Like I said, don't expect anything mind-blowing on there. It's more like my own internal monologue, really. I don't know why anyone would really want to read it, but there it is.
UNFINISHED BLOG POSTS FROM THE PAST PART 1: APRIL 18, 2006
I was just flipping through some old posts I made and came across a bunch of stuff that I started writing, never finished, and never published online. I guess since I rarely seem to be motivated to write about stuff that is going on lately, I might as well finish up what I started. Here's something from TWO YEARS AGO(!).
It's kind of appropriate, I think, since it shows how long I've been desperately searching for an apartment in New York to escape having to go home to New Jersey, and my epic failures in attempting to do so.
Here we go:
Apartment Searches, Past and Present.
(Last saved on 4.18.2006)
My apartment search this year was much more fruitful than the last, thank god.
Last year, all I did was troll Craigslist for a few days before giving up and returning to New Jersey to pass the summer months living at home with my parents.
One of the Craigslists ads I responded to last year looked so promising -- $700 a month for a place right on Union Square seemed absolutely perfect for me; I had two part-time jobs in Manhattan lined up and could probably pay the rent myself while still saving a bit of money in the bank.
So I ended up talking on the phone with this guy named David, who immediately annoyed me by doing something I absolutely hate -- He talked while playing the guitar, barely paying attention to our conversation, while giggling with one of his friends.
"Will you teach me how to play the guitar if you move in?" he asked me. "Uh, yeah, sure," I said. "Can we talk about the rent now?"
I didn't want to be dragged through the bullshit chitchat, so I met with him to look at the apartment. He was this tall, skinny, Jamaican guy who thought he was just the absolute shit. The cat's meow AND the bee's knees.
"I think my style is kind of like The Matrix," he said to me five minutes after we said hello. "I'm cool like Neo." He was wearing what appeared to be a shitty women's navy blue pea coat and dirty black loafers. "Right," I said, smiling uncomfortably. "Just like Neo."
"By the way, I'M GAY," he said, without me asking about or mentioning anything of the sort. "I'm GAY, so don't worry about anything, okay? I'm GAY."
We walked to the apartment and he opened the door to an enormous space sectioned off into five little living areas. It was nice, except there were three scrawny white kids living there -- none of them could have been more than 14-16 years old. I immediately thought, "Oh my god, the dude is running a child sex ring in here!"
Whether that was true or not, I still don't know. In fact, I don't want to know. But once we got to his place, David immediately sat at a computer desk, put on a headset, and started loudly playing Counterstrike instead of showing me the place. I stood a few feet away from him by the doorway, unsure of what to do for about 15 minutes, until I finally interrupted his rapid typing and loud cursing into the microphone. "Um, are you going to show me the place? And... who are these kids?"
David said they were pre-college kids living there temporarily to take some summer classes, which struck me as being really odd. Who would send their teenage kids to the home of some random 29-year-old Jamaican guy who sits around playing computer games all day? Plus, the ad I'd responded to said the people I'd be sharing the place with were a 19 year old girl and two guys, 21 and 24. "Oh, Amanda's coming home from work any minute now," he said, referring to the 19 year old girl.
We were there for over an hour, and no Amanda.
There was a large lofted area over the kitchen, with like a 4.5 foot clearance.
"This is where you'd be staying," said David, as we climbed up the ladder to take a look. We both had to crouch like hunchbacks so that our heads didn't hit the ceiling above us.
The place was filthy. The entire floor was covered with two thin blankets, side-by-side. There were stacks of books and VHS tapes taking up the rest of the place.
David stretched out on one of the blankets and patted the spot next to him. "This is where I sleep," he said. "You'd be sleeping right next to me."
My eyes bugged out a little then, I think. He saw I was freaked and immediately reminded me, putting his hands out, welcomingly, "But I'm GAY, remember? I'm GAY. Don't worry! I'm GAY. Really -- I'm GAY!"
So despite the less than ideal conditions, in my feeble mind I felt like this would be better than commuting into New York from home in New Jersey. We sat up there in the loft for a little while longer, discussing the rent. I called my parents up to tell them that I was staying in NY and that I'd found a place, and they flipped out.
"What? You crazy? It waste of money. You coming home." --click--
"I think the rent is kind of high for me," I said to David. He was reading Sin City and was falling asleep. "Well, how about this. If you wear a maid outfit and clean up the apartment and cook for us, maybe I could cut the rent for you..." The maid outfit was a bit much for me, but if it meant saving some money... "How much?" "I'll take off... $20 bucks a month." "Forget it!"
I got up to leave, climbed down the ladder very slowly (I am afraid of heights), and told him I'd call him tomorrow. I wanted the place, but only if he cut the rent down to $600. He threatened to show the place to "hundreds of other people interested in renting the place." I said "fine" and left.
About half an hour after I'd returned to my dorm, my cell phone rang. It was David.
"I want you to move in. You've got the place." "Are you serious??" The thought of not having to live in New Jersey filled me with relief. "Yeah. Now come back and give me the first and last month's rent... $1200 cash." "What???"
I ended up talking David down to just one month's rent. We met up again -- by this time it was around 1 in the morning -- and went to the closest bank nearby so I could withdraw the cash from the ATM, withdrawl fees be damned! Once we stepped into the bank, it was as though we stepped into some bizarre alternate universe -- immediately, we were hit with the unmistakable smell of shit.
Something had obviously gone very, very wrong in this bank. There was a big upturned carton of salad that looked like it had exploded all over the floor, and a huge mess of newspapers covering an enormous pile of shit that was so big, only a human could have pinched it out.
"I don't even want to KNOW what happened in here," said David, as he quickly left to wait outside.
So there I was, in a shit-filled ATM area, withdrawing a huge chunk of my life savings to give to this "gay" maid-outfit-fetish freak. I could only take out $200 -- I'd forgotten there was a withdrawl limit on my debit card. In a way, I was relieved. I carefully stepped over the pile of salad and shit, exited the bank, and handed over the cash in an envelope.
When I explained about the limit, David surprised me by exclaiming, "What! GOD! You are just like my ex-girlfriend!!!"
Wait.
Ex-girlfriend?
"Aren't you GAY?" I asked, getting mad. "Yes! I AM GAY!! I AM. I am gay! What, you don't think I'm GAY?" he said, quite visibly flustered.
I looked at him silently.
"Okay fine, I'm bi then. Okay?"
I swallowed down the terrible feeling that was welling up in my stomach, and silently convinced myself that since I'd be working those two jobs every weekday, I wouldn't have to actually deal with David and his ragtag team of teenage slaves so much. Plus, I said to myself, it would still be better than living in New Jersey.
So while walking home, I called up my ex and told him what had happened.
"What?!?!" he screamed into the phone. "GO THERE AND GET YOUR FUCKING MONEY BACK! Are you retarded??"
It hit me right then what a horrible idea it would be to live with this crazy guy and his minions. Visions of maid outfits and Counterstrike sessions filled my head. I frantically called David and told him that we had to talk -- I wouldn't be taking the place.
He insisted on me coming to his place to talk instead of meeting me somewhere in between, as I was "fucking him over." I wanted my envelope of cash back, so I reluctantly agreed.
Once I arrived, he started wailing about how that coming Sunday was going to be Mother's Day, and how since both of his parents were dead, he was now an "orphan." And how DARE I do this to an "orphan"!
It was difficult for me to have much sympathy, as I have never heard of a 29-year-old man referring to himself as an "orphan." Honestly.
I coolly stood my ground and said since he had "hundreds" of people wanting the apartment, it would be easy for him to find someone to take my spot. Unwilling to be caught in a lie, he said "Yeah, I guess, but I want YOU to live here!"
When I again asked him for my money back, he slowly ascended the ladder up to the loft, and I heard the sssssslkk! ssssslk! sssslk! sound of a stack of money being counted. I assumed it was my stack of $20 bills that I'd given him. He didn't come down, but instead dropped an envelope down to me, and it fluttered down towards the floor. I caught it, snatching it out of the air.
I opened the envelope and counted the money. It was, unsurprisingly, $80 short.
"Dude, this is only $120. Where is the other $80?" I said. "I... um, I used it already." "You used $80 in the half hour that went by from the time I gave you the money to right now???" I said. "Yeah." "That's fucking bullshit, give me the rest."
He came down and eyed me.
"How about you give me the $80 for all the trouble you put me through?" he said. "After all, I'm an orphan." "How about no?" I replied.
At this, he let out a huge melodramatic sigh that was big enough to potentially cause a windstorm in his shitty apartment. He pulled out a wadded up bunch of cash from his pocket and shoved it into my hand.
"Now, don't think that you can come back here and be my friend or anything, okay?" he said. "I don't think we can be friends after this." I was absolutely dumbfounded by this. Friends? "Are you fucking serious? You must be seriously fucking insane."
With that, I made my grand exit: My fingers, numbed by my adrenaline rush (my body's survival instinct kept asking me if I was going to have to engage in fisticuffs with this ruffian) fumbled with the lock, but I managed to let myself out, closed the door firmly (I'm not much of a door-slammer) and walked out, feeling as though I had just barely avoided letting my naiveté fuck me over by some Counterstrike playing, Matrix-loving, faux-gay, Neo-wannabe. I considered myself very lucky, indeed.
(Note: Okay, back to 2008 now. Just wanted to mention that after all this fuss, I did in fact go back home in New Jersey that summer of 2006. And I hate to say it, but looking back now, two years later, despite the stubbornness and resentment I felt at the time... I think it was a very, very, very good thing.)
[Peek-a-Foo]