowing full well I was in Texas for a couple of weeks, she called and left me the following message: "(Safey), it (Insane Landlady Bitch). You no at house when I stop by. You unstable. You artist. I no renew lease for you. You call me."
So I dialed her number, hands shaking, ready to curse up a storm. But my phone would not connect. So I waited until I was calmer and e-mailed her a message reminding her that I was in Texas, that I had received her very rude message, and that I would look for a new apartment. I then broke the news to my new, not-shitty roommate (who was also in TX) and began searching Craigslist for apartments instead of sperm recipients. Things looked promising. There were loads of apartments available, and many of them were affordable and close to the comic book store, where I'm now officially working. Then I had my eventful trip home with Ben and the bus people. And I called my landlady. She did not call back. Days passed into week. I e-mailed. She failed to respond. Unfuck her. So, my new roommate, Byrne, said he'd help look for a new apartment, and another poetry friend of mine, Mike (not a Michael, Mike) said that he and his imaginary friend were looking for an apartment. So we pooled our resources. Spent a couple of days searching through Craigslist, and then Mike found three or four apartments that we should look at. We only made it to the first one. How to describe the oasis of freshly laid Greek marble tiles, bamboo, stainless steel kitchen appliances, a washer and dryer without coin slots, a stunning lack of rats. There aren't enough words. Out of our price range comes to mind, but it wasn't. It was...$150 a month cheaper than where I was currently living with Divine the Nowhere Near Great and Just Plain Old Terrible. So we took it. No look at other, more expensive apartments was necessary. Though, something about the way the landlady smiled when she talked made me uneasy, Mike assured me she was a great person. That night, while changing the trash at three a.m. an acrobatic rat did a backflip out of the trash can and hit me in the face. A sure sign I was not meant to stay. There was also a certain smell to the apartment. Mike suggested it was something dead, I noted that I hadn't seen Divine for a while. I optimistically opened the door to her room, but her corpse was not there, and neither was a great deal of her stuff. So she must have moved out. Cool, I'd alert my lawyer. The following day, Mike, his imaginary friend and I went to sign the new lease (Byrne was working). Sure enough, when I got there there were three people in the room besides me: the new landlady, Mike, and MybuddyDex (the aforementioned imaginary friend). He seemed almost real. While we were signing, someone knocked on the door, another one of Mike's friends that I'd assumed to be imaginary (who also thought MybuddyDex was imaginary, and vice-versa). He'd just moved in down the street and was serving as a guarantor for us. The ink on the lease was barely dry when my phone rang, it was Byrne, who'd just arrived at our old apartment. "Your Crazy Landlady is here. She's yelling something about you not calling or something." I groaned and muttered. There was less than a day left in August. Soon she and her madness would be behind me. "We should check out the neighborhood." Mike said. A great idea. So we wandered over to the nearest grocery store to check it out. It was...huh. Sawdust on the floor. Hysterically laughing employees. Spam EVERYWHERE. And more types of pudding than The Geneva Convention allows for. "Pudding!" Mike said. And we shit talked and wandered around and..."Hey, where'd MyBuddyDex go?" We looked around and around. No sign of him. "Fuck." I said. "You've got to concentrate harder, Mike. Everytime you lose focus one of us disappears, like the people on Michael J. Fox's photograph in Back To The Future." We went to the checkout counter, where there was still no sign of MyBuddyDex. "I think he's gone forever." Mike mused. The checkout girl said "Should we page him?" Of course we should page him. So we did "MyBuddyDex to the front of the store please, your parents are waiting for you and very worried." "Guys." MyBuddyDex said. "I'm right here. I've been here the whole time. Why were you guys talking about me like I wasn't." Oh, this apartment is so going to rule. Outside, on our way back to the apartment, we caught a glimpse of a harvesty moon. "So beautiful." "What?" Asked Mike's Other Imaginary Friend. "The moon." Mike said. "I can't see it." "Why?" Mike asked. "Because you're Jewish?" "It's true. The only drawback to being one of the Chosen People. You can't see the moon." I cocked my head. "The Chosen People. You're a Pokemon? Guarantor, I choose you! Lease signing attack!" To which Mike's Other (Witty) Imaginary Friend replied "Guarantor! Guarantor!" Oh, this apartment is definitely going to rule. But first I had to go back to the old place to pack my shit for the move. I packed for a day. Wasn't totally finished, but had a good lead on it. Byrne and I took four trips back and forth to the new apartment using his Rav4. The next day we had a van rented, and were ready to move the big furniture. We were tired after trip four and ready to sleep. I went into the kitchen and rearranged my refrigerator magnets to read Worst Landlady Bitch ever. So, of course, there was a knock on the door. Worst Fucken Landady Bitch ever. "Hi (Safey). You look so good. Very nice. I renew yo lease. You stay, I think. Been try to call, but you no answer." The fuck? The hallway was clearly filled with boxes, it was the last day of,...scratch that, it's now September 1st, but just barely. There was no way I was staying the fuck there. "Sorry" you insane bitch "but I already have a new apartment. Cheaper. Nicer." And the landlady is normal. "But, I think, you, Celeste, all you friends been living here eight years total. Always one of you. I renew lease." "I'm not staying. Look, I've been cleaning as much of the apartment as I can, scrubbing the bathroom and everything." "Ok." She said. "Looks very nice. Maybe I see kitchen." Yes, kitchen where the refrigerator is, and the magn..."Uhhh, actually, I have a question..." We stood there blinking at each other. What was my question? "Shelves! There are shelves in the closet. Should I leave them? Throw them out?" "I like shelves. I keep. Now, kitchen..." "Oh, and my computer desk. Should I leave that?" "I see." And so I went through every piece of furniture I didn't want one at a time, and then asked inane questions about whatever I could think of. Maybe Byrne had heard and had already rearranged the magnets. And maybe if I imagine hard enough, flowers will sprout out of my ass (though why anyone would want that to happen, I have no idea). The stalling eventually worked, and she never made it to the kitchen. "You have one week to move out stuff. No worry bout hurry. I rhyme. I artist too." I'm sure she meant to say unstable. The next day, after I got done with work, I met Mike and MyBuddyDex at my old apartment, we loaded furniture (including Byrne's GIGANTIC bed), and headed to the new place to unload it. Then we went back for smaller things. Byrne joined us, replacing MyBuddyDex who had to go to work. During our last packing session, Mike fell asleep on a mattress in Divine's former room. When Byrne and I were just about done, he awoke with a scream. "Dude, there was a mouse in my ear." "What?" "I woke up and a mouse was nuzzling my ear. I've got to get out of here." I knew exactly how he felt. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2025
|
RSS Feed