My house is a slum and I want a new apartment.
The tour:
Let's start at the quaint and authentic back balcony. See that shack? That used to be where the original owners kept firewood, way back in someone's salad days. Now it's just where we store the dead hookers and drape our spare tarps. It's like a little piece of history. Especially since all the other sheds of its kind were torn down a long time ago on account of their knack for catching fire and burning down whole city blocks at a time.
Speaking of fire, see there, past yonder row of charred and broken windows? That's one of the rooms my landlord burned out while he was making french fries a few years ago. Note the blackened door that welcomes you onto what must have once been a balcony. Look how it now opens out to a sheer drop lined with a wet cement bottom. Yea, the door that leads to nowhere.
Please understand, your safety is important to us. Perhaps you would like to locate your nearest fire escape in case of emergency. (Hint: If you're having a hard time finding it, check underneath the skeletal burned-out canoe.) So the wood is a little splintered through the middle of some/all of the steps. Big deal. Below, there is more wet pavement and impalables to break your fall. Don't be such a baby.
Other luxuries include a hot water heater that is constantly broken, a bathroom so cold you can see your breath when you pee, and a lopsided tub with a puddle at one end that ices your toes till your feet look dead. Move over, Irish Spring. It doesn't get more invigorating than this.
In other news, the “kitchen counter” is pretty much just a slab of well decayed particle board wrapped in linoleum, and I have a chair in my kitchen whose sole purpose is to keep the oven door closed. And I think this is all somehow unrelated to the fact that the whole place always kinda smells like gas.
Ok, so the landlord who lives next door is frequently mistaken for being a homeless. But so what? You'd probably think he was homeless too. He's eighty, toothless, hunchbacked, with a big white beard and a penchant for digging through garbage. Man, you should see his apartment. But at least he gets shit done. Like when he says he's "calling a plumber" to fix the tub, I can rest easy, knowing that he will take at least a few days to give the problem careful consideration before he summons the greasiest, perviest neighbor from the tenement across the street to come and breathe heavy while he pulls whole sewer rats worth of my hair out of my drain.
The thing is, honestly, none of this bugs me. My semi-squalid apartment suits me, grime-wise.
It's just these goddamn freeloaders.
Yeah, so they shit on my counter and eat my junk food. Whatever, so do my friends.
BUT.
The other night I was trying to lay some sleaze on this boy and it was all twinkle eyes and mood music on the couch in my room until all of a sudden some creature started trying to escape from inside my dresser. I swear to god it sounded like a fucking badger / wererat / huge pig-squealing tapir or some shit. Oh man I have never seen someone leave my house so fast.
Cockblocked.
And this is not an isolated incident.
Anyone remember that time I was looking for a roommate and that unrealistically attractive boy came over to check it out? God he was beautiful. Then we walked into the kitchen and there they are, just chilling right there on the stove-top, swinging their stupid little legs over the side, drinking my beer and smoking my weed. And I was all wtf? and they're all like, whatever man, and I got so stressed out for some reason that my eye went nuts and got all huge and red and then my other roommate Tom had left a big dump in the toilet and longstoryshort the hotguy didn't take the place - but did ask me out - but then never called back to make the date so I count this one as a loss and a loss and I blame it on the FUCKING mice.
