I finally harassed our landlady into finding us someone and she called me on a Friday morning after a particularly heavy Thursday night. I was in bed rehabbing and ignored her call so I wouldn’t have to interact with real humans at the ungodly hour of ten in the morning. She was kind enough to leave me a message telling me that she would come by in five minutes with the prospective renter. “Excellent,” I thought as I laid my head back down on my pillow, “the place is rented out.”
The good times ended when I jumped out of bed realizing that the apartment was a few empty beer bottles short of the Bonnaroo fairgrounds. Let us also not forget that the numerous holes in the wall were not exactly giving off the welcoming, “please pay us to live here” atmosphere that we were going for. We shoveled as many empties as we could into the trash bin and finished putting posters up over the holes just as we heard a knock on the door.
Tom opened up the door and ushered in our prospective Lessee and the landlord. By the way, I'm against the term ‘landlord'- It's a little strong of a categorization.
Lessee - we will call him this for now on- was an Egyptian who now lives in Italy. He was overly nice and seemed like a good person to rent to.
As they entered the establishment one of the posters took a very opportunistic drop. As it fell to the floor it revealed the two fist holes that we were hiding; a great first impression. I could just imagine what was going through this kids head as he stood in the couch room.
The place doesn’t smell; that’s good. Whoa, are those holes. Wait, there are more of them. How did they get one over there? Someone had to have kicked that one in. Why are there so many empty bottles? There’s more on top of the counter, it looks like they are displaying that trash for everyone to see. Look at all those liquor bottles on the fridge. That’s just downright dangerous.
You get the picture. It ended up that Lessee was just looking to rent one room, and we were happy enough to get any sort of payment at all. We assured them that the holes would be fixed and the garbage picked up by the beginning of next week- when he wanted to move in. We also guaranteed that the bathroom would be restored to “normal-human-being” living conditions, since it hadn’t been cleaned at any point in recent memory.
The Sunday before he was supposed to move in we spent the entire day fixing the holes in the wall and making the place presentable. Being that he was an exchange student, I cleaned that bathroom like it was going to be our ambassador to other nations. I scrubbed it like my citizenship depended on it. On a side note, we thought it would be a fun idea to paint the opposing walls in the coach room bright red and orange.
Lessee moved in on Monday, with no visible signs of astonishment from the “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” appearance of the TV room. Probably because the U.S. didn’t allow Pee Wee to be exported to other countries after that whole hands in the pants ordeal.
“This is your room,” I instructed as I led him to Swirsky’s room- the one in the middle.
“I can put my stuff in here now?”
“Yea, it’s all set. You can move right in”
“So I can bring my bag in now?” He looked at me questioningly, with an awkward glance, like I was leaving something out.
“You can do whatever you need; this is your place now.”
We walked back into the other room, by the kitchen, and he looked back at me.
“The refrigerator, I can use it?”
“Yea, definitely. There should be room in there.”
“I have a chicken. I can put it in there?” Again that same look.
“You do what you have to do man. As long as you pay the rent, you have the run of the place.”
“So it is ok for me to put my chicken in there?” He was just being nice, trying to not cross any boundaries. Apparently he forgot that we had numerous holes in the wall just days before and that the digs currently resembled a dilapidated McDonalds.
“We don’t really have too many rules here. You’re free to do whatever you have to do.”
He seemed all set at that point. As Tom and I left the place we were pretty content with our situation except we wondered aloud about one thing. We were just hoping that the chicken he was talking about was not a live one. We didn’t mean this in a barbaric kind of way, we were just hoping that we wouldn’t return to the apartment to see feathers scattered all over the place as he was hacking away at the neck of a screaming chicken. I guess we all have our pet peeves.
Lessee returned that night as we were barbecuing and enjoying a few beers with the afternoon sun. As spring begins to show its true colors it feels like a crime to not have a beer or two with those first warm days of the year. It would be like peanut butter without jelly. We offered him a beer but he told us that he did not drink.
As it began to get chilly and dark outside the party migrated in. Not a party in the raucous set-couches-on-fire sense, but party in the restaurant meaning of the word, as in, “Henderson, party of five.” I went back to his room tell him to come get me if we got bothersome.
“Oh, why? You have party tonight?”
“No, we are just going to watch TV, but let me know if it is loud. Feel free to come sit down.”
“Ok, well I change. I coming over there.”
He came and sat down just as, “Deal or No Deal” was coming on. Everyone got along great. The girls quizzed him on every dirty word that he could translate into Egyptian and everyone else was interested in his studies of mechanical engineering. I can’t say that we were interested in what he was actually learning, more the fact that we wouldn’t be able to define what his subject was if we had a gun to our heads. The show came back on so everybody turned their attention back to the television and all energy was centered on the game show.
As everyone leered and jeered at the screen, I fixed my attention on Lessee to see what he was picking up. He looked genuinely interested in the action but I could tell that he was pretty lost when it came to what exactly was happening. During a commercial I asked him if he understood what the program was about.
“It is like lottery right?”
A very perceptive observation by him. The show returned and as the contestant got into the thick of things, the cheers in the room got louder. Suddenly people had feelings about what they hoped should would happen to the hopeless man standing center stage. Personally, I’m afraid this show brings out the worst in me. Maybe it is because of the completely arbitrary manner of the game, but I always find myself rooting for the worst things to happen to the competitor. I am always crossing my fingers for the highest amount to be held in the next briefcase he picks. Maybe it is because no skill is involved so I just get mad because I think anyone could be successful. I’m not sure, sometimes I don’t understand myself.
While we are discussing the game I think there are a few amendments that could be made to make the show more enjoyable for everyone. First of all, Howie is a little weird to begin with. Between his OCD and his overall borderline-sketchy demeanor, he is no Bob Barker. I think Howie should have an earpiece telling him what amounts are in each briefcase so that the contestant could try and read his reactions- adding even a modicum of skill to the game.
I also think they need to do away with the part where they let the models react to the opening of each briefcase. Each one of them seems to think that they need to offer some divine insight. The problem is most of them are just barely able to conjure up some words that pass for a sentence and react to the amounts by attempting to contort their faces into some semblance of an expression but the abundance of botox impedes this exercise. I’m starting to realize I might think about this show too much, let’s get back to the story.
As the cheers got louder, the scene dawned on me. This exchange student was sitting on a couch in a random, oddly decorated apartment with some half-drunk Americans who are screaming their heads off at a screen that was showing a program about briefcases with money in them. That’s all the glorified spectacle was, random metal briefcases with different money values inside.
It was so American of us- booze and money. All that was left was for us to start doing drugs and erupt into an orgy and the scene would have been complete. Hopefully that’s coming tonight.
I’ll be back with more updates on how the living situation is working out- if only because Swirsky asks me hourly if his room is still intact.
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