Adventures in Renting
This is a story I wrote for a project that never really went anywhere, but I think it’s pretty funny.
Ten AM. God my head hearts. What’s that pounding? I wish I could just get back to sleep. Stop pounding, sleep it off. What happened last night? Damn my head’s never literally pounded like this before…
Shit, the door. Who the fuck would come to my house at this time in the morning? Anybody who knows me knows to stay the fuck away from my house before noon, really before one or two. Who the fuck is this?
I was bare ass naked. I threw a pair of pants on that didn’t fit, riding down to expose a bush of pubic hair, and stumbled out to get the door, squinting in the morning sunlight.
That’s a fucking cop.
What the fuck’s a cop doing here?
When I opened the door I was looking down at the cop from a step below me. He was staring up at me in that stupid cop way, that he may not know what, but he’s sure I’ve done something wrong.
“Yeah?” I greeted sleepily.
“Is that your car?” The cop pointed. It was my roommate’s.
“No…”
“Do you know who’s car it is?”
“Uh… he lives in the building.”
“Well the registration’s expired.”
You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. Why are you snooping around back here anyway? The car’s parked behind a fence, completely invisible unless you go behind a grocery store, up the dirt driveway to the house, and peek around a fence to see what’s going on. So you’re spying on me?
“Yeah?” was all I really said.
“Yeah, tell him that he has to fix that, or else he has to get a junk permit for it and shouldn’t be driving it.”
“Right.”
“Have a good day.”
“You too…” fucker.
I turned around. There was my roommate and I don’t think I ever saw the man look so confused.
“Was that a fucking cop?”
“Yeah”
“What the fuck did he want?”
“Your registration’s expired.”
I was wrong, my roommate looked even more confused now.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope. Register it or get a junk permit.”
I went back to bed. Head was still pounding, but the noise was gone. I stared up at the paper-patched raccoon hole in my ceiling and thought about the rotting shingles outside.
The man certainly had his priorities.
The police, as a whole, always have their priorities. Rich men constantly break the law, but they will never be arrested by an ordinary cop. But often, if the officer was aware of the law, such violations are blatant. Many buildings inhabiting human beings for money clearly should be drastically renovated or condemned. Restaurants leave the back door of their kitchens wide open flaunting their abysmal state of cleanliness for all the world to see, dumpsters spilling into the alley behind the store. If cops can come poking around for expired registrations, they can come poking around for overflowing dumpsters. But they don’t.
People scoff at the idea, and say that’s not the officer’s job. I beg, what’s the difference? Ethically, why is purse snatching a more pressing matter than poor insulation, locks that don’t work and rodent infestation? “To protect and serve,” they say, but to protect and serve whom? Granted, there are government agencies established to combat the indiscretions of the rich, but at the very least it must be admitted that there is class distinction in the methods of policing. Often suspects can be detained and arrested because they “fit a description.” I’ve got another lawbreaking description for you: fat, white and wealthy. Running a slum should be an arrestable offense, like drinking and driving, shoplifting, and smoking pot.
Once we went through the proper channels and called the Board of Health for an inspection. Boy was the landlord pissed. First time he’d called me in months, ranting and raving about how we should have called him rather than health inspectors. The problem was that I had been calling him, and it didn’t really get results. At some point a pipe had started leaking between the floors, directly over our toilet. Every time I sat down on it, my feet sat in a horrifying puddle on the floor, and my head felt the drip-drip-drip. It smelled terrible. It was health hazardous and just plain unappealing to set foot in my bathroom. Repeated phone calls and this still took two months for the plumbers to come through to fix the problem. The plumbers had to cut a hole in our ceiling and it remained there for several more months, until our call to the Board of Health.
The super got in pretty quickly and started making repairs. I felt bad for the guy, he was overworked in the first place. Not only was he servicing the four apartments in the building, but the two organic grocery stores that our fearless landlord owned as well. One day the landlord showed up with him, and asked to look over the lease. This has to be one of the more frightening powers that one man can have over another, when he inspects the legal arrangement that allows the other to have a home.
“Just a month to month, huh?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, there’s going to be some big changes around here pretty soon, I think.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Changes in occupancy.”
“Are you threatening to evict me?” I’d done my homework. According to the State of Massachusetts, he was not allowed to threaten eviction because we had demanded repairs. The law would be on my side. I may still be homeless, but the law was on my side.
“Well, this building may be coming down pretty soon.”
He laughed, and relaxed a little bit, “I’m sorry. It’s just that this building has been a constant source of headaches for me. Insurance costs, repairs, it seems like something’s constantly going wrong with it. It just seems like it would be easier to tear the whole thing down and be done with it.”
He was laughing, but my apprehension was turning quickly to ferocity while he spoke.
“Look, your headache is my home. Show some respect.” I said it with a calmness and dignity that I probably won’t soon repeat.
And after that, he did.