Recently, I’ve been idly interested in buying a home. I’ve been told that owning your own home is “The American Dream,” but even though I wouldn’t call myself a typical American, it sure as hell isn’t one of my fantasies. My fantasies include Paris Hilton, chloroform and handcuffs, plus some Krazy Glue and a plastic suitcase handle for leverage. Home ownership is not a factor. Because you’d have to be crazy to do that kind of shit in a place that’s under your real name.
But whether it’s my dream or not, I am getting a little tired of watching my rent creep up every year. Plus, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that every shot of Jim Beam is an exciting game of Security Deposit Russian Roulette. One Saturday morning, I woke up and discovered I’d disassembled the toilet. Thankfully, it was my neighbor’s. We had words. Luckily, the incident went away when his word was “lawsuit,” and mine was “arson,” but I digress.
So I was thinking about biting the homeowner bullet, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna work out for me. A couple weeks ago, I saw a place I liked, so I went to talk to a real estate agent, which is when I ran into my first problem: talking to a fucking real estate agent.
Every real estate agent I’ve ever met strikes me as the kind of guy who would’ve stayed on the grift forever if it weren’t for the rotten hours and natural-fiber clothing. My real estate agent did everything in his power to make me feel like his closest, most personal line of credit with two convenient lie-receiving anntennae on the sides of my head.
He told me, with a straight face, that the two-bedroom condo with no lawn, deck, or fence to block out the porno shop down the block was worth more than a third of a million dollars, and that the price was slightly below what the average person in the greater Boston area was paying. So right out of the gate, I knew I was dealing with a man who understood that the average person in the greater Boston area was completely batshit insane.
Even so, he said that he would finance me that third of a million dollars, even though I clearly stunk of scotch and broken promises. The caveat was that I had to prove that I not only had a job, but that I’d been at the job for more than two years, and that I had no intention of leaving it (He assured me that waking up every workday screaming didn’t count in any legally binding sense).
And that’s when I finally realized that The American Dream really wasn’t my dream. If all you want out of life is to be able to look people in the eye and proudly say those four magic words – “I am a homeowner” – more power to you, but me? I’m a little too fond of four other magic words that I like to proudly say: “Fuck you, I quit.”
Besides, if you had my fantasies, you wouldn’t want a mortgage standing between you and a midnight flight out of the country, either.
[tags]Real estate, home ownership, realty, mortgage, American Dream, Dark Humor[/tags]
