I apologize for the limited writing of substance this week, but trust me when I say that it’s for the good of the site: I am currently shopping for a new Home Office for The American Jerk. And since buying real estate in the current market would mean drinking less (Because selling blood to make your mortgage leads to a mellow buzz at two beers, and it leads to yenching up the ramen noodles you eat at every meal to avoid foreclosure at two and a half beers), this means that I am busy calling and meeting with rental agents, who are remarkably like real estate agents except in this relationship, both of us think that the other guy’s a scumbag. And in this particular case, we’re both right.
Frankly, I don’t understand the attitude these people cop when they meet me. Sure; I’ve got long hair, I usually wear t-shirts advertising one of any number of fine distilled beverages, and I often have white cigarette filter flecks on my lips that could be mistaken for rabies, but that doesn’t make me a bad guy. Hell, I try to explain to these people that more years than not, I have an income that approaches five figures. I am looking for upscale property! The absolute finest home that can be rented on a tenant-at-will basis with no security deposit in case I decide to bail.
This evening, I was shown an apartment in a metro Boston building that I was hoping would be the home of my dreams, because it’s half a block from my favortie comic store. Sadly, Steve, the store owner, will be pleased that I have decided to hang my hat elsewhere, because I like the dude, and now I’m going to buy more books from him to make sure he can afford a gun.
I was met at the front door by the rental agent and a young woman who, with a forty-ounce beer in a brown paper bag at her feet, was simultaneously smoking a Lucky Strike while breast feeding an infant. To be fair, I don’t know for sure that it was her infant; she may have just found that way to poison other people’s noisy children for which I’ve been searching my entire adult life.
I was then brought up three flights of stairs to view a corner unit, which could charitably be listed a one-bedroom apartment if the rental agent was willing to stop also advertising that the place had a walk-in closet. I was proudly advised that heat was included with the rent, which would have been a good selling point had I been able to locate a single heating element in the entire fucking apartment. Apparently the place was heated by happy thoughts, which is unfortunate, because at that moment, I had none.
The agent brought me out of the building via a different route, and that’s when I noticed children’s toys being stored in the halls. Not a hall, the halls. Further, even though the hallway walls were made of solid brick, I could hear the screams of small children every step of the way out. And I’m sorry; I can’t live that close to small children.
It’s a court order kind of thing. I don’t like to talk about it.
[tags]Real estate, apartment rental, dark humor[/tags]
This is frigging’ hysterical.
Of course you forgot to mention that there was a mystery switch in the bathroom that had been labeled “Don’t Do It!” or something like that.