A roommate-landlord history

Here’s the latest image from my book of 9,000 Drawing Prompts. Each blank page has a word or phrase written in the corner which is supposed to prompt you to create an illustration. That’s why this one says “Psychedelic portal” in the top left. (For ease of archiving, here’s a link to the previous page.)

Dear diary,

This entry’s first sentence will appear in the next paragraph, for, before beginning, I must define a term that I’ll employ in it. Fixer-upper (noun; North American, informal): a house in need of repairs (used chiefly in connection with the purchase of such a house).

My problem is that I bought a fixer-upper and failed to fix ’er up. I was in my early twenties and working at an eyeglass factory, and I desperately needed a place to live, because my roommate, to whom I paid rent because he was also my landlord, decided to sell the condominium where we were living. His life was on one trajectory and mine was on another. I’ll try to tell both tales here. Which one do you want to hear first? His? Really, why? Oh, because it’s more stupid juicy negative – I understand. OK, I agree: I’ll tell his story first. And my side isn’t even a story, anyway; I could give the whole of it in about a single sentence:

I was young, and my living quarters were being pulled out like a rug from beneath my feet, so I had to scramble to find another shelter, and I took the first one that came along, which was affordable because dilapidated, and since I was against physical labor at the time and only willing to perform mental work (I’ve since changed my attitude about this: now I side with Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”—section 5 begins like so: “I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,/ And you must not be abased to the other…”), I say, since, at that time, so long ago, I was averse to all physical tasks and thus unwilling to fix up my fixer-upper, in my ignorance I set the stage for my own humiliation, because currently, now that a score of years has passed, I am forced to die on the cross for my apartment’s sins—in other words, all the stuff that was wrong with this dump at the moment I bought it, since I never attended to any of it, all that stuff is now being blamed on ME as if I myself were its primum mobile, its lazy mastermind, its culprit. A realtor who enters my abode sipping coffee will do a spit-take and remark: “How did that wall-sized mural of Dante’s Inferno come to look so repulsive?” And I answer: “That’s just something that I inherited when I bought this place.” But I can tell that she does not believe me—she assumes that, if I really did inherit this mural with the apartment’s purchase, I would immediately have annihilated it by scrubbing it with holy water and then painting it eggshell white and installing cute shelves over the top of it; therefore it follows that, since I obviously did not perform this exorcism, then I must have commissioned the painting of this eyesore (for the same reason that people remark “X has a demeanor that only a mother could love”, except, with me, they say “not even a mother,” etc.), or it is tacitly assumed that I myself even personally created this atrocity, this pale white sage holding two fingers up to appease a demon while molten rocks frolic in the background. She (the real estate agent) considers my disavowal disingenuous, like when you call a radio show and ask a question about yourself but claim that you are asking on behalf of a friend:

“My friend accidentally winked lewdly at a priest who was trying to molest him, and, as a result, the molestation came to a halt and was unsuccessful. Is there anything that he—my friend not I—can do to win back this priest’s lust, such as send him a bouquet of roses on Mother’s Day? For my friend’s desire is to reclaim God’s good graces.”

Or when contractors enter my apartment to perform some job, like replacing the countertops, they look at the existing décor and exclaim, “Mon Dieu! this kitchen is so outdated that it’s almost fashionable again.” And I say “Those yellow countertops were installed in the late 1970s, way before I bought this place—I only inherited them.” And the contractors squint at me, and their gaze pierces to the depths of my soul: they discern the truth: now they know that I myself chose to magnetize into my apartment every ugly furnishing in the universe. Everything wrong with the world is the fault of the current homeowner; yet beware: the current homeowner will try to trick you into believing that all these evils are the fault of previous homeowners. Do not believe him.

So, instead of giving you the whole spiel about my abode-selling woes, I’ll start by telling you the story of my roommate-landlord. Here’s what happened:

This ass-hole ends up impregnating a cheerleader in high school. I am not making this shit up. So the cheerleader is forced to stop cheerleading, because she is big with child. Being big with child while cheering for the home team is a no-no. So she retires from the hustle. She wants to get married and raise her little burden. But here’s the problem: my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, claims that he is bound by a strict code of morality (nobody can prove that he’s lying, by the way; perhaps he really does harbor some holy prejudice in his mind: for no one can read your thoughts except God and Facebook) (Facebook is what the Global Central Intelligence Agency was formerly called; nowadays it is more commonly known as The Church Court of the Inquisition), and this code of morality states that, before he (my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole) can marry, a period of engagement must be endured, and that period must last five years, no more no less. So the cheerleader answers him, “Fine, even though I’m carrying your child, which will be born in seven months prematurely, I’ll agree to wait five years to marry officially, on one account: You must buy me an expensive engagement ring. This will prove your love.” So my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, goes out and purchases a ring at the Mall of America. He empties out the entirety of his e-purse: three thousand bitcoins. Now the couple are engaged.

It isn’t over yet. I’m just pausing to catch my breath. And if the story seems boring to you, that’s not my fault. I’m telling it exactly like it happened.

So the ass-hole and his cheerleader purchase a condo, directly after the baby is born. The baby was born prematurely, and it needed to remain in an incubator for its first months on earth. My roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, if you ask him about it, will claim angrily that the cause of his offspring’s inopportune arrival is that his fiancée, the aforesaid pregnant cheerleader, went bowling that night, for fun, and overexerted herself, thus triggering the untimely birth. But who knows if this hypothesis is true. This is only one ass-hole’s opinion; and he’s only one half of the parenting couple. I could never find out what the mother thinks about this, because, by the time I entered the adventure, she was estranged from the ass-hole.

So anyway, here we have this ass-hole occupying a condominium with his ex-cheerleader and their son who lives in his incubator. And the incubator looks like a transparent oven that’s baking a human-shaped cookie. Now I could go into all sorts of details about their daily life around this time, but I’d rather cut to the crux. And the crux is this: They argued a lot and the girl moved out. She took the kid and his incubator and escaped across the street to an alternate condo. Again, I am not making this shit up: she actually bought a condominium of her own, which was the identical model of the one that the ass-hole, her fiancée (tho they never did get married) had recently purchased, except hers was located, as I said, across the street. There were two complexes of condos facing each other, with a street between; and the street’s name was Westbrook.

So when the cheerleader swiped her infant and forsook the ass-hole, my soon-to-be roommate-landlord (lord of the land) found himself with mortgage payments that he could not afford; and he whined about this on a phone call to me myself (here’s where I, the narrator, hereto hovering above the story like a vulture, enter the farce and become another of its suckers), and, as I was, at that time, living with my earthly father, the offer of a change of residence was music to my ears, so I answered the ass-hole as follows:

“I’ll accept your bid that I move in and split the rent with you, but only on account that it’s not rent that I’m paying but mortgage-plus-interest: what I mean is that we must attribute the same percentage of MY payments to the principal of the loan towards which your own payments are applied. This way, I’m not just throwing my hard-earned cash away on rent; and, if the place is ever sold, I’ll be entitled to the same amount of equity as you.”

And the ass-hole agreed to this, readily. So I moved in. But for the immediate future—that is, for the first couple years—the ass-hole couldn’t even manage to pay his half of the monthly mortgage: so I footed the entire bill for us both. This is an important fact: remember it.

But I should explain: the reason that my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, was always so broke is that he was making lavish child-support payments to his ex-fiancée cheerleader, A.K.A. the baby’s mama. And he was doing this voluntarily—the twain had not yet gone to court, so the payments were unofficial; nevertheless he kept writing out checks to Ms. Pompom because he was trying to be ultra-responsible. And I was covering this ass-hole’s mortgage in a similar attempt to be ultra-responsible. But then a day came (my roommate would call it an evil day) when the cheerleader’s mother paid her a visit. She gave her a talk: the cheerleader’s mother said, “You’ve got to make this child-support business official: I don’t care if he’s making the payments voluntarily at present; for the day will come when he’ll prove that he is a deadbeat—ALL men are deadbeats; none are fathers, no, not one—and then you’ll regret that you never took the ass-hole to court and skewered his soul and raked him over the coals.”

So the cheerleader heeded this advice that was given by her mother, and she summoned the ass-hole, my roommate and lord of the land, to the court of the law. And the judge pounded the gavel thrice and bellowed:

“You, Mr. Ass-hole, are a deadbeat dad. The court hereby sentences you to pay child support. You shall make monthly payments, and we shall garnish your wages to assure that there’s no monkey-business. And you shall also pay an exorbitant sum, in addition to the monthly support payments, to make up for all the payments that you did not pay, during all those months that your son has been living since the day he was born. This aggregate and retroactive back-payment of delinquent support shall be a mountainous debt to you. You shall be crushed by its force, and you shall curse it daily.”

But my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, answered the judge and spoke these words in a trembling voice: “Your honor, I have made payments dutifully to Ms. Pompom from the very moment that our son was spawned in his incubator. Therefore this last exorbitant sum that you have said that you will charge me should be removed; for I have paid it already—in fact, here are the cashed checks to prove it.” And the ass-hole presented the court a big box of checks which he had saved for this very purpose.

But the judge thundered at the ass-hole, my roommate-landlord, and said: “These checks that you present as evidence of your having paid support from the start of the life of your son are hogwash. I will not admit them. You shall pay the exorbitant sum, as I ordered.”

& the ass-hole stammered, “But why is my evidence inadmissible?”

And the judge explained, “The deadline for registering such exhibits was Wednesday – two days ago. You’re late; now fuck off.” Then she yelled: “Court dismissed.”

So this is why my landlord was always cash-poor.

And when the state garnished his paychecks, the withheld amount was determined by taking a percentage of his gross earnings. Since my roommate, the ass-hole, was working as a research engineer at an eyeglass factory (the same factory where I myself was a pawn), his gross earnings were fairly high. This sizable salary resulted in his child support payments being proportionately steep. Now, when my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, grasped this relation, a lightbulb fizzled & cracked inside his mind. He rubbed his hands together and whispered sinisterly: “I know what I shall do to wreak vengeance upon the state, which is garnishing my paychecks, and upon this cheerleader whom I impregnated and whose mother has made my existence like the stench of death to me: I shall intentionally under-employ myself, so that my wages are low, and thus the support payments will likewise be brought low.” So my roommate-landlord, the ass-hole, after searching far and wide for the worst-compensated profession, decided to join the U.S. military.

Please don’t take this last detail of the plot’s development as MY OWN criticism of the military – no, again, I swear, I’m not making this shit up: that ass-hole, my roommate-landlord, really did decide to join the armed forces because he thought it’d lower his support payments and thus countervail the ruthless tactics of his baby’s mama’s mama. I truly wish that he hadn’t concluded this way, because it had an adverse effect on me myself. When he summoned us into the front room awkwardly one night for a “meeting of the roommates”, I assumed he was going to scold me yet again for playing my clavier too well-temperedly, but instead he made this astonishing declaration: “I am selling this condo and joining the U.S. military.”

I gasped and said, “But where shall I live?” And he answered, “That’s your problem, not mine.” So I said, “Well then tell me how much equity I can expect from this place, once it sells; because I need to figure out how much of a down payment I can make on my own potential home – for I don’t even have a credit card, and you are the only person I’ve ever made payments to, thus I have scant recorded history with creditors; and by scant I mean zero; and I’ve been told that no credit equals bad credit; so I’m worried that I’ll need vast collateral for any bank to consider deigning to plague me with a house loan.” And the ass-hole, my roommate-landlord, answered as follows:

“You have no equity, no share in the worth of this condominium.”

I cried, “But what about our agreement? Right from the start, I said I’d never move in if I were only paying you rent. You said my payments were going to be applied to the principal and interest of your mortgage, just like your own payments to the bank. So shouldn’t we have nearly equal shares in this place?”

And the ass-hole explained, “Your payments were indeed applied to the mortgage, but you haven’t contributed enough yet to make a dent in the principal.”

And I said, “How do you figure that?”

And this ass-hole actually uttered as follows, with a straight face: “My own payments were applied to the principal of the loan, so I possess equity in this condo and will receive a sum of money from its sale; but YOUR payments were all applied to the loan’s interest, so you own no equity and will receive nothing from its sale.”

Beside myself with frustration now, I exclaimed: “You can’t be serious. You’re saying that you consider my payments were all interest while yours were all principal? That wasn’t our agreement! I would NEVER have agreed to that!”

And the ass-hole allowed himself the last smug word: “Well that’s how it worked out, in the end.”

*

So my ex roommate-landlord moved to California and spent several years holding a firearm on a battleship. But the state refused to alter the amount that they withheld from his paychecks for child support – they kept garnishing his wages at a rate as if he were still a skilled engineer making the big bucks, although he was now earning only two pesos per fortnight. The result was that he accumulated a super-massive avalanche of debt, just like the judge prophesied. Full decades of his life would be expended very slowly paying off these government liabilities. And incidentally, after a while, he got himself kicked out of the military when, on a routine drug test, he popped positive for marijuana. This “other than honorable discharge” followed him through his working life – with such a blotch on his record, it was hard to find jobs.

P.S.

One thing I like about the sun, tho: it always goes down. You never have the problem of the sun remaining in the sky all night. That’s my fear, with contractors who come and do work on your house: that they’ll never go home. (I wrote the whole blog post above while a team of guys was repairing a wall in our bedroom.) I used to say that the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but now I am reminded that the scariest film is Straw Dogs (1971).