Post #2: Confronting a Landlady, and Making a New Friend

It’s day six into the madness, and I’m standing at the edge of my driveway with a hose in one hand, and a bucket of soapy water- with a never-used-before kitchen sponge floating on top- in the other. Standing next to me is my new friend Clever, who wears baggy pants, a backwards hat and a great deal of gold chains that dangle from his neck. To put it frankly, he looks, and acts, like a caricature of a 90’s rap star, but I suppose that’s my fault, really (trust me, you’ll know what that means soon enough). 

So it’s the two of us standing there, me with my hands full, him shaking his head, and we’re both just staring at my car, frowning. Neither one of us is impressed. I’m downright ashamed. I’m almost as ashamed of my car as I am of the shed that stands behind my car, just past the driveway, and the story that goes with it. You see, that shed holds the washer and dryer of the duplex. At least it did, until my roommate J moved out and took the washer with him. He should have taken both, as they both belonged to his family, but for reasons that are unclear to me he only takes the washer. Which means for the past week I’ve only had a dryer at my disposal. 

Now I believe a respectable adult would probably have made due with this in a perfectly respectable manner. Perhaps they would wash the dirty clothes in the kitchen or bathroom sink before taking them out to the dryer. That’s a great strategy, and one that I admire. But it’s still only week one and I’m just not ready for that sort of a semi-post-apocalyptic labor yet. My strategy instead is to simply wear every clean article of clothing I have until everything is dirty and then figure out what to do from there. 

Now I think we can all agree this is a sound strategy. But it’s not a perfect one. The issue really is with my towels and work out clothes. I run through the park and along the bayou every other day, and shower once a day (Some of you seemed worried about my bathing situation. Just know I have been able to use my roommates’ bathroom and shower while mine is waiting for repairs), so I had a hamper full of dirty, sweat soaked work out clothes and damp towels that was steadily piling up in the corner of my room and not smelling great. I think it was on the third day when the idea came to me that I could just throw all this grossness in the dryer and be set. I mean, I didn’t need clean workout clothes, right? I just need them dry. Who cared if they were dirty, not like anyone else would know (not like I had any plans to broadcast this to the online world, or anything). 

So yeah, that shed behind the driveway has become a bit of my shed of shame, as it is where I turn sweat soaked, dirty cloth into… dry dirty cloth. In fact, as I stand in front of my car, next to my new friend, I can smell that odd, unwelcomed scent of dried dirty, as I’m wearing some of my work out clothes now, because I’m about to wash my car, and I know things are about to get filthy. Because my car is filthy. Way more than I remember it being. It’s bizarre, but it feels like I’m looking at my car for the first time in months. Like I haven’t really stopped to notice the appearance of my vehicle in ages.   

And while all this is embarrassing, what annoys me the most is none of this would have been in issue if it wasn’t for my god damn landlady… 

Now let’s back up a bit. If you remember the end of my last post, I had this cunning plan where I was not going to say anything to M about my roommates moving out until rent was due, so she would have as little recourse as possible. To be honest, this plan was causing me a great deal of anxiety, just thinking about how she would react to this news kept me up at night. I’m not much for upsetting people and I knew how nasty she could get when things didn’t go her way. Plus there’s that whole element of not knowing what was going to happen. The lockdown started two weeks before rent was due. What if she stopped by unannounced before then and found me living here alone in an empty house? The infinite potential reactions haunted my nights. Sometimes I imagined her beady eyes turning red and growing five times in size and her head twisting down 90 degrees so that it ran perpendicular to her neck as she screamed “What do you mean I’m only getting five hundred bucks this month?? THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS!” before slicing my throat with one of her claws. 

And then, after all that anxiety and worry,  it finally fucking happened. Well, not the claw part, but the finding out part. 

Three days into lockdown our roommate group chat gets a surprise text from M. 

I’m coming over to drop off some air filters for the AC. Don’t want you guys to be stranded during this whole mess. 

I still don’t know what her actual motive was here, but in no way do I believe she was doing this to help us. She probably wanted to sneak a peek at the condition of the house since she’s still delusional enough to believe she could sell this place during this insanity. 

But there was no time to ponder M’s motivation, I didn’t have a moment to spare. I needed to come up with a plan. Do I hide in one of the empty bedrooms, crouch down in some corner and wait til she stops knocking? What if she peered through one of the windows of the living room and saw the complete lack of furniture? Surely that will tip her off that something’s up. 

I swear at this point I could hear my former roommate J laughing at me blocks away at his new, furnished place, she’s your problem now, big guy! 

God damn him. 

No, I told myself, focus on the matter at hand! 

I realize there is really only one reasonable option here. I take out my phone, find her name in my contact list, say a quick prayer and hit the call button. 

“Yes, Randy, hello.” she responded like some sort of malcontent robot. 

“Hello M, I heard you might be coming over here soon?” 

“…Yes, I just texted you guys that a minute ago.”

“Right right. Well that’s great. Quick question though, J and f talked to you right?” 

“No…” 

“Oh, they didn’t. Ha, those crazy…knuckleheads,” I heard myself say, dear god what have I become, “well, I guess they heard from T about you putting the house on the market, so they moved out. Also, T and his cousins moved out from upstairs… so, I’m actually the only one who lives here now.” I had to fight myself from including a cheerful surprise! to the end of this.

I waited for any kind of response, but nothing came. I imagined an axe coming through the front door, ala The Shining.

“Oh jesus,’ she finally said, but to my great shock there was little to no rage in her voice. It sounded more like sad frustration. “They shouldn’t have done that. This house ain’t selling anytime soon. Not with all this going on. They should have talked to me first.”

“I know!” I told her, “I know, that’s what I tried to tell them, but they just didn’t listen. But you know… I’m still here. I haven’t abandoned you yet.” Again, I was forced to wonder what kind of person I had become. 

‘Well,” she said with a slight snarl, and i knew the anger was coming, “look, that place is $1500 a month, $3000 including the upstairs unit. You know, five hundred bucks ain’t gonna cut it. It just ain’t.” 

“I hear ya, I hear ya, I don’t like it anymore than you,” I lied. 

“Yeah, cause 500 a month just ain’t gonna cut it!” 

“Well, the best I can do is put up an ad on craigslist and try to get someone to move in.”

“Yeah, do that, cause 500 a month ain’t gonna cut it!”

It’s gonna have to, I thought to myself, it’s gonna have to. 

After our talk, I strongly considered not even putting up an ad and just telling her I did and that no one responded. But I got paranoid that she might check and find out i’m lying, and I knew I didn’t need anymore anxiety, so I quickly threw some sentences together along with a few photos and posted the damn ad, half terrified/ half fascinated about what sort of people might be looking to move in to a stranger’s place in the middle of a pandemic. 

Now just so you know, I have lived at this current spot for four years, and in that time more than a few roommates have come and gone. And when they go, I’ve always been the one to post up an ad online to find a replacement. Normally, for a spot like ours, the responses come quick. We usually get dozens of emails in just the first day. 

This time I got one single response in three days. One. And it’s from someone named, wait for it, Clever Banger. Now just like most of you I’m sure, the first thing that struck me was his name. I refused to believe that there was someone out there whose birth name was Clever Banger, and a quick google search confirmed this, as I found Mr. Banger was a local aspiring rapper. Of course, like most of you, I’m sure, I had a lot of questions about the meaning behind his rap name. Does Clever Banger mean he is clever in his banging? Like he has sex in witty ways that normal folks such as I could never understand, OR, did his cleverness stem from how he got ladies to let him bang them, was his level of suave seduction out of this world? (Note: before I put these posts out into the world, I let a friend take a look at them first just to make sure I’m not saying anything too insane or stupid. Anyway, this time he stopped right here and asked, “Wait Randy, do you not know the term ‘gangbanger’? that’s clearly what this guy is referencing. Not banging chicks.” I told him I was familiar with that term, I just totally forgot about it. He did not seem to believe me and I suspect he now thinks I’m the whitest person on earth. So, just know that.) We may never know the answers to these questions I’m afraid, but I can tell you that Mr. Banger was rather clever in his email, as he offered me a counteroffer of 200 dollars a month plus some weed for rent instead of 600 dollars a month. I emailed Mr. Banger back and told him I would pass his counter offer onto my landlady.

Which I did. 

She responded to this with a snort. Not a snort of laughter, but one of hatred. I know how that sounds, and no I have never heard of a snort of hatred before, but I swear that’s what she did. No words. Just the snort followed by her hanging up the phone.     

I guess 500 a month is gonna cut it, after all… 

So it looked like that was that. My landlady seemed to have had resigned herself to the fact that this next month would not be great for her and I would live out my pandemic days in her empty house just as I had been those past few days. Except now I found a new imaginary houseguest living with me. For whatever reasons I couldn’t get the local rapper/shrewd negotiator out of my head, and I started imagining a show of sorts entitled: “The Adventures of Randy and Clever Banger”. And then, soon enough, I was starting to imagine him just hanging out with me around the house (see I told you we’d get there together)- along with the ghost of my ex, angry former roommates, and disappointed relatives- Only Clever was much more fun, as he turned into something of a hypeman for me, giving me encouragement when I needed it the most.

“You got this, son!”

“That was one hell of a nap you just took!  Mad props!” 

“You can finish that box of cookies right now! I believe in you!” 

So for a second there, I thought things would be okay.

And then I soon found out that M had no intention of making my life easy. After first appearing relatively cool with the situation, she decided to spend the next three days driving by the house before sending me some not-so-friendly texts. And all them, oddly enough, were about cars. Here are three different texts I received from M in two days:  

Whose blue truck is that parked in front of the house? Is someone else staying there! And what’s the deal with that green honda in the driveway, does it even run?

Whose red toyota is parked by the trash cans? Is someone else staying there? And you never told me the deal with that green honda in the driveway, does it even run?

Why is that blue truck back in the front of the house, is the driver staying there? What’s wrong with the green honda in the driveway?

My landlady clearly believed some sneaky business was afoot. She seemed to think I was trying to run some shady, illegal, hotel during a global pandemic without giving her a cut of the profits. But I can assure you, as I did her many times, that I am not nor have I ever been in the illegal hotel business nor did I know the history of any of the cars parked around my house. But if I had to guess, as I guessed to her many times, I would say they belonged to the FUCKING PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE GOD DAMN NEIGHBORHOOD. 

 In any case, I was so annoyed with these texts I decided right then and there I would not do anything about the appearance of my car just to spite her. I honestly had no idea why my car annoyed her to begin with, but I definitely wasn’t going to do her any favors now. 

And I probably would have stuck with that decision, if it weren’t for one small thing.

 I’m a writer.

How do those two things connect? Alright lemme explain. Most people assume that the majority of a writer’s time is spent writing. A fair assumption, and sometimes, a correct one. But sometimes, sometimes, a writer’s day can be spent looking at an opened word document on their laptop and having nothing to say. Nothing. And if this goes on long enough, a voice will suddenly appear in their head. A voice that says:

“What the fuck were you thinking? Did you actually think you would ever make it as a writer? Do you know how hard it is to do that? Do you know how few artists out there are actually paying the bills with their art? Nevermind buying things like a car or a house? How delusional are you? Do you have any idea how screwed you are? Look at your friends? Look at the friends you had back in college who were determined to become successful in their art. How many are still pushing? Cory? Colin? Damon? Britney? How many are still holding onto the dream? Zero. They’ve all found nice stable jobs. They have families and 401k plan. You don’t even know what a 401k plan is!! You are an idiot. A delusional idiot. You’ll be doing ghost tours till you are sixty and you will die alone.” 

A bit of a debbie downer of a voice, to say the least. BUT, just when things start to seem real dark, like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, a second voice comes to you and says something that changes everything. It says:

“You should go do the dishes.”

Or

“Your room needs to be clean.”

Or

“Why don’t you take care of the laundry?”

Or some other menial task suggestion that seems absurd at first. But what I have learned over the years is that if you listen to this second voice and momentarily walk away from your work and take care of this task, things will improve. Not always, but a lot of the time. You’ll be doing the dishes or cleaning your room, and as you do this you slowly forget your troubles. Then as you’re reaching way down in the crack between your bed and the wall for some forgotten sock, or getting that last bit of grime off your favorite plate, you’ll get hit with inspiration, and you suddenly have an idea of where to go next in your story. So you hop back on your computer and get to work, and you realize things don’t seem so scary anymore, and that the life of the writer is actually a pretty great one, especially when you have ghost stories to pay the bills. 

The point is, when that second voice comes to save you, you better listen to it (also, just to be clear, there is a difference between that second voice and your mind just trying to get you to procrastinate for the sake of procrastination. And that’s a very hard distinction to make). 

So it’s on this sixth day of madness when that second voice comes to me. I had been trying my best to finish the latest chapter of my novel- a comedy of sorts based on my experience as a french quarter tour guide (There will be a future post on this too, believe me, and it’ll be far more entertaining than whatever you’re picturing in your head)- and just getting nowhere. And that’s when that first voice hits, the one telling me I’m a delusional idiot. Except this time the voice is way harsher than normal, and far more topical. (And what it tells me next is something I imagine you all can relate to in these troubling times.)

“Besides, even if you weren’t a joke of a writer, which you are, with no hope of ever making it, which you don’t, haven’t you noticed the entire world crumbling around you? Society is over. The economy is crumbling and infection is king. There’s gonna be nobody left to read your stupid novel when you finish it anyway. Don’t you get it! It’s over. Both for you, and the world!”

Now this double whammy of a debbie downer was just a bit much for me to take at the time. Breathing started getting difficult and I was fairly certain a panic attack of extraordinary proportions was on its way. And that’s when that second voice came, in a loud forceful manner and calmly gave me a command:

“GO WASH THE FUCKING CAR.”

Ordinarily, I might try to argue with the voice, explaining that I didn’t want to give in to my nasty landlady and all that, but at that moment, I had no fight in me. And even Clever Banger pointed to the bucket in the corner, suggesting I fill it with water and soap and do what had to be done. 

And so that’s how I’ve come to be out at the edge of my driveway, looking at my shameful car with my new imaginary friend, wondering how things got so bad. 

Part of the problem with the appearance of my car is my driveway lies under the shade of some oak trees that continuously crap out this odd yellow sticky dust stuff on anything that languishes below. And my car has been languishing in the same spot below the oaks all week now, and this yellow crap has taken over and its color has faded a bit, giving the impression of rust. But it’s worse than that, and I know it. I can’t remember the last time I washed this thing. Six months at least.  

The other problem is all the dents, punctures, and scratched paint that cover the exterior of my forest green car. Like the big ol’ dent in the back bumper’s left corner, as well as a slightly smaller dent in the front bumper. These are both from the same hit and run accident a few years ago when during Mardi Gras some drunken ass hit me at a stop sign, causing my car to lurch forward and hit the car in front of me. This literally happened fifty feet away from four cops who were standing around talking. They did nothing and the driver drove off without any trouble. That was fun. This city is fun. 

There’s also the sizable crater in the driver door that dates all the way back to my LA days, when someone hit my parked car in the middle of the night. 

And the long jagged key scratches that run up and down both sides of my door are from a crazy roommate from years ago back when I lived uptown who had enough of me and decided to take her anger out on my car. (I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking I’m making it sound like none of these accidents are my fault and I’m passing the buck, but that’s not true… okay, it’s kinda true, but I swear like 90 percent of the exterior damage isn’t my fault, dammit.. Sure, the key marks might be somewhat on me, but this isn’t the roommate post so we can’t go into that now).

And I’m looking at all this and find it so very, very depressing. 

“Yo man,” Clever says, “sometimes when I’m down what I do is pretend that things are better than they are and sort of focus on that. You good at pretending?”

“Yes,”I tell my imaginary, rapper friend, “I’d say I’m decent at it.” 

And so I look around me and pretend. I pretend like my car isn’t a shameful mess, but an elegant sports car that I purchased just last year, thanks to the bonus I received at the top fiction magazine I write for, because print never died. And I look at my house and see it is truly my house. It’s not some lousy duplex with old plumbing and zero furniture, it’s my house, I own it. I have a mortgage, which I always pay on time, cause I’m a real adult, and inside my house I have the best sort of furniture, and art, and little gadgets. And my friends come over once a month for a bbq get together and there’s nothing wrong with that, because there is no covid virus, no quarantine, the world did not completely change in a matter of months. No, everything is normal and great. And the best part is, inside the home that I own, waiting for me, is her, my ex, who… 

I stop myself here. God dammit. How did she worm her way into my fantasy? I had no intention of involving her at all, and yet there she is, like always. Day after day of this shit. Hell, a global pandemic didn’t stop her. At least a dozen times a day I go through the same cycle. That feeling of loss, regret, sadness, anger, and hopelessness. It’s just so very tiring at this point. So very futile. How long is this gonna last? 

“Hey dawg, you gotta let her go,” Clever Banger tells me. 

“I know, I know.” 

“And you gotta let that thing go too. You can’t be mad about it anymore.”

“But one month compared to a year, how is that fair? How is that right?”

“You gotta let it go.”

A stand there, thinking. I can smell the crusty dried sweat from my work out clothes. It makes me a little sick. Everything seems to make me a little sick.

“Come on man, let’s clean this gross ass motherfucking car.”

This seems like sound advice. I get to work. I spray my filthy car down with the hose before using the kitchen sponge to soak it with suds. That yellow shit from the trees, plus whatever sap or sticky pollutant that ended up on my car, is just embedded in the paint, and I end up having to turn the sponge over and use the rough side just to get all of it off. This takes a while, but it feels great. Feels like I’m scrubbing all the bullshit of my life away, putting in that elbow grease to get a fresh start. I finish one whole side and move on to the next, then the hood, then the trunk. By the end, I feel amazing. 

Best therapy ever. 

And then Clever hands me some towels and I go to work drying it off. As I use the tested and true Karate Kid method of “wax on wax off” on my car I notice something strange. The paint. There’s something not right about the paint. There’s all these really tiny scratches on it. I move wildly around the car and find out they are everywhere. Like an idiot I rub the paint with my thumb, hoping against hope these aren’t scratches but something else that will go away with the gentle kiss of a fingerprint. This does not work. With a stabbing feeling in my gut, I whip out my phone and perform another google search. 

Top search result for should I not use the rough part of the sponge to wash my car? Is a yahoo question from 2006, back before the pandemic or the great recession. Somehow that makes it worse. An angry young man in 2006 is explaining that he made his ten year old brother wash his car unsupervised and the “dumb bastard” used the rough part of a sponge and now his car is covered in microscratches. None of the answers he receives give me much hope. 

I put my phone back in my pocket, still dumbfounded. How could I have done this? 

“You didn’t know that you’re not supposed to use the rough part of a sponge to wash your car?” Clever asks me. 

“I think I did at one point, I just forgot… I think.” He doesn’t look at me. I’m too embarrassing for my imaginary friend to handle. This is a new low. 

Jesus Christ, I’m gonna die alone. 

I see a faded red car coming down the street, going quite slow. I recognize it as my landlady’s car. As it passes by me I see her beady little eyes find me in the driveway, next to my now clean car that looks like it got into a fight to the death with eighty cats.

I want to scream at her,

 “Are you happy now!!” 

But I don’t. Instead, I get another whiff of my dried but not washed clothes and realize again that I’m gonna die alone. 

But there is a silver lining here. All this misery gives me an idea for where to take my story. Mission accomplished. 

As I walk back into the house, Clever follows behind me, and I hear him ask, “so after you’re done writing, you down for some drinking alone?” 

Definitely, Clever Banger, definitely. 

Next Up: The weirdness begins at nightfall (AKA The Roommate Post)