In my days of desperate dating, I went to the man mall on the internet, as anyone who has access to the internet at work while she has long, boring conference calls does. (This only worked when I had my own office. Once my spineless boss let another department kick all eight of us out of our offices and into cubicles in the converted warehouse 13 miles away where people were carjacked occasionally and we were warned not to walk to our cars alone after dark, I could no longer indulge in all the internet foolishness that I wanted to.)
I eventually met a long-term boyfriend on matchmaker.com (and know a few friends who have married internet matchups - Hi Kim!), but my first foray into the online personals was not the greatest of successes.
I found a guy - Gus - a couple of years older than I. Never married. Employed. A doctor! That's high on the scale. Owned his house. Cute. Not Catholic, but you can't have everything.
We emailed. Liked each other as much as you can like someone you've never met. He suggested we meet for lunch.
I had to make sure he wasn't an ax murderer first.
My real estate fair godmother/landlady is married to a physician. This was a smallish town as far as that sort of thing went. I asked Mary Linda if she had heard of this guy and if he was who he said he was.
Oh yes. She didn't know him, but she knew of his father, also a doctor, who had abandoned Gus and his mother when Gus was a kid for his receptionist or something like that. Not an ax murderer, though.
We met for lunch. I agonized over what to wear and made the bad decision to don my olive-green pantsuit. Bad because 1. I look like crap in olive and I don't even know why I owned that suit and 2. I look way better in a skirt than I do in pants and I say this with all modesty. I am just blessed with nice legs, at least below the knees, the same way I am not blessed with a bosom. There has to be some compensation for getting the short end of the stick in the cup lottery.
I thought we hit it off, even though he was 20 minutes late. I had expected that. (I expect almost everyone to be late, which is why I almost always have a book with me. Just because I expect it, however, does not mean I like it.)
We discussed U.S. energy policy. Isn't that the ideal conversation to have on a semi-blind date? I didn't make any major eating mistakes. Didn't pick my nose. None of that. We walked out to the parking lot and he asked if he could call me again.
I said yes.
I thought he really meant, Could he call me again?
Apparently, that is guy code for, "I wouldn't cross the street to pee on you if you were on fire."
Or maybe just, "You're nice, but I don't want to go to bed with you."
But I didn't figure this out until later because I thought, Could he call me? meant that he was going to Call Me.
I had several other blind dates set up by my fairy godmothers. None of the others asked if they could call me, so I did not expect a call. They just said "Nice to meet you" and that was that. Which was fine. You don't always - indeed, you rarely - have chemistry with someone. Still, they all insisted on paying for lunch, even though I think on a blind date, you should go halfsies. But this was The South and in The South, The Man Pays.
When I returned to my office (not cubicle), I sent Gus what I thought was a witty and charming email reiterating the points I had made about energy policy.
He did not answer.
He did not call.
Hmm. Maybe there was a hint there. I'm not totally deaf.
Then a friend said I shouldn't give up. She had baseball tickets she wasn't able to use. Why didn't I invite him to the ball game with me?
I debated. Should I put myself out there again? It seemed pretty clear (now) that he was not interested, but maybe he had just been too busy to answer my email. Maybe it had gone into his junk folder. Maybe he had laryngitis. Maybe he'd gone out of town. Maybe he'd been hit by a bus!
Besides, what man can resist free tickets to a ball game?
I was too chicken to call him, so I wrote him a little note. On nice stationary (ery?), of course. Taking twice as long to write as I usually do so that my handwriting was not completely illegible.
He never called.
All that humiliation for nothing. But did I learn my lesson?
No.
But that's another story.
PS He is now married with two kids, one at least of which who came with the (slim, bosomy) wife. It is amazing what you can find on facebook when people do not set their security properly.
PPS Even though I am very happy with Primo and he was worth the wait, there is always a bit of the Sally/Harry moment of, It's not that he didn't want to get married, he just didn't want to marry (or date) me.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
In which the neighbors prove to be complete losers
My Miami duplex was part of a pair - two duplexes sharing the same yard. My across the yard neighbor, Mousson, was great. We were friends. Her duplex neighbors were two Argentine guys whom we rarely saw. There are more fun things to do in Miami for a young man than hang out with his neighbors.
My duplex neighbors were jerks.
The first neighbor, who moved out after a year, had two big dogs that she let poop in the yard and on the sidewalk. This would not have been a problem except I had to go past her half, on her sidewalk, to get to my half, on my part of the sidewalk.
She did not think it was her responsibility to clean up any dog poop after her half of the yard or the sidewalk. Actually, I don't even think she cleaned the poop out of the yard.
My half of the sidewalk was always poop-laden, which is bad for its own sake but really bad considering I rarely got home before dark. Once I had navigated my way through the land mines that Neighbor's two DOBERMANS had left, I still got to smell the poop as it wafted into my bedroom window.
She finally moved out.
Then Marta and her husband moved in. At first I thought, well cool! She's from Venezuela and her husband is Brazilian, so I can practice both Spanish and Portuguese.
Then I asked Marta to watch my place while I was on vacation for two weeks. (Mousson was in Haiti for the summer.)
"Please take my newspapers," I asked her.
"I don't read the paper," she told me.
"Then please just put it in the trash," I asked her. I hadn't put the paper on vacation hold because there was a rumor that some of the customer service people at The Herald would provide that information to burglars.
"Please move my mail away from the mail slot in the door," I asked her.
"Please water my plants," I asked her. Then I gave her my house key.
Then I went happy to Ireland with my friend Lenore. Tralalalala I don't have to worry about my house in Miami, where I have to chain my washer and dryer to the outside wall next to the back door and guess what? dryers are not meant to be outside in the rain and they will rust on the inside and you cannot get rust out of your clothes for love or money, where late-night revelers from Cocowalk pee on the side of my fence and throw used diapers and condoms into the ditch, where my license plates have been stolen twice and my car has been broken into by thieves who smashed the window and stole everything - my prescription sunglasses, the spare change in the ashtray, four quarts of motor oil - except my music cassettes, which was a real slap in the face. I mean, you guys steal the old shower curtain in the trunk in case I had to change a tire in the mud yet you don't want my music?
Philistines.
I returned from Ireland with a little gift for Marta because she had done me this enormous favor.
My friend Susan, who picked me up from the airport, and I arrived at my house.
My car interior light was on.
What the?
It was on because the door was slightly ajar.
Because it had been broken into. Again.
I opened the gate (the one with the "Perro malo" sign that kept out nobody but the FedEx guy, so when I got my job offer and signing bonus from my post-yellow truck employer, it was delayed for three days as I tried to convince FedEx to deliver it) and saw two weeks' worth of newspapers in the yard.
I tried to open my front door. I had to push hard to get through the mail that had accumulated at the mail slot.
My plants were dead.
I went next door and knocked. Marta opened the door and started to speak fast in Spanish: "They tried to break into your house! They broke into your car and then we heard somebody late one night trying to break into your house so we called the police and yelled at them and they went away!"
"Thank you," I said. "Thanks for preventing them from breaking into my house. But - um - Marta? How do you think they knew I wasn't at home?"
She looked at me wide eyed. "I don't know!" she answered.
"Do you think it could have been that all the newspapers were in the yard?"
She gasped. "No! That's how they figured it out?"
"Yes," I told her. "That's why I asked you to put them in the trash."
"Who would have thought," she mused as she shook her head.
Yeah. Who would have thought.
She never did explain why she hadn't bothered to close my car door.
My duplex neighbors were jerks.
The first neighbor, who moved out after a year, had two big dogs that she let poop in the yard and on the sidewalk. This would not have been a problem except I had to go past her half, on her sidewalk, to get to my half, on my part of the sidewalk.
She did not think it was her responsibility to clean up any dog poop after her half of the yard or the sidewalk. Actually, I don't even think she cleaned the poop out of the yard.
My half of the sidewalk was always poop-laden, which is bad for its own sake but really bad considering I rarely got home before dark. Once I had navigated my way through the land mines that Neighbor's two DOBERMANS had left, I still got to smell the poop as it wafted into my bedroom window.
She finally moved out.
Then Marta and her husband moved in. At first I thought, well cool! She's from Venezuela and her husband is Brazilian, so I can practice both Spanish and Portuguese.
Then I asked Marta to watch my place while I was on vacation for two weeks. (Mousson was in Haiti for the summer.)
"Please take my newspapers," I asked her.
"I don't read the paper," she told me.
"Then please just put it in the trash," I asked her. I hadn't put the paper on vacation hold because there was a rumor that some of the customer service people at The Herald would provide that information to burglars.
"Please move my mail away from the mail slot in the door," I asked her.
"Please water my plants," I asked her. Then I gave her my house key.
Then I went happy to Ireland with my friend Lenore. Tralalalala I don't have to worry about my house in Miami, where I have to chain my washer and dryer to the outside wall next to the back door and guess what? dryers are not meant to be outside in the rain and they will rust on the inside and you cannot get rust out of your clothes for love or money, where late-night revelers from Cocowalk pee on the side of my fence and throw used diapers and condoms into the ditch, where my license plates have been stolen twice and my car has been broken into by thieves who smashed the window and stole everything - my prescription sunglasses, the spare change in the ashtray, four quarts of motor oil - except my music cassettes, which was a real slap in the face. I mean, you guys steal the old shower curtain in the trunk in case I had to change a tire in the mud yet you don't want my music?
Philistines.
I returned from Ireland with a little gift for Marta because she had done me this enormous favor.
My friend Susan, who picked me up from the airport, and I arrived at my house.
My car interior light was on.
What the?
It was on because the door was slightly ajar.
Because it had been broken into. Again.
I opened the gate (the one with the "Perro malo" sign that kept out nobody but the FedEx guy, so when I got my job offer and signing bonus from my post-yellow truck employer, it was delayed for three days as I tried to convince FedEx to deliver it) and saw two weeks' worth of newspapers in the yard.
I tried to open my front door. I had to push hard to get through the mail that had accumulated at the mail slot.
My plants were dead.
I went next door and knocked. Marta opened the door and started to speak fast in Spanish: "They tried to break into your house! They broke into your car and then we heard somebody late one night trying to break into your house so we called the police and yelled at them and they went away!"
"Thank you," I said. "Thanks for preventing them from breaking into my house. But - um - Marta? How do you think they knew I wasn't at home?"
She looked at me wide eyed. "I don't know!" she answered.
"Do you think it could have been that all the newspapers were in the yard?"
She gasped. "No! That's how they figured it out?"
"Yes," I told her. "That's why I asked you to put them in the trash."
"Who would have thought," she mused as she shook her head.
Yeah. Who would have thought.
She never did explain why she hadn't bothered to close my car door.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
In which I realize I have a bad landlord and even worse neighbors
When I got the job in Miami, the Yellow Truck Sweatshop Employer, who shall go unnamed, flew me to Miami for a few days a month before I was supposed to start working so I could find a place to live. That day, I found a cute, cute duplex in Coconut Grove. A little stucco house with wood floors and a porch and arched doorways and a built-in bookcase. It was to die for. Expensive, but hey I was rolling in the dough now.
I also got my drivers' license in about two seconds because Florida allows you to make appointments at the DMV. I was the only person who seemed to have figured this out, because when I got there, there was nobody at the "appointments" counter and a huge line at the other counters.
Driver licensing is the one public service that Florida does well. Getting license tags and getting the car inspected were nightmares. My first year, I got to the car inspection place, which closed at 5 during the week, not that I could have gotten there even if it stayed open until 7, or 8, or 9 because I would still have been at work, on Saturday morning at 7:30 in anticipation of the 8:00 a.m. opening. There was already a long line around the block. When they opened the gate, we moved into four lanes. After I had been waiting 40 minutes, someone drove from the outside, around those of us waiting, and to the front of the line.
NO ONE DID ANYTHING!
Another car decided to try the same trick. I thought, "Not on my watch, buddy," so I honked and did the Latin America finger wave, which is when you move your index finger from side to side. That means, "No way in heck are you doing this and if you do, there will be severe repercussions."
It worked. Spurred by my example, the other drivers showed a bit of cojones and honked as well. The breakaway car had to slink to the back of the line. That had probably never happened to him before, as line cutting is an enormous problem in Miami. They would even cut in line at communion at church, which come on - you're not going to miss communion and it's not like church will end any faster if you cut, unless you're like me and leave right after communion because you cannot stand to hear one more awful song from the "Gather" hymnal.
Back to the landlord. He seemed like a decent guy, although it's pretty clear from some of my other rental decisions that I am completely incapable of judging landlord character. I told him if he would buy the paint, I would re-paint the living room. He dropped off the paint and the brushes. I asked where the dropcloths and the tape were.
Oh no me preocupe, he told me. Don' worry 'bout it.
I didn't understand how he could be so cavalier about his own property. I bought tape and dropcloths because although I do only a half-assed job on things like washing dishes - clean enough not to give anyone food poisoning is my mantra - I am a kick-ass painter. Dishes can be re-washed. Painting is a different story.
He did jump to my aid when I called him to announce there were rats in the kitchen. Or rat. I didn't know how many. At least one - it was eating my bread (through the wrapper). Then I saw it scurry under the stove one night. In a completely instinctive reaction, I jumped onto a chair. When you see that scene in a movie, do not laugh. It is what rational people do in response to seeing a nasty, disease-laden, eats the noses off babies rat.
He came over the next day with a mousetrap and the advice to get a cat or a snake. Because snakes eat rats, you know, and wouldn't it be nice to have a snake roaming the house?
The trap didn't work. I put cheese in it and the rat stole the cheese. I read that I should use peanut butter instead. I tried that - the peanut butter was untouched, but the bananas were nibbled upon.
I bought poison, something the landlord had been unwilling to do. Cheap? Ignorant? Who knows.
I saw the poison level (the box was in the kitchen) decreasing a little bit each day, but saw no dead rats. A few days into it, I came home to find a stoned rat in the poison box.
He had been eating the poison and was happy, happy, happy. I tried to sweep him out of the house, thinking to take advantage of his drunken slowness, but he still scrambled under the stove.
The next night, the same thing, only this time the rat had the nerve to wave at me.
Then I didn't see him again, but a few days later, I smelled a whiff of something nasty. That whiff became a horrible odor.
The rat(s) had climbed underneath my floor to die. And to decompose. Thank you, humid Miami climate, for carrying that stink into my house for two weeks.
I checked into getting cats. I went to the adoption fair that the crazy cat ladies were running at the bookstore. I picked two cats, but could not take them home until my house had been inspected by the crazy cat lady.
"Vere vill ze kitties eat?" she demanded.
"In the bathroom."
"Zey cannot eat in ze bazroom!"
"Um, in the kitchen?" I said weakly. It's not like she would be coming back to inspect once the cats arrived.
She seemed satisfied with that answer.
"Vere vill ze kitties sleep?" she continued.
I shrugged. "Wherever they want, I suppose." Had she never observed a cat in action? If someone can tell me the secret of keeping a cat from going where you do not want it to go, please share this information with me. Primo and I have two cats who have taken over the kitchen. Over the house. I have surrendered and now use a cutting board (stored in the cupboard) for preparing all food because I do not want my food to touch the counter where the cats have trod using the same feet they use in their litter box.
"Vy do you vant ze kitties?"
"Because I have rats," I told her.
She staggered and put her hand to her chest. (OK, not really.) "You cannot haf ze kitties if you haf ze rats!" she exclaimed, horrified.
"Why not?" I muttered. "I have to work for a living. Why shouldn't my cats?"
Somehow, I passed. I don't know if the cats could have killed any rats, but perhaps their constant killing and eating everything but the heads of the cute bright green geckos that lived on my blinds served as a warning to the others. The heads and tails would disappear on Saturday mornings when I would put on my glasses and clean the house. The rest of the week, I just didn't look. Plus I usually didn't get home from work until like midnight and who cares if she has a clean house at midnight. Have I mentioned I hated my job at the place that rhymes with "Sider?"
I don't think the rats were scared of the cats (whose names I have forgotten - shame on me - I had to give one of them away when I moved to Cedar Rapids - the other was killed by a car and more about that later when I talk about my really clueless neighbor), but perhaps their mere presence was a deterrent. Yes, there was the gecko killing, but it's easy to pick on something smaller than you. The rats were almost as big as the cats and it's not like my cats were hungry or anything because during the day while I was at work, they hung out with my neighbor Mousson (not the bad neighbor - Mousson was really nice), who, along with her teenage son, Rudolph, fed the cats on demand. Cats need to be a little bit hungry to be truly effective hunters.
Back to the landlord. His responsiveness kicked into super low gear when I discovered that the roof was leaking and that the plaster above my sofa was getting soggy. I called him every day for five days, telling him that there was a leak and it was damaging his ceilings. On Sunday, I awoke to see that the plaster was sagging about an inch. It was going to fall.
I pulled as much furniture out of the living room as possible and covered the sofa with an old sheet. A regular sheet. I didn't have many old sheets in the sense of "used up and replaced by new sheets" because I had been in grad school for two years, then a year unemployed, then two years of Peace Corps, then another year unemployed, all of which meant that I had only the sheets that I had had for years.
But a sheet is easier to replace than a sofa, so there you go, just as the Good Towels are easier to replace than the basement carpet when the sewer drain backs up, which it has done every summer since Primo and I bought our house. Primo freaks out that I am bringing the Good Towels downstairs to blot the water ("blot" being used in the sense of "try to sop up the five gallons of water that are now inhabiting our new basement carpet") but I point out that the carpet cost $1,000 to install and yeah, the insurance paid for it but still do we want to go through that hassle again and towels are not that expensive at TJMaxx and you can even get stuff that's not made in China, which is a quality I seek as I am not a fan of slave/prison labor.
I called my landlord again and left the message that the ceiling was about to fall and he might want to arrange for the repair.
Then I went to a movie. When I returned, the plaster had indeed fallen - a chunk about 3' x 8.' I pulled my trash can in from the street and began tossing the plaster into it.
Do you know how heavy wet plaster is?
It is very, very heavy. And a trash can full of it is very, very, very heavy, even when you are dragging it back out to the curb rather than carrying it. I could hardly walk the next day at work. Who knew my glutes needed so much work? I should have left it for the landlord to clean, but I didn't want wet plaster soaking through to my sofa. And he probably wouldn't have done it.
Why he just hadn't fixed the leaky roof in the first place I do not know. Wait. I do. I was in Miami a few years ago with my former boyfriend (the one who gave me the belt sander, which I still love) and we drove past my old place. Only it was gone. It had been replaced by some crappy new construction. My place had been built in the '40s. It was solid, good construction - wood, stucco, tile. The corners were square. The materials were high quality. It had character.
It had been replaced by a McCondo. So sad.
I was going to talk about my bad neighbors, but I'll do that next time.
I also got my drivers' license in about two seconds because Florida allows you to make appointments at the DMV. I was the only person who seemed to have figured this out, because when I got there, there was nobody at the "appointments" counter and a huge line at the other counters.
Driver licensing is the one public service that Florida does well. Getting license tags and getting the car inspected were nightmares. My first year, I got to the car inspection place, which closed at 5 during the week, not that I could have gotten there even if it stayed open until 7, or 8, or 9 because I would still have been at work, on Saturday morning at 7:30 in anticipation of the 8:00 a.m. opening. There was already a long line around the block. When they opened the gate, we moved into four lanes. After I had been waiting 40 minutes, someone drove from the outside, around those of us waiting, and to the front of the line.
NO ONE DID ANYTHING!
Another car decided to try the same trick. I thought, "Not on my watch, buddy," so I honked and did the Latin America finger wave, which is when you move your index finger from side to side. That means, "No way in heck are you doing this and if you do, there will be severe repercussions."
It worked. Spurred by my example, the other drivers showed a bit of cojones and honked as well. The breakaway car had to slink to the back of the line. That had probably never happened to him before, as line cutting is an enormous problem in Miami. They would even cut in line at communion at church, which come on - you're not going to miss communion and it's not like church will end any faster if you cut, unless you're like me and leave right after communion because you cannot stand to hear one more awful song from the "Gather" hymnal.
Back to the landlord. He seemed like a decent guy, although it's pretty clear from some of my other rental decisions that I am completely incapable of judging landlord character. I told him if he would buy the paint, I would re-paint the living room. He dropped off the paint and the brushes. I asked where the dropcloths and the tape were.
Oh no me preocupe, he told me. Don' worry 'bout it.
I didn't understand how he could be so cavalier about his own property. I bought tape and dropcloths because although I do only a half-assed job on things like washing dishes - clean enough not to give anyone food poisoning is my mantra - I am a kick-ass painter. Dishes can be re-washed. Painting is a different story.
He did jump to my aid when I called him to announce there were rats in the kitchen. Or rat. I didn't know how many. At least one - it was eating my bread (through the wrapper). Then I saw it scurry under the stove one night. In a completely instinctive reaction, I jumped onto a chair. When you see that scene in a movie, do not laugh. It is what rational people do in response to seeing a nasty, disease-laden, eats the noses off babies rat.
He came over the next day with a mousetrap and the advice to get a cat or a snake. Because snakes eat rats, you know, and wouldn't it be nice to have a snake roaming the house?
The trap didn't work. I put cheese in it and the rat stole the cheese. I read that I should use peanut butter instead. I tried that - the peanut butter was untouched, but the bananas were nibbled upon.
I bought poison, something the landlord had been unwilling to do. Cheap? Ignorant? Who knows.
I saw the poison level (the box was in the kitchen) decreasing a little bit each day, but saw no dead rats. A few days into it, I came home to find a stoned rat in the poison box.
He had been eating the poison and was happy, happy, happy. I tried to sweep him out of the house, thinking to take advantage of his drunken slowness, but he still scrambled under the stove.
The next night, the same thing, only this time the rat had the nerve to wave at me.
Then I didn't see him again, but a few days later, I smelled a whiff of something nasty. That whiff became a horrible odor.
The rat(s) had climbed underneath my floor to die. And to decompose. Thank you, humid Miami climate, for carrying that stink into my house for two weeks.
I checked into getting cats. I went to the adoption fair that the crazy cat ladies were running at the bookstore. I picked two cats, but could not take them home until my house had been inspected by the crazy cat lady.
"Vere vill ze kitties eat?" she demanded.
"In the bathroom."
"Zey cannot eat in ze bazroom!"
"Um, in the kitchen?" I said weakly. It's not like she would be coming back to inspect once the cats arrived.
She seemed satisfied with that answer.
"Vere vill ze kitties sleep?" she continued.
I shrugged. "Wherever they want, I suppose." Had she never observed a cat in action? If someone can tell me the secret of keeping a cat from going where you do not want it to go, please share this information with me. Primo and I have two cats who have taken over the kitchen. Over the house. I have surrendered and now use a cutting board (stored in the cupboard) for preparing all food because I do not want my food to touch the counter where the cats have trod using the same feet they use in their litter box.
"Vy do you vant ze kitties?"
"Because I have rats," I told her.
She staggered and put her hand to her chest. (OK, not really.) "You cannot haf ze kitties if you haf ze rats!" she exclaimed, horrified.
"Why not?" I muttered. "I have to work for a living. Why shouldn't my cats?"
Somehow, I passed. I don't know if the cats could have killed any rats, but perhaps their constant killing and eating everything but the heads of the cute bright green geckos that lived on my blinds served as a warning to the others. The heads and tails would disappear on Saturday mornings when I would put on my glasses and clean the house. The rest of the week, I just didn't look. Plus I usually didn't get home from work until like midnight and who cares if she has a clean house at midnight. Have I mentioned I hated my job at the place that rhymes with "Sider?"
I don't think the rats were scared of the cats (whose names I have forgotten - shame on me - I had to give one of them away when I moved to Cedar Rapids - the other was killed by a car and more about that later when I talk about my really clueless neighbor), but perhaps their mere presence was a deterrent. Yes, there was the gecko killing, but it's easy to pick on something smaller than you. The rats were almost as big as the cats and it's not like my cats were hungry or anything because during the day while I was at work, they hung out with my neighbor Mousson (not the bad neighbor - Mousson was really nice), who, along with her teenage son, Rudolph, fed the cats on demand. Cats need to be a little bit hungry to be truly effective hunters.
Back to the landlord. His responsiveness kicked into super low gear when I discovered that the roof was leaking and that the plaster above my sofa was getting soggy. I called him every day for five days, telling him that there was a leak and it was damaging his ceilings. On Sunday, I awoke to see that the plaster was sagging about an inch. It was going to fall.
I pulled as much furniture out of the living room as possible and covered the sofa with an old sheet. A regular sheet. I didn't have many old sheets in the sense of "used up and replaced by new sheets" because I had been in grad school for two years, then a year unemployed, then two years of Peace Corps, then another year unemployed, all of which meant that I had only the sheets that I had had for years.
But a sheet is easier to replace than a sofa, so there you go, just as the Good Towels are easier to replace than the basement carpet when the sewer drain backs up, which it has done every summer since Primo and I bought our house. Primo freaks out that I am bringing the Good Towels downstairs to blot the water ("blot" being used in the sense of "try to sop up the five gallons of water that are now inhabiting our new basement carpet") but I point out that the carpet cost $1,000 to install and yeah, the insurance paid for it but still do we want to go through that hassle again and towels are not that expensive at TJMaxx and you can even get stuff that's not made in China, which is a quality I seek as I am not a fan of slave/prison labor.
I called my landlord again and left the message that the ceiling was about to fall and he might want to arrange for the repair.
Then I went to a movie. When I returned, the plaster had indeed fallen - a chunk about 3' x 8.' I pulled my trash can in from the street and began tossing the plaster into it.
Do you know how heavy wet plaster is?
It is very, very heavy. And a trash can full of it is very, very, very heavy, even when you are dragging it back out to the curb rather than carrying it. I could hardly walk the next day at work. Who knew my glutes needed so much work? I should have left it for the landlord to clean, but I didn't want wet plaster soaking through to my sofa. And he probably wouldn't have done it.
Why he just hadn't fixed the leaky roof in the first place I do not know. Wait. I do. I was in Miami a few years ago with my former boyfriend (the one who gave me the belt sander, which I still love) and we drove past my old place. Only it was gone. It had been replaced by some crappy new construction. My place had been built in the '40s. It was solid, good construction - wood, stucco, tile. The corners were square. The materials were high quality. It had character.
It had been replaced by a McCondo. So sad.
I was going to talk about my bad neighbors, but I'll do that next time.
In which I have a huge crush on a co-worker friend and think he likes me back but then he outs himself to me
I moved to Miami for a job with a big company, which will remain unidentified but let's just say "yellow trucks," in the sweatshop known as corporate finance. It was a horrible, awful job, where we drones (aka "financial analysts") worked until 9 or 10 at night because the director and VP wouldn't meet with us to review our work until 7 p.m. and really, who would have a problem with that after arriving at work at 7:15 a.m.? After all, we could drop our dry cleaning off on the first floor and there was an on-site cafeteria and a gym. Why would anyone need to go home?
I hated that job with a passion. Hated it. The only thing that made my one year and one day there somewhat bearable is that I liked four of my co-workers a lot. They all quit shortly after I did. The others are still there. Are you seeing a connection?
I especially liked Liam. We got along great, hitting it off from the beginning because of our shared love of travel and our shared hatred of our workplace. Although who wouldn't want to go through the past 15 years of annual reports and calculate what the stock price, revenues, and profits would have been had the company not sold its aircraft division ten years earlier? That is Very Useful Information. One of my co-workers had to do a cost-benefit analysis of installing a security system in the building. It didn't matter that the system had already been installed and the money already spent.
Liam had majored in Chinese or Asian studies or something like that. After college, he got a job running a small factory in China. He spoke Chinese fluently and had traveled all over Asia. He returned to the US to get an MBA, then got his job at The Sweatshop.
Liam and I became fast friends. We went to lunch together, volunteered in a business program at an elementary school together, went out to concerts together, went dancing together. We got an opera subscription together. We would use the tickets investor relations got to attend gala events together, like the Yo-Yo Ma concert and the small dinner afterwards. Oh yes. I have been not ten feet from Yo-Yo Ma. Are you impressed?
Liam had an out of town girlfriend, Claudia. But they were having problems. He would discuss the problems with me. I hoped he would ditch her. I never met her. He didn't have a photo of her. But she sounded like she did not deserve him.
I thought it odd when Liam told me that he had given Claudia a fancy camera for Christmas. Not very romantic, I thought. But that was before Primo gave me a digital SLR for my birthday a few years ago and before a former boyfriend gave me a belt sander. Those are two of the best presents I have ever gotten. So the camera should not have given me pause at all. At the time, though, it did.
Liam and I spent so much time together that our colleagues thought we had something going on.
"We're just friends," I told them.
"Right," they said.
I would then say, "Look at Liam. Do you really think we go together?" Liam was 6'2", blonde, green eyes, fab body. Gorgeous. And smart. And super nice. He'd been picked for the Cutty Sark clipper sail from Norway to England. As in, they picked the civilian crew for their photogenics.
A guy like that can do much better than me. Not that I am chopped liver, but I am not the female equivalent of Liam. Brooke Shields is the female equivalent. (Except she has a lot more money than Liam does.)
I was flattered that they were so convinced.
But no.
One day, Liam asked me if I thought it was better to be with someone who was like you ("you" in the non sex specific third person sense) or one who was different.
Thinking, "I am the one who is like him! We both love chocolate!" I answered, "Definitely the one who is like you."
"Yeah," he sighed. "I think you're right."
Then he told me he had something important to discuss with me and could he come over to my house that night.
Oh yes! This was when he was going to confess his feelings for me! I knew I wasn't his looks match, but we clicked on everything else. It could happen.
I bought a baguette, some good cheese and some grapes. Liam showed up with a bottle of wine.
Oooh! Makeout city tonight! My only other social and - other - actions since I had moved to Miami had been a phone message one Friday night asking if I wanted to buy a septic tank, which I did not because 1. I was connected to the sewer system and 2. I rented. Having a guy over was a big deal.
We started talking. I was waiting. Waiting for him to tell me, "I want us to be more than friends," because really, how many guys hang out with a woman as much as we did without an ulterior motive?
That is not what he told me.
What he told me was that he wanted to tell me something important that nobody else at work knew but he was tired of having to keep secrets all the time.
He told me he was gay and that Claudia was a man.
"You're dating a man named Claudia?" I asked. I didn't get it.
"No!" he told me. That was the name he had given to his boyfriend, Pedro, so he could take about him/her at work and nobody would suspect anything.
My jaw dropped. I usually had pretty decent gaydar - I had several gay friends from the Peace Corps. But they were out. Maybe guys trying to hide it in a suit and tie corporate environment could turn it off.
Well crap.
Well rats.
Well I knew it was too good to be true.
Oh well.
I hated that job with a passion. Hated it. The only thing that made my one year and one day there somewhat bearable is that I liked four of my co-workers a lot. They all quit shortly after I did. The others are still there. Are you seeing a connection?
I especially liked Liam. We got along great, hitting it off from the beginning because of our shared love of travel and our shared hatred of our workplace. Although who wouldn't want to go through the past 15 years of annual reports and calculate what the stock price, revenues, and profits would have been had the company not sold its aircraft division ten years earlier? That is Very Useful Information. One of my co-workers had to do a cost-benefit analysis of installing a security system in the building. It didn't matter that the system had already been installed and the money already spent.
Liam had majored in Chinese or Asian studies or something like that. After college, he got a job running a small factory in China. He spoke Chinese fluently and had traveled all over Asia. He returned to the US to get an MBA, then got his job at The Sweatshop.
Liam and I became fast friends. We went to lunch together, volunteered in a business program at an elementary school together, went out to concerts together, went dancing together. We got an opera subscription together. We would use the tickets investor relations got to attend gala events together, like the Yo-Yo Ma concert and the small dinner afterwards. Oh yes. I have been not ten feet from Yo-Yo Ma. Are you impressed?
Liam had an out of town girlfriend, Claudia. But they were having problems. He would discuss the problems with me. I hoped he would ditch her. I never met her. He didn't have a photo of her. But she sounded like she did not deserve him.
I thought it odd when Liam told me that he had given Claudia a fancy camera for Christmas. Not very romantic, I thought. But that was before Primo gave me a digital SLR for my birthday a few years ago and before a former boyfriend gave me a belt sander. Those are two of the best presents I have ever gotten. So the camera should not have given me pause at all. At the time, though, it did.
Liam and I spent so much time together that our colleagues thought we had something going on.
"We're just friends," I told them.
"Right," they said.
I would then say, "Look at Liam. Do you really think we go together?" Liam was 6'2", blonde, green eyes, fab body. Gorgeous. And smart. And super nice. He'd been picked for the Cutty Sark clipper sail from Norway to England. As in, they picked the civilian crew for their photogenics.
A guy like that can do much better than me. Not that I am chopped liver, but I am not the female equivalent of Liam. Brooke Shields is the female equivalent. (Except she has a lot more money than Liam does.)
I was flattered that they were so convinced.
But no.
One day, Liam asked me if I thought it was better to be with someone who was like you ("you" in the non sex specific third person sense) or one who was different.
Thinking, "I am the one who is like him! We both love chocolate!" I answered, "Definitely the one who is like you."
"Yeah," he sighed. "I think you're right."
Then he told me he had something important to discuss with me and could he come over to my house that night.
Oh yes! This was when he was going to confess his feelings for me! I knew I wasn't his looks match, but we clicked on everything else. It could happen.
I bought a baguette, some good cheese and some grapes. Liam showed up with a bottle of wine.
Oooh! Makeout city tonight! My only other social and - other - actions since I had moved to Miami had been a phone message one Friday night asking if I wanted to buy a septic tank, which I did not because 1. I was connected to the sewer system and 2. I rented. Having a guy over was a big deal.
We started talking. I was waiting. Waiting for him to tell me, "I want us to be more than friends," because really, how many guys hang out with a woman as much as we did without an ulterior motive?
That is not what he told me.
What he told me was that he wanted to tell me something important that nobody else at work knew but he was tired of having to keep secrets all the time.
He told me he was gay and that Claudia was a man.
"You're dating a man named Claudia?" I asked. I didn't get it.
"No!" he told me. That was the name he had given to his boyfriend, Pedro, so he could take about him/her at work and nobody would suspect anything.
My jaw dropped. I usually had pretty decent gaydar - I had several gay friends from the Peace Corps. But they were out. Maybe guys trying to hide it in a suit and tie corporate environment could turn it off.
Well crap.
Well rats.
Well I knew it was too good to be true.
Oh well.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
In which I get taken advantage of by a family that took advantage of babysitters, then make things worse by giving them my best friend's phone number
My friend Jackie still has not forgiven me for this. She brings it up every time I see her, which sadly, has not been for the past few years. We seem to have lost touch, despite my calling and writing. My automatic assumption is that I did something to make her mad and not want to be my friend any more, but the last time we talked, things were fine. I would rather have her be mad at me than be dead or in a coma, though.
When I was in high school, my main source of income was babysitting. There weren't many options for the teenagers on base in Panama. Teenage jobs, such as bagging groceries or teaching swimming, went to Panamanian nationals, which only makes sense: these people had families to support, we just wanted to buy clothes and makeup. Well, some girls wanted to buy makeup. I might have, had I a clue of how to use it, but I didn't get that gene. My sister did, so she does a makeover on me every time I see her and darn if I don't look better after she is through. But I am way too lazy to do what she does, so I usually remain unadorned.
I made 75 cents an hour, which you will note was less than minimum wage at the time. I think it was about $2.25 then. (This was the late '70s.)
Babysitters in my neighborhood today make about $10 an hour. Much higher than minimum wage. Why should babysitters make more than minimum wage here? Maybe the parents have to compete with McDonald's to get babysitters. Or maybe I live in a higher-income area than I did when I was in high school and these girls aren't going to leave their houses for less than $10 an hour. Whatever it is, I have considered babysitting as my second career. Ten dollars an hour, cash, tax free is not too shabby. (My friend's daughter gets $20 an hour in San Francisco.)
One day, I got a call from a family a few miles away. I usually babysat within walking distance of my house and did not know this family. I don't remember who referred them to me. I wish I did so I could call that person and let them know what's what. I should have been suspicious that they were calling someone so far from their own neighborhood.
But I wasn't.
They offered me $10 to babysit for a whole day so they could go fishing.
It seemed like a fortune.
Ha.
I wish I remembered their names so I could call and demand more money.
They picked me up at 6:00 a.m. and dropped me off at their house before speeding away, wheels spinning in the gravel. The concrete. The roads were paved, even in enlisted housing.
I walked into the kitchen.
Horrible mess. Not a "we didn't finish the dishes last night after supper" but "we have not washed dishes in a week plus we do not understand the concepts of 1. wiping off the table and the counter after preparing a meal and eating and 2. occasionally sweeping the crap off the floor."
Granted, they had four children, but I know other families with four kids and they do not live in pigsties.
For other families, I would wash the dishes after the kids went to bed because I was usually pretty bored once I had found the Playboy magazines and eaten cold cereal of the kinds my mom never bought, like Cap'n Crunch. (An addiction that haunts me to this day, such that I avoid the cereal aisle altogether lest I find myself buying the 2 for $5 regular and peanut butter Cap'n Crunch, eating half the box before I get home, then hiding the rest in the basement from myself and from Primo so he won't give me a hard time about eating such junk, even though he is the one who hides the Dill Pickle Pringles from himself in the basement and has a lifetime supply of ramen noodles). Washing dishes also sometimes generated a little extra cash at the end of the evening. I knew who paid for it and who didn't.
But this house - let's call this family "the McCalls" - was of a different order of magnitude. I did not want to spend an hour cleaning that kitchen. Then the kids woke up - all four of them - and demanded breakfast.
I pulled out the cold cereal and discovered there were no clean bowls and no clean spoons to be found.
I had to wash the dishes. I had to wash the frying pans with the burned-on food (hello Mrs McCall! have you never heard of scraping the extra in the pan into the trash and then soaking the pan?) and the greasy kettles and the silverware that was thrown on top of them just to clear the sink.
Then I had to wash the plates and glasses on the counter so I could find the bowls.
It took forever. Is there anything more gross than sticking your hands in someone else's nasty dishes?
Well yes there is.
When the kids came down for breakfast, I discovered that two of them were still in diapers.
Remember a long time ago when people used cloth diapers? Do you remember how cloth diapers worked? Poopy diapers rinsed in the toilet, then thrown into the diaper pail with the other pee diapers until there was a full load for the washing machine.
Do you remember how the diaper pail would smell after a day or two?
Oh yes that poopy ammonia smell. The smell that would make you gag.
Why am I writing about this, you ask?
Because there were
1. two kids in diapers and
2. not a clean diaper in the house
Yes, the McCalls were getting their money's worth. But really, how could they have anticipated that I would need clean diapers? No parent can see that far in advance.
I had to wash, dry and fold a load of diapers before I could change diapers.
Then. The kids were holy terrors. I discovered them climbing out of the upstairs window, getting ready to jump to the ground. They didn't shut up but screamed like banshees all day. If they had ever been disciplined, there was no evidence of such.
Mr and Mrs McCall got home at 7:00 p.m. After I had changed about a dozen diapers, prepared three meals for their kids and cleaned the kitchen after, because that's how I roll.
I did not have the guts to demand more money. They did not offer any.
They got the bargain of a lifetime.
Two weeks later, they called to ask me to babysit again.
I turned them down.
And gave them Jackie's phone number.
I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking. I deserve for Jackie still to be mad at me today. Because although I would wish the McCalls on my worst enemy, I would never wish them on a friend.
When I was in high school, my main source of income was babysitting. There weren't many options for the teenagers on base in Panama. Teenage jobs, such as bagging groceries or teaching swimming, went to Panamanian nationals, which only makes sense: these people had families to support, we just wanted to buy clothes and makeup. Well, some girls wanted to buy makeup. I might have, had I a clue of how to use it, but I didn't get that gene. My sister did, so she does a makeover on me every time I see her and darn if I don't look better after she is through. But I am way too lazy to do what she does, so I usually remain unadorned.
I made 75 cents an hour, which you will note was less than minimum wage at the time. I think it was about $2.25 then. (This was the late '70s.)
Babysitters in my neighborhood today make about $10 an hour. Much higher than minimum wage. Why should babysitters make more than minimum wage here? Maybe the parents have to compete with McDonald's to get babysitters. Or maybe I live in a higher-income area than I did when I was in high school and these girls aren't going to leave their houses for less than $10 an hour. Whatever it is, I have considered babysitting as my second career. Ten dollars an hour, cash, tax free is not too shabby. (My friend's daughter gets $20 an hour in San Francisco.)
One day, I got a call from a family a few miles away. I usually babysat within walking distance of my house and did not know this family. I don't remember who referred them to me. I wish I did so I could call that person and let them know what's what. I should have been suspicious that they were calling someone so far from their own neighborhood.
But I wasn't.
They offered me $10 to babysit for a whole day so they could go fishing.
It seemed like a fortune.
Ha.
I wish I remembered their names so I could call and demand more money.
They picked me up at 6:00 a.m. and dropped me off at their house before speeding away, wheels spinning in the gravel. The concrete. The roads were paved, even in enlisted housing.
I walked into the kitchen.
Horrible mess. Not a "we didn't finish the dishes last night after supper" but "we have not washed dishes in a week plus we do not understand the concepts of 1. wiping off the table and the counter after preparing a meal and eating and 2. occasionally sweeping the crap off the floor."
Granted, they had four children, but I know other families with four kids and they do not live in pigsties.
For other families, I would wash the dishes after the kids went to bed because I was usually pretty bored once I had found the Playboy magazines and eaten cold cereal of the kinds my mom never bought, like Cap'n Crunch. (An addiction that haunts me to this day, such that I avoid the cereal aisle altogether lest I find myself buying the 2 for $5 regular and peanut butter Cap'n Crunch, eating half the box before I get home, then hiding the rest in the basement from myself and from Primo so he won't give me a hard time about eating such junk, even though he is the one who hides the Dill Pickle Pringles from himself in the basement and has a lifetime supply of ramen noodles). Washing dishes also sometimes generated a little extra cash at the end of the evening. I knew who paid for it and who didn't.
But this house - let's call this family "the McCalls" - was of a different order of magnitude. I did not want to spend an hour cleaning that kitchen. Then the kids woke up - all four of them - and demanded breakfast.
I pulled out the cold cereal and discovered there were no clean bowls and no clean spoons to be found.
I had to wash the dishes. I had to wash the frying pans with the burned-on food (hello Mrs McCall! have you never heard of scraping the extra in the pan into the trash and then soaking the pan?) and the greasy kettles and the silverware that was thrown on top of them just to clear the sink.
Then I had to wash the plates and glasses on the counter so I could find the bowls.
It took forever. Is there anything more gross than sticking your hands in someone else's nasty dishes?
Well yes there is.
When the kids came down for breakfast, I discovered that two of them were still in diapers.
Remember a long time ago when people used cloth diapers? Do you remember how cloth diapers worked? Poopy diapers rinsed in the toilet, then thrown into the diaper pail with the other pee diapers until there was a full load for the washing machine.
Do you remember how the diaper pail would smell after a day or two?
Oh yes that poopy ammonia smell. The smell that would make you gag.
Why am I writing about this, you ask?
Because there were
1. two kids in diapers and
2. not a clean diaper in the house
Yes, the McCalls were getting their money's worth. But really, how could they have anticipated that I would need clean diapers? No parent can see that far in advance.
I had to wash, dry and fold a load of diapers before I could change diapers.
Then. The kids were holy terrors. I discovered them climbing out of the upstairs window, getting ready to jump to the ground. They didn't shut up but screamed like banshees all day. If they had ever been disciplined, there was no evidence of such.
Mr and Mrs McCall got home at 7:00 p.m. After I had changed about a dozen diapers, prepared three meals for their kids and cleaned the kitchen after, because that's how I roll.
I did not have the guts to demand more money. They did not offer any.
They got the bargain of a lifetime.
Two weeks later, they called to ask me to babysit again.
I turned them down.
And gave them Jackie's phone number.
I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking. I deserve for Jackie still to be mad at me today. Because although I would wish the McCalls on my worst enemy, I would never wish them on a friend.
Monday, August 9, 2010
In which a broker kisses me so I steal his biggest account
When I was working for the insurance company, I sold direct and also worked through brokers. Some accounts would take direct bids from the vendor, but many relied on a broker to collect and analyze the various proposals. Those brokers were powerful – you didn’t have a shot at the business if the broker didn’t like you.
I had a list of accounts I was supposed to sell and the only way to sell some of them was to convince the broker to let me bid.
There was this one broker, “Jim,” who controlled a few accounts I was interested in. The largest was a savings and loan with over 200 employees, which would have yielded a nice bonus – enough to pay off a big chunk of my student loans and let me eat meat more than once a week. (Well, I did eat meat more than once a week, but that was at lunch when I was entertaining brokers, prospects and clients on the company American Express. When I had to pay for food myself, it was rice and beans and peanut butter.)
I called Jim. We spoke over the phone. We met. We got friendly. We would banter. It was my job to make this guy like me enough that when his account went out to bid, I would get a shot.
I was bantering with a married man OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY FATHER. I was NOT INTERESTED IN THAT WAY.
In my mind, this was absolutely not flirting. He was MARRIED, for pete’s sake. Who flirts with a married man? A married man old enough to be her father?
Not me. I could hardly flirt with single guys my age. Flirting was not in my repertoire.
He asked me for a bid for the S&L. I gave him numbers. We didn’t get the business. We were a check bid. Big waste of time. But he did let me meet the prospect, which was rare. Most brokers liked to keep complete control and separate insurance company from prospect.
Over the next year, I kept in touch with him (and with the S&L finance lady). About eight months after the check bid, I ran into him at a park, where he had been coaching a kids’ soccer team. I said hi and he walked over to my car, bent down and kissed me on the mouth.
He kissed me. On. The. Mouth.
Omigosh.
I had no idea what to do.
So I said, “Well, bye!” and went home.
The next day, I marched into my boss' office and told him I no longer wanted to work with Jim. My boss asked why not. I told him that Jim had kissed me. My boss told me that I must have done something to provoke it. I told him I had no interest in provoking a married man my dad's age. My boss refused to re-assign the broker.
I was ticked. Remember, this was in the late '80s, before anyone cared about sexual harassment. Then, it was just part of doing business. Someone comes on to you and you don't like it? Too bad, missy. Deal with it yourself. And don't de-rail your career while you do it.
My friend B is a lawyer. She was at a work party with the other lawyers in her firm when one of the partners made inappropriate comments to her and was telling inappropriate jokes. When she protested, he looked at her, smirked, and said, "Don't forget I'm the one who does your performance evaluation."
She found a new job in Washington, DC, shortly after that. She didn't want to work in that environment and suing would have kept her from ever working as a lawyer in our state again. I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but I am also not a big fan of people using their power inappropriately.
Back to me and Jim. I had kept in touch with the finance lady at the S&L. Her renewal was approaching, so I called to ask if she wanted us to bid again. She did. I prepared a bid. Jim asked me for one as well and I told him that I was working directly with the client.
I got the account. He lost whatever commission - 6%? 3%? I can't remember what the rate was - he would have gotten for 200 employees at about $90/month per single employee, $200/month per family. (This was a long time ago.)
Teach him to mess with me.
Unfortunately, the S&L went out of business three months after I wrote the account, so I had to return my entire bonus, but it was still worth it.
I had a list of accounts I was supposed to sell and the only way to sell some of them was to convince the broker to let me bid.
There was this one broker, “Jim,” who controlled a few accounts I was interested in. The largest was a savings and loan with over 200 employees, which would have yielded a nice bonus – enough to pay off a big chunk of my student loans and let me eat meat more than once a week. (Well, I did eat meat more than once a week, but that was at lunch when I was entertaining brokers, prospects and clients on the company American Express. When I had to pay for food myself, it was rice and beans and peanut butter.)
I called Jim. We spoke over the phone. We met. We got friendly. We would banter. It was my job to make this guy like me enough that when his account went out to bid, I would get a shot.
I was bantering with a married man OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY FATHER. I was NOT INTERESTED IN THAT WAY.
In my mind, this was absolutely not flirting. He was MARRIED, for pete’s sake. Who flirts with a married man? A married man old enough to be her father?
Not me. I could hardly flirt with single guys my age. Flirting was not in my repertoire.
He asked me for a bid for the S&L. I gave him numbers. We didn’t get the business. We were a check bid. Big waste of time. But he did let me meet the prospect, which was rare. Most brokers liked to keep complete control and separate insurance company from prospect.
Over the next year, I kept in touch with him (and with the S&L finance lady). About eight months after the check bid, I ran into him at a park, where he had been coaching a kids’ soccer team. I said hi and he walked over to my car, bent down and kissed me on the mouth.
He kissed me. On. The. Mouth.
Omigosh.
I had no idea what to do.
So I said, “Well, bye!” and went home.
The next day, I marched into my boss' office and told him I no longer wanted to work with Jim. My boss asked why not. I told him that Jim had kissed me. My boss told me that I must have done something to provoke it. I told him I had no interest in provoking a married man my dad's age. My boss refused to re-assign the broker.
I was ticked. Remember, this was in the late '80s, before anyone cared about sexual harassment. Then, it was just part of doing business. Someone comes on to you and you don't like it? Too bad, missy. Deal with it yourself. And don't de-rail your career while you do it.
My friend B is a lawyer. She was at a work party with the other lawyers in her firm when one of the partners made inappropriate comments to her and was telling inappropriate jokes. When she protested, he looked at her, smirked, and said, "Don't forget I'm the one who does your performance evaluation."
She found a new job in Washington, DC, shortly after that. She didn't want to work in that environment and suing would have kept her from ever working as a lawyer in our state again. I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but I am also not a big fan of people using their power inappropriately.
Back to me and Jim. I had kept in touch with the finance lady at the S&L. Her renewal was approaching, so I called to ask if she wanted us to bid again. She did. I prepared a bid. Jim asked me for one as well and I told him that I was working directly with the client.
I got the account. He lost whatever commission - 6%? 3%? I can't remember what the rate was - he would have gotten for 200 employees at about $90/month per single employee, $200/month per family. (This was a long time ago.)
Teach him to mess with me.
Unfortunately, the S&L went out of business three months after I wrote the account, so I had to return my entire bonus, but it was still worth it.
Monday, August 2, 2010
In which I go to another darn funeral
Dr J, my mother's gentleman caller, died suddenly and unexpectedly last week. He fell down the stairs ten days ago, hit his head, went into a coma, and had a stroke. He died five days later without regaining consciousness.
I am getting tired of the nice people dying and the mean people hanging on. Now I know where the phrase, "Too mean to die" comes from. Although my mom pointed out that if I were God, who would I want with me? The mean people or the nice ones? I think there is a solution for that - send the mean people to H-E- double hockey sticks, but I bit my tongue on that one because that really is a horrible thing to wish for someone.
We are devastated. Dr J was the sweetest, most gracious man. We all loved him. He and my mom live two days driving apart. He would call her and visit her and send her flowers. When he was home, he would visit my grandmother in her nursing home, which was about 50 miles from his house.
We have known Dr J since I was five and he and his family lived in the same apartment building as my mother, my brother, my sister and I. My dad was in Vietnam. Dr J lived down the hall from us.
My first memory of him was when he gave me rabies shots. Fourteen of them. In my stomach. I had played with a mouse in the window well after my mother had told me to stay away from it. When it bit me, I wrapped my finger in kleenex, thinking she wouldn't noticed a bloody tissue on my finger and put two and two together.
She did. Moms figure out everything.
She took me to the hospital for my first shot, but then Dr J came over every evening for the next two weeks to give me the remainder.
Have you ever had a shot in your stomach?
It hurts like heck.
He and my mom had to pull me out from under the bed, where I was grabbing the bedposts. Then my mom would sit on my arms and he would sit on my legs. All that muscle tensing did not make the shot any more pleasant.
I think I have since learned that the old rabies series was ineffective anyhow.
My mother stayed friends with Dr J and his wife. Four years ago, Mrs J died. Dr J and my mother began writing and phone calling. A long-distance courtship. He asked her to marry him, she said yes. She later decided that she treasured her independence too much to re-marry, but she and Dr J maintained their relationship.
He was the only non-family member at our wedding. His wedding gift to me, although he might not have known this was his gift, was to sit with Primo's parents, Sly and Doris, during our wedding supper and keep them distracted from Primo and me, who wanted to actually enjoy our meal instead of listening to his parents' whining. If you don't know why this is such a big deal, you need to read the archives of this blog, starting at the very beginning.
At first I felt guilty about trying to avoid Sly and Doris, but then I thought, "It's my darn wedding celebration and I should not have to play hostess to jerks."
Dr J was a modest man, but he passed Sly's snob/intellect meter because he was a doctor. Little did Sly know that Dr J's religious and political beliefs were 180 degrees from Sly's. Dr J did not need to inject politics into every conversation and could avoid being drawn into a political argument, even when the other side said something inflammatory. If Sly had known about Dr J's beliefs, his head would have been spinning as he tried to figure out the, "My sister! My daughter!" dilemma of, "Smart! But those beliefs! Nobody smart can believe those things!"
My mother was going to drive to the funeral, but Primo and I convinced her that jumping into the car for a two-day trek was insanity. We got her a ticket here with Primo's frequent flyer miles. She arrives today, then she and I will drive the four hours north to the visitation and funeral tomorrow. She will leave on Saturday.
Dr J is the third boyfriend my mother has buried since my dad died 14 years ago. The other two, whom I didn't know, died of cancer. Dr J, I knew well. He visited Primo and me when he was in town, taking us out to dinner at one of the nicest restaurants here. Primo drove Dr J's brand new car into town. I opened my door before Primo had stopped and gouged the door against the grillwork in front of the restaurant. Primo and I were horrified and told Dr J we would of course pay for the repairs, but he tossed it off, saying he would have the dealer touch it up.
I stopped to see him when I drove north to see my relatives. He and I sat together at my grandmother's funeral last summer and snuck out before the burial to get a diet Coke at the corner store. He was always sending wine ideas to Primo and sent us flowers and three bottles of very, very, very nice wine for a wedding present.
He was a lovely, lovely man and we didn't even get the chance to say goodbye.
I am getting tired of the nice people dying and the mean people hanging on. Now I know where the phrase, "Too mean to die" comes from. Although my mom pointed out that if I were God, who would I want with me? The mean people or the nice ones? I think there is a solution for that - send the mean people to H-E- double hockey sticks, but I bit my tongue on that one because that really is a horrible thing to wish for someone.
We are devastated. Dr J was the sweetest, most gracious man. We all loved him. He and my mom live two days driving apart. He would call her and visit her and send her flowers. When he was home, he would visit my grandmother in her nursing home, which was about 50 miles from his house.
We have known Dr J since I was five and he and his family lived in the same apartment building as my mother, my brother, my sister and I. My dad was in Vietnam. Dr J lived down the hall from us.
My first memory of him was when he gave me rabies shots. Fourteen of them. In my stomach. I had played with a mouse in the window well after my mother had told me to stay away from it. When it bit me, I wrapped my finger in kleenex, thinking she wouldn't noticed a bloody tissue on my finger and put two and two together.
She did. Moms figure out everything.
She took me to the hospital for my first shot, but then Dr J came over every evening for the next two weeks to give me the remainder.
Have you ever had a shot in your stomach?
It hurts like heck.
He and my mom had to pull me out from under the bed, where I was grabbing the bedposts. Then my mom would sit on my arms and he would sit on my legs. All that muscle tensing did not make the shot any more pleasant.
I think I have since learned that the old rabies series was ineffective anyhow.
My mother stayed friends with Dr J and his wife. Four years ago, Mrs J died. Dr J and my mother began writing and phone calling. A long-distance courtship. He asked her to marry him, she said yes. She later decided that she treasured her independence too much to re-marry, but she and Dr J maintained their relationship.
He was the only non-family member at our wedding. His wedding gift to me, although he might not have known this was his gift, was to sit with Primo's parents, Sly and Doris, during our wedding supper and keep them distracted from Primo and me, who wanted to actually enjoy our meal instead of listening to his parents' whining. If you don't know why this is such a big deal, you need to read the archives of this blog, starting at the very beginning.
At first I felt guilty about trying to avoid Sly and Doris, but then I thought, "It's my darn wedding celebration and I should not have to play hostess to jerks."
Dr J was a modest man, but he passed Sly's snob/intellect meter because he was a doctor. Little did Sly know that Dr J's religious and political beliefs were 180 degrees from Sly's. Dr J did not need to inject politics into every conversation and could avoid being drawn into a political argument, even when the other side said something inflammatory. If Sly had known about Dr J's beliefs, his head would have been spinning as he tried to figure out the, "My sister! My daughter!" dilemma of, "Smart! But those beliefs! Nobody smart can believe those things!"
My mother was going to drive to the funeral, but Primo and I convinced her that jumping into the car for a two-day trek was insanity. We got her a ticket here with Primo's frequent flyer miles. She arrives today, then she and I will drive the four hours north to the visitation and funeral tomorrow. She will leave on Saturday.
Dr J is the third boyfriend my mother has buried since my dad died 14 years ago. The other two, whom I didn't know, died of cancer. Dr J, I knew well. He visited Primo and me when he was in town, taking us out to dinner at one of the nicest restaurants here. Primo drove Dr J's brand new car into town. I opened my door before Primo had stopped and gouged the door against the grillwork in front of the restaurant. Primo and I were horrified and told Dr J we would of course pay for the repairs, but he tossed it off, saying he would have the dealer touch it up.
I stopped to see him when I drove north to see my relatives. He and I sat together at my grandmother's funeral last summer and snuck out before the burial to get a diet Coke at the corner store. He was always sending wine ideas to Primo and sent us flowers and three bottles of very, very, very nice wine for a wedding present.
He was a lovely, lovely man and we didn't even get the chance to say goodbye.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
In which an insurance agent makes a pass at me and I don’t know what to do and I turn down his open-mouth eating boss for lunch and get in trouble
In one of my first jobs after college, I worked for an insurance company that no longer exists as I knew it then. Then, the company required that employees work from 8:00 to 4:00, with a half an hour for lunch, except for Fridays, when we all went out and took a little longer. People were allowed to smoke in their own offices, but if you were a cubicle person, you were out of luck. Shortly after I started, the company outlawed smoking on all company space, reasoning that as a health insurance company, they should be setting a Good Example.
We got a turkey at Christmas and the donut and coffee guy came around at 10:30 every morning, although I never bought from him because I was too poor, living in my wee studio apartment on Sunset Drive in Houston, taking peanut butter and cardboard sandwiches to work for lunch, making shoes out of duct tape, sweaters out of the dust bunnies under the twin bed I had hauled from my mom and dad’s house in the back of my Chevette hatchback and hair products out of cigarette ashes scrounged from honkey tonks and bacon fat.
We got 11 federal holidays and regular vacation. We left work at 4:00 without looking back.
It was another time.
A time when men made passes at lasses with glasses even at work and that’s just the way it was. Nobody told us that this was improper. Or how to handle it. We just accepted that was how some men (=jerks) acted and our responsibility as women was to extricate ourselves from the situation without making a scene or embarrassing the man in question, because of course the worst thing of all would be to embarrass a man.
I had an assignment where I traveled to Arkansas, New Mexico and all over Texas, working with the company’s insurance agents. My goal was to get them to sell more of my department’s product.
I went to Albuquerque to do a presentation to the office there. After I was done with the speech, I went out to lunch with some of the agents. One of them asked if I wanted to go out to dinner with him that night.
Not only did I not want to go out with him because I was horribly not attracted to him and because he was sort of a co-worker, but I already had a date with Kerry, the to die for cute room service waiter at the Marriott who was the self-proclaimed oldest student at the University of New Mexico, which couldn’t possibly have been true because he was only 26 and the average age at UNM was 28.
But I felt like I couldn’t tell this guy I had other plans.
So I did the next best thing. I wanted to say I thought he was too old for me, but I knew that was tactless. Instead, I told him I thought I was too young for him.
Smooth, huh?
When we returned to the office after lunch, I sat at a desk to work. He walked up behind me and started to rub my neck.
Yes, you read that correctly. He put his hands on my body and began to move them.
I had no idea what to do. What to say.
I hung up the phone, stiffened, and said nothing. Pointedly said nothing.
He stopped.
I went back to work. I said nothing and did nothing, but saved my revenge for the next man who crossed me in such a way, because it takes me some time to figure out how to react. I’ll tell you about the guy who got the vengeance for two later. I also did not return to that agency.
Then his boss called me into his office and asked if the two of us could go to lunch again the next day to discuss strategies to improve sales.
I had eaten lunch with the manager already. He chewed noisily, smacking his lips with his open mouth full of food. He grossed me out. I only speak with my mouth full of food when I have something really, really important to say, like interrupting someone to tell a good joke. This guy just made it a habit.
Again, I did not know what to say. The appropriate response would have been something like, “Oh that sounds great but unfortunately, I already have another appointment.”
Instead, I said, “But I was going to go shopping at lunch!”
Which was not true. I had lunch plans with Kerry as well. If I wasn’t at work, I was hanging out with Kerry. (Whom I have recently found again on facebook and is as cute as ever, 20 years later.)
When I returned to Houston, my boss called me into her office.
“So and so from Albuquerque called me,” she said carefully.
My heart sank.
“You shouldn’t tell a manager you are going shopping instead of meeting with him,” she said. “It is your job to meet with these guys, you know.”
“I know,” I told her miserably. Then I explained how he was such a pig.
She sighed. “You need to always have a good excuse ready,” she said. “Don’t let it happen again.”
It didn’t. I made sure I had an excuse.
We got a turkey at Christmas and the donut and coffee guy came around at 10:30 every morning, although I never bought from him because I was too poor, living in my wee studio apartment on Sunset Drive in Houston, taking peanut butter and cardboard sandwiches to work for lunch, making shoes out of duct tape, sweaters out of the dust bunnies under the twin bed I had hauled from my mom and dad’s house in the back of my Chevette hatchback and hair products out of cigarette ashes scrounged from honkey tonks and bacon fat.
We got 11 federal holidays and regular vacation. We left work at 4:00 without looking back.
It was another time.
A time when men made passes at lasses with glasses even at work and that’s just the way it was. Nobody told us that this was improper. Or how to handle it. We just accepted that was how some men (=jerks) acted and our responsibility as women was to extricate ourselves from the situation without making a scene or embarrassing the man in question, because of course the worst thing of all would be to embarrass a man.
I had an assignment where I traveled to Arkansas, New Mexico and all over Texas, working with the company’s insurance agents. My goal was to get them to sell more of my department’s product.
I went to Albuquerque to do a presentation to the office there. After I was done with the speech, I went out to lunch with some of the agents. One of them asked if I wanted to go out to dinner with him that night.
Not only did I not want to go out with him because I was horribly not attracted to him and because he was sort of a co-worker, but I already had a date with Kerry, the to die for cute room service waiter at the Marriott who was the self-proclaimed oldest student at the University of New Mexico, which couldn’t possibly have been true because he was only 26 and the average age at UNM was 28.
But I felt like I couldn’t tell this guy I had other plans.
So I did the next best thing. I wanted to say I thought he was too old for me, but I knew that was tactless. Instead, I told him I thought I was too young for him.
Smooth, huh?
When we returned to the office after lunch, I sat at a desk to work. He walked up behind me and started to rub my neck.
Yes, you read that correctly. He put his hands on my body and began to move them.
I had no idea what to do. What to say.
I hung up the phone, stiffened, and said nothing. Pointedly said nothing.
He stopped.
I went back to work. I said nothing and did nothing, but saved my revenge for the next man who crossed me in such a way, because it takes me some time to figure out how to react. I’ll tell you about the guy who got the vengeance for two later. I also did not return to that agency.
Then his boss called me into his office and asked if the two of us could go to lunch again the next day to discuss strategies to improve sales.
I had eaten lunch with the manager already. He chewed noisily, smacking his lips with his open mouth full of food. He grossed me out. I only speak with my mouth full of food when I have something really, really important to say, like interrupting someone to tell a good joke. This guy just made it a habit.
Again, I did not know what to say. The appropriate response would have been something like, “Oh that sounds great but unfortunately, I already have another appointment.”
Instead, I said, “But I was going to go shopping at lunch!”
Which was not true. I had lunch plans with Kerry as well. If I wasn’t at work, I was hanging out with Kerry. (Whom I have recently found again on facebook and is as cute as ever, 20 years later.)
When I returned to Houston, my boss called me into her office.
“So and so from Albuquerque called me,” she said carefully.
My heart sank.
“You shouldn’t tell a manager you are going shopping instead of meeting with him,” she said. “It is your job to meet with these guys, you know.”
“I know,” I told her miserably. Then I explained how he was such a pig.
She sighed. “You need to always have a good excuse ready,” she said. “Don’t let it happen again.”
It didn’t. I made sure I had an excuse.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
In which a dog pees on my friend's bridal shower presents
Actually, it might have been two dogs. But let me start at the beginning.
Before that, I'll tell you I am going for a quick story today because I have to read through the drivel of nine, yes nine, journals from my youth. I have read only the first five or six pages of one, plus flipped through to read the odd page here and there and peoples, I tell you, somebody should have slapped me. I was a whiney, self-pitying, drama queen. Oh, the angst! Oh, the lack of understanding from everyone around me! Oh, the wallowing! Oh, the sounding like a 14 year old!
Only I was in my late 20s.
Anyhow, I have to read through the journals and glean anything worth relating here. Don't worry, I won't subject you to this sort of thing:
Dickens said it in "Two Cities." This past year has been the best of times and the worst of times. The time I spent with [grad school jerk boyfriend] was the happiest time of my life. The time I've spent since without him has been the worst. I never knew it was possible to feel so miserable without someone.
And so on, for pages and pages. And pages.
You don't deserve that kind of torture. It's boring the heck out of me, but like that kid says, there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
Back to my friend's bridal shower.
My friend Leigh was getting married. Her friend Desiree and I co-hosted a bridal shower. I asked Desiree what she wanted me to do and she told me just to bring some food. She didn't want help with the invitations, with setting up at her house, with anything. "Bring snacks" is all she said. I suggested a tea bread and maybe brownies. I can't remember. I do remember the dill-onion tea bread, though.
Brownies is my other standard contribution because there is never enough chocolate at these things. Or at a church potluck. Have you noticed that? Potlucks here are pretty heavily weighted toward dessert, much as church lady cookbooks consist of 1/5 entrees, side dishes (such as "Milky Way Salad," which yes, consists of Milky Ways, apples, walnuts and whipped cream) and appetizers and 99% desserts. And yet there is rarely any chocolate. Why is that?
Discuss.
At no point did Desiree mention she would be charging me. At no point did she say, "I think we should do this and it will cost $X, what do you think?"
Just "bring food."
I arrived at Desiree's for the shower. I rang the bell and heard frantic barking. Desiree opened the door, blocking two yappy dogs, the worst kind, and warning me, "Don't let the dogs out!"
She then repeated that action and those words for every guest who arrived after I did, with the additional statement that, "It really upsets the dogs to have strangers in here."
My friend Megan and I looked at each other, rolling our eyes. We decided we needed to get away from the dogs, so we gave ourselves a tour of Desiree's house. In the upstairs hallway, we discovered dog poop. Not fresh dog poop, but dog poop nonetheless.
We told Desiree about it, thinking she might not want to be exposed as a really bad housekeeper who lets her dogs poop on the carpet and then doesn't clean it up. Desiree told us again it upset the dogs to have strangers in the house.
Then Megan went into the guest bathroom and discovered a towel laid on the floor. There was dog poop on the towel. Because that's where the dogs pooped.
Desiree did have a fenced-in back yard.
The dogs pooped on the towel.
Desiree invited everyone to get something to eat. We filled our plates and returned to the living room, where the dogs continued to yap and to jump on us. Desiree ignored her obnoxious dogs.
Megan and I went to get the presents.
They were wet.
I looked up to see if there was a leak in the ceiling.
No leak.
I sniffed a wet present.
It smelled like pee.
Dog pee.
"Desiree," Megan said. "Your dogs peed on Leigh's presents."
Desiree ran to the kitchen to get a rag.
We sat again to watch Leigh open her presents.
The dogs continued to jump. We guests sat politely and gently pushed the dogs away, casting pleading glances at Desiree as we did so.
Desiree did nothing. She did not tell the dogs to sit. She didn't apologize for them. She did not put them out.
This is where I tell you that Desiree is a psychologist with PhD.
Why would a psychologist let her dogs act aggressively and obnoxiously and put the onus on her guests to put up with the behavior?
Discuss. For extra credit, analyze the possibility that Desiree, who did not have a boyfriend despite her boob job, might have been sabatoging the shower because she was jealous of Leigh.
The dogs jumped on Megan for the last time. "Desiree, you need to put these f***ing dogs outside," she said, teeth clenched.
Desiree sighed and rolled her eyes. (Well, maybe she didn't but her overall attitude was of deep, sacrificial sighing and eye rolling.) She grabbed the dogs and locked them in the bathroom with the poop towel.
Leigh finished opening her presents. We finished the food. We cleaned up.
The days later, Desiree called me and told me I owed her $60 for my share of the food.
I was very happy when Desiree was not involved in Leigh's baby shower a few years later.
Before that, I'll tell you I am going for a quick story today because I have to read through the drivel of nine, yes nine, journals from my youth. I have read only the first five or six pages of one, plus flipped through to read the odd page here and there and peoples, I tell you, somebody should have slapped me. I was a whiney, self-pitying, drama queen. Oh, the angst! Oh, the lack of understanding from everyone around me! Oh, the wallowing! Oh, the sounding like a 14 year old!
Only I was in my late 20s.
Anyhow, I have to read through the journals and glean anything worth relating here. Don't worry, I won't subject you to this sort of thing:
Dickens said it in "Two Cities." This past year has been the best of times and the worst of times. The time I spent with [grad school jerk boyfriend] was the happiest time of my life. The time I've spent since without him has been the worst. I never knew it was possible to feel so miserable without someone.
And so on, for pages and pages. And pages.
You don't deserve that kind of torture. It's boring the heck out of me, but like that kid says, there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
Back to my friend's bridal shower.
My friend Leigh was getting married. Her friend Desiree and I co-hosted a bridal shower. I asked Desiree what she wanted me to do and she told me just to bring some food. She didn't want help with the invitations, with setting up at her house, with anything. "Bring snacks" is all she said. I suggested a tea bread and maybe brownies. I can't remember. I do remember the dill-onion tea bread, though.
Brownies is my other standard contribution because there is never enough chocolate at these things. Or at a church potluck. Have you noticed that? Potlucks here are pretty heavily weighted toward dessert, much as church lady cookbooks consist of 1/5 entrees, side dishes (such as "Milky Way Salad," which yes, consists of Milky Ways, apples, walnuts and whipped cream) and appetizers and 99% desserts. And yet there is rarely any chocolate. Why is that?
Discuss.
At no point did Desiree mention she would be charging me. At no point did she say, "I think we should do this and it will cost $X, what do you think?"
Just "bring food."
I arrived at Desiree's for the shower. I rang the bell and heard frantic barking. Desiree opened the door, blocking two yappy dogs, the worst kind, and warning me, "Don't let the dogs out!"
She then repeated that action and those words for every guest who arrived after I did, with the additional statement that, "It really upsets the dogs to have strangers in here."
My friend Megan and I looked at each other, rolling our eyes. We decided we needed to get away from the dogs, so we gave ourselves a tour of Desiree's house. In the upstairs hallway, we discovered dog poop. Not fresh dog poop, but dog poop nonetheless.
We told Desiree about it, thinking she might not want to be exposed as a really bad housekeeper who lets her dogs poop on the carpet and then doesn't clean it up. Desiree told us again it upset the dogs to have strangers in the house.
Then Megan went into the guest bathroom and discovered a towel laid on the floor. There was dog poop on the towel. Because that's where the dogs pooped.
Desiree did have a fenced-in back yard.
The dogs pooped on the towel.
Desiree invited everyone to get something to eat. We filled our plates and returned to the living room, where the dogs continued to yap and to jump on us. Desiree ignored her obnoxious dogs.
Megan and I went to get the presents.
They were wet.
I looked up to see if there was a leak in the ceiling.
No leak.
I sniffed a wet present.
It smelled like pee.
Dog pee.
"Desiree," Megan said. "Your dogs peed on Leigh's presents."
Desiree ran to the kitchen to get a rag.
We sat again to watch Leigh open her presents.
The dogs continued to jump. We guests sat politely and gently pushed the dogs away, casting pleading glances at Desiree as we did so.
Desiree did nothing. She did not tell the dogs to sit. She didn't apologize for them. She did not put them out.
This is where I tell you that Desiree is a psychologist with PhD.
Why would a psychologist let her dogs act aggressively and obnoxiously and put the onus on her guests to put up with the behavior?
Discuss. For extra credit, analyze the possibility that Desiree, who did not have a boyfriend despite her boob job, might have been sabatoging the shower because she was jealous of Leigh.
The dogs jumped on Megan for the last time. "Desiree, you need to put these f***ing dogs outside," she said, teeth clenched.
Desiree sighed and rolled her eyes. (Well, maybe she didn't but her overall attitude was of deep, sacrificial sighing and eye rolling.) She grabbed the dogs and locked them in the bathroom with the poop towel.
Leigh finished opening her presents. We finished the food. We cleaned up.
The days later, Desiree called me and told me I owed her $60 for my share of the food.
I was very happy when Desiree was not involved in Leigh's baby shower a few years later.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
In which I rent a duplex from Michelle the worst landlady in the world
I had been accepted at the UT-Austin graduate school of business. My friend Rebecca and I were sharing a house, but she was moving to D.C. for a job with the Department of Labor. I couldn't afford the house on my own.
I found a cute duplex in the same good zip code neighborhood. We were Oh-three-ers. Highly desirable Austin location. I looked at it, thought yes, this will work, and the landlady, Michelle, and I signed the lease.
Four hours later, she called me to say that she needed to charge more rent than we had agreed upon.
Can you say, ENORMOUS CRIMSON FLAG BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD?
But I ignored that banner. And I - this is where it gets worse - agreed to the rent increase.
How dumb was that?
I moved in. Cute cute little Tarrytown duplex. Walking distance to the shuttle bus to school, although I tried riding my bike at first, which is not the best idea when it is 112 degrees outside. For a week straight.
A few days after I moved in, I came home to find that someone had closed the blinds, removed my plants from the windowsill, and put a "for sale" sign up in the front yard.
Michelle. She left me a phone message: "Please keep the blinds closed. It looks tacky to have them open."
The "for sale" sign? I spoke to my upstairs neighbor. "This place has been for sale for months," she told me. "Michelle took the sign down before she tried to rent your place."
Because knowing if a place is for sale and that I could possibly be displaced by new owners is not information that would be useful in making the rental decision.
Deep breath. All the Drama was over. Still a cute place.
No. Michelle stopped by my neighbor's house on her way home from aerobics "just for a glass of water." As in, let herself in with the key while the neighbor was out, got a glass of water and left the dirty glass in the sink.
Realtors started bringing people by. Unannounced. When I was busy studying, something I did in grad school. A new experience for me. Who knew that studying could improve your grades so much?
In the middle of studying for finals, I was interrupted by a realtor and a client. The client was a pompous jerk who worked at Dell. I told them that they couldn't look right now; I was busy. Yes. They should have called. And yes, it would only have taken a few minutes to let them look, but I was not inclined to be charitable to someone who might displace me from my home and who was in any way in cahoots with Michelle.
The client and I got into a bit of a yelling match. (I know! I don't usually yell at people to their faces! I wait until later that night after someone has ticked me off and yell about him to an innocent person.)
He made some snotty comment about the UT business school - he had his MBA from Wharton.
"How much did you pay for your MBA?" I asked.
"$60,000," he admitted.
"Mine will cost me about $5,000 and guess what? UT is a top-20 school. Plus we're both here in Austin. Looks like I made the better investment," I snapped.
I complained to Michelle's husband. He agreed that she was pushy and talked smack about her, but wouldn't challenge her. He would call me to complain about her, which I thought was highly inappropriate. He talked to me - his tenant - about divorcing his wife. I don't know why he stayed except she was very pretty with a large chest. But she was pretty only on the outside. As soon as you spent more than a few minutes with her, you knew that if you looked it up in the dictionary, her photo was next to the phrase, "Beauty is only skin deep."
She re-landscaped the yard and would come in to use my bathroom. Without asking.
She let herself into my neighbor's place while my neighbor was - ahem - busy with her boyfriend.
That was the last straw for my neighbor. She moved out. Prospective tenants started looking. They would ask me what it was like to live here.
I warned them.
One of them told Michelle I was telling people not to move in.
She called me and screamed at me.
I went to legal services at school to see what I could do. The lawyer told me that according to the lease, Michelle did have the right to enter when appropriate, but the devil was in the definition of "appropriate." He agreed with me that her behavior was insane.
I started to have nightmares about Michelle coming after me with a knife. With legal aid's help, I wrote a letter to Michelle telling her I wanted to move out because of what she was doing.
She sent me a letter saying fine, I could break the lease but I had to be out by December 25 and forfeit the deposit.
I was not in a position to lose that money and legal aid said that she was within her legal rights.
I stayed.
The place was still for sale. Nobody wanted it as a rental property and the lot wasn't big enough for a single-family home by current zoning.
She moved onto her fourth realtor in eight months. I spoke to one of them and she told me that Michelle McMichael had a reputation with Austin realtors as being almost impossible to work with.
I got a new upstairs neighbor who moved out after three months. The place was up for rent - again. I continued to warn people.
One of the prospective tenants I warned against renting did indeed rent - not to live there but to cheat on Austin schools and have an address to get her daughter in from out of district.
I ran into the new tenant months after I moved out and she, who did not even live in the property, shook her head and said, "I should have listened to you. That woman is nuts."
"I told you so," I said.
As soon as my lease was up, I moved out.
I found a cute duplex in the same good zip code neighborhood. We were Oh-three-ers. Highly desirable Austin location. I looked at it, thought yes, this will work, and the landlady, Michelle, and I signed the lease.
Four hours later, she called me to say that she needed to charge more rent than we had agreed upon.
Can you say, ENORMOUS CRIMSON FLAG BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD?
But I ignored that banner. And I - this is where it gets worse - agreed to the rent increase.
How dumb was that?
I moved in. Cute cute little Tarrytown duplex. Walking distance to the shuttle bus to school, although I tried riding my bike at first, which is not the best idea when it is 112 degrees outside. For a week straight.
A few days after I moved in, I came home to find that someone had closed the blinds, removed my plants from the windowsill, and put a "for sale" sign up in the front yard.
Michelle. She left me a phone message: "Please keep the blinds closed. It looks tacky to have them open."
The "for sale" sign? I spoke to my upstairs neighbor. "This place has been for sale for months," she told me. "Michelle took the sign down before she tried to rent your place."
Because knowing if a place is for sale and that I could possibly be displaced by new owners is not information that would be useful in making the rental decision.
Deep breath. All the Drama was over. Still a cute place.
No. Michelle stopped by my neighbor's house on her way home from aerobics "just for a glass of water." As in, let herself in with the key while the neighbor was out, got a glass of water and left the dirty glass in the sink.
Realtors started bringing people by. Unannounced. When I was busy studying, something I did in grad school. A new experience for me. Who knew that studying could improve your grades so much?
In the middle of studying for finals, I was interrupted by a realtor and a client. The client was a pompous jerk who worked at Dell. I told them that they couldn't look right now; I was busy. Yes. They should have called. And yes, it would only have taken a few minutes to let them look, but I was not inclined to be charitable to someone who might displace me from my home and who was in any way in cahoots with Michelle.
The client and I got into a bit of a yelling match. (I know! I don't usually yell at people to their faces! I wait until later that night after someone has ticked me off and yell about him to an innocent person.)
He made some snotty comment about the UT business school - he had his MBA from Wharton.
"How much did you pay for your MBA?" I asked.
"$60,000," he admitted.
"Mine will cost me about $5,000 and guess what? UT is a top-20 school. Plus we're both here in Austin. Looks like I made the better investment," I snapped.
I complained to Michelle's husband. He agreed that she was pushy and talked smack about her, but wouldn't challenge her. He would call me to complain about her, which I thought was highly inappropriate. He talked to me - his tenant - about divorcing his wife. I don't know why he stayed except she was very pretty with a large chest. But she was pretty only on the outside. As soon as you spent more than a few minutes with her, you knew that if you looked it up in the dictionary, her photo was next to the phrase, "Beauty is only skin deep."
She re-landscaped the yard and would come in to use my bathroom. Without asking.
She let herself into my neighbor's place while my neighbor was - ahem - busy with her boyfriend.
That was the last straw for my neighbor. She moved out. Prospective tenants started looking. They would ask me what it was like to live here.
I warned them.
One of them told Michelle I was telling people not to move in.
She called me and screamed at me.
I went to legal services at school to see what I could do. The lawyer told me that according to the lease, Michelle did have the right to enter when appropriate, but the devil was in the definition of "appropriate." He agreed with me that her behavior was insane.
I started to have nightmares about Michelle coming after me with a knife. With legal aid's help, I wrote a letter to Michelle telling her I wanted to move out because of what she was doing.
She sent me a letter saying fine, I could break the lease but I had to be out by December 25 and forfeit the deposit.
I was not in a position to lose that money and legal aid said that she was within her legal rights.
I stayed.
The place was still for sale. Nobody wanted it as a rental property and the lot wasn't big enough for a single-family home by current zoning.
She moved onto her fourth realtor in eight months. I spoke to one of them and she told me that Michelle McMichael had a reputation with Austin realtors as being almost impossible to work with.
I got a new upstairs neighbor who moved out after three months. The place was up for rent - again. I continued to warn people.
One of the prospective tenants I warned against renting did indeed rent - not to live there but to cheat on Austin schools and have an address to get her daughter in from out of district.
I ran into the new tenant months after I moved out and she, who did not even live in the property, shook her head and said, "I should have listened to you. That woman is nuts."
"I told you so," I said.
As soon as my lease was up, I moved out.
In which I rent a room in a group house in Washington DC with the three post-college guys who lived like post-college guys
I had to move out of the room I was renting from Crazy Carmen in D.C. I had gone to Washington D.C. after I got out of the Peace Corps in the hopes of finding a job in international development. What I discovered was that someone with my background - master's degree, one foreign language, international work experience, Fortune 50 company experience - could find employment as a secretary. A temp secretary.
The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.
I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.
Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.
Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.
I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.
I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.
I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.
When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.
They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.
According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.
And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.
Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.
On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.
I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.
But I had no such power over the kitchen.
Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.
They won.
Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.
I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.
The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.
I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.
Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.
Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.
I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.
I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.
I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.
When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.
They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.
According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.
And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.
Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.
On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.
I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.
But I had no such power over the kitchen.
Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.
They won.
Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.
I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.
In which I rent from Janette, who I thought was my friend but then went a little crazy
I moved from Maruja la Bruja's house (Maruja the Witch) to Janette's house. I had met Janette when I shopped at her knitting store. I knit a lot in Chile. At work, we had long meetings (on benches, not even on chairs) about important issues like, "Should our mission be to serve Mapuche women or young Mapuche women?"
These meetings would last eight hours and end without resolution. Knitting during these torture sessions made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something.
Rosa, the director of the agency (La Casa de la Mujer Mapuche, "House of the Mapuche Woman," Mapuches being an indigenous group), told me I had to stop knitting because it was "distracting." Rosa's baby was attached to her boob at that very moment. It was not uncommon to see breasts whipped out at least two or three times during meetings for children as old as four. Yet my knitting was the problem.
Note about my working conditions in Chile:
Our office was in an old two-storey house without heating. Offices upstairs, store downstairs. It would get so cold inside that I had to wear gloves while I typed. We didn't have the money for heat, but my co-workers found money in the budget to buy their lunches. Thank you, U.S. taxpayer, who funded the group via a grant from the Inter-American Foundation.
The toilet paper disappeared frequently. Stolen. I brought my own toilet paper to work and locked it in my desk.
My first week at work, there was a party. (Not on my behalf.) Two men came to the office and slaughtered a sheep in the back yard. They stabbed it in the neck with a sharp stick, let the blood drain into a pan (for later eating - mixed with lemon juice and cilantro and left until it coagulated - I avoided that delicacy), then cut a hole in the skin by the back heel and blew it up like a balloon to separate the skin from the flesh for easier skinning.
Then they butchered it and hung the meat on the stair rail of the office, where it rested for two days until it was cooked.
The barbecued meat was good, but a little odd to walk up to my office past raw mutton for a couple of days.
But my knitting was "distracting."
I went to the knitting store a lot. Janette and I became friends sort of. The kind of friend you talk to only in a certain place, like your gym friends who are your friends at the gym but not outside of the gym. Janette was my knitting store friend.
During the Maruja travails, I asked Janette if she knew of anyone with a room to rent.
She did, she told me. She had a little shed in her back yard with one room and a bathroom. I could rent the room and use her kitchen.
Win/win! Rent a room from someone I already like! But with privacy!
I looked at the place (as if there would have been anything to keep me from taking it). It was a small, sturdy building with room for a twin bed and a dresser. The bathroom, which had a shower but no tub, was tiny but it would be my own bathroom, with only my hair and toothpaste in the sink and my shower dirt and my whiskers in my razor.
I moved in.
Janette and I would chat in the evenings as she prepared supper and I made myself something to eat. I liked her two kids. I made them barbecued chicken and baked beans once, but they didn't like the idea of sweet meat and sweet beans. Nor did they like the cornbread. Corn is not for bread. It is for soup - a half a cob thrown into each soupbowl. This would be good if they used sweet corn, but they used field corn, which is only fit for livestock in my opinion.*
I did not take their criticism to heart because the main flavoring in Chilean food is salt. Fifteen years after leaving Chile, I still salt my food too much because I was forced to eat over-salted meals while I was there. (I will say, though, that the produce in Chile was fabulous. The key was to do my own cooking.)
Janette's husband was not around. He, a university professor, had left her for someone else, but they weren't divorced. Maybe divorce wasn't legal in Chile yet? Chile had one of the highest rates of bigamy in the world then, as in, I won't let the fact that I am not divorced from my first spouse keep me from marrying my second.
The door to my room did not have a lock. Janette hadn't gotten around to installing one. I was not comfortable leaving the room unsecured because I had a camera and cash.
The solution?
I removed the doorknob and carried it with me. Without the knob, the door couldn't be opened. It latched closed and stayed that way until the knob was installed and turned.
I soon tired of carrying a heavy doorknob in my bag, so hid it behind the rosebushes instead.
Hi-tech security.
Things were fine.
Then I met that embassy guy in Santiago. The one with the porn magazines hidden under the towel in his nightstand.
He wanted to visit me.
I asked Janette if it was OK if he stayed. She was not comfortable with the idea of a co-ed sleepover for her unmarried tenant.
Oh! I told her. I don't want to sleep with him that way! I was going to give him the bed and I was going to sleep on the floor. (Which was true - not only did I not want to sleep with him that way but there was not room for two people in the twin bed.)
She suggested that I sleep in the house while he was visiting. Perfect. I preferred that solution anyhow.
I thought everything had been resolved.
He came, we drove around the countryside (the joy of driving in a car and listening to the radio after you have had a year of only public transportation on crowded busses is enormous), we stopped for lunch in Pucon, a town at the base of a volcano, we bought Chilean cheese from a farm stand, which is not All That, we got stuff to make supper and cooked in Janette's kitchen.
The kitchen to which I had been granted access. I thought.
The next day, he returned to Santiago.
Janette got mad at me.
Why? I asked.
You let that man into my house! she said.
What? Yes. We cooked supper. You were already done in the kitchen. Why is this a big deal?
You let him into my house! Into my kitchen!
She was adamant that I had done something wrong. She stopped talking to me, which made cooking awkward and difficult for me. Our friendship was over.
I had to once again find a new place to live, me with the scarlet "R" for "renter" or "K" for "kitchen abuser" or "A" for "maybe adulteress."
* Remind me to tell you my fish-flavored chocolate chip cookie story some day.
These meetings would last eight hours and end without resolution. Knitting during these torture sessions made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something.
Rosa, the director of the agency (La Casa de la Mujer Mapuche, "House of the Mapuche Woman," Mapuches being an indigenous group), told me I had to stop knitting because it was "distracting." Rosa's baby was attached to her boob at that very moment. It was not uncommon to see breasts whipped out at least two or three times during meetings for children as old as four. Yet my knitting was the problem.
Note about my working conditions in Chile:
Our office was in an old two-storey house without heating. Offices upstairs, store downstairs. It would get so cold inside that I had to wear gloves while I typed. We didn't have the money for heat, but my co-workers found money in the budget to buy their lunches. Thank you, U.S. taxpayer, who funded the group via a grant from the Inter-American Foundation.
The toilet paper disappeared frequently. Stolen. I brought my own toilet paper to work and locked it in my desk.
My first week at work, there was a party. (Not on my behalf.) Two men came to the office and slaughtered a sheep in the back yard. They stabbed it in the neck with a sharp stick, let the blood drain into a pan (for later eating - mixed with lemon juice and cilantro and left until it coagulated - I avoided that delicacy), then cut a hole in the skin by the back heel and blew it up like a balloon to separate the skin from the flesh for easier skinning.
Then they butchered it and hung the meat on the stair rail of the office, where it rested for two days until it was cooked.
The barbecued meat was good, but a little odd to walk up to my office past raw mutton for a couple of days.
But my knitting was "distracting."
I went to the knitting store a lot. Janette and I became friends sort of. The kind of friend you talk to only in a certain place, like your gym friends who are your friends at the gym but not outside of the gym. Janette was my knitting store friend.
During the Maruja travails, I asked Janette if she knew of anyone with a room to rent.
She did, she told me. She had a little shed in her back yard with one room and a bathroom. I could rent the room and use her kitchen.
Win/win! Rent a room from someone I already like! But with privacy!
I looked at the place (as if there would have been anything to keep me from taking it). It was a small, sturdy building with room for a twin bed and a dresser. The bathroom, which had a shower but no tub, was tiny but it would be my own bathroom, with only my hair and toothpaste in the sink and my shower dirt and my whiskers in my razor.
I moved in.
Janette and I would chat in the evenings as she prepared supper and I made myself something to eat. I liked her two kids. I made them barbecued chicken and baked beans once, but they didn't like the idea of sweet meat and sweet beans. Nor did they like the cornbread. Corn is not for bread. It is for soup - a half a cob thrown into each soupbowl. This would be good if they used sweet corn, but they used field corn, which is only fit for livestock in my opinion.*
I did not take their criticism to heart because the main flavoring in Chilean food is salt. Fifteen years after leaving Chile, I still salt my food too much because I was forced to eat over-salted meals while I was there. (I will say, though, that the produce in Chile was fabulous. The key was to do my own cooking.)
Janette's husband was not around. He, a university professor, had left her for someone else, but they weren't divorced. Maybe divorce wasn't legal in Chile yet? Chile had one of the highest rates of bigamy in the world then, as in, I won't let the fact that I am not divorced from my first spouse keep me from marrying my second.
The door to my room did not have a lock. Janette hadn't gotten around to installing one. I was not comfortable leaving the room unsecured because I had a camera and cash.
The solution?
I removed the doorknob and carried it with me. Without the knob, the door couldn't be opened. It latched closed and stayed that way until the knob was installed and turned.
I soon tired of carrying a heavy doorknob in my bag, so hid it behind the rosebushes instead.
Hi-tech security.
Things were fine.
Then I met that embassy guy in Santiago. The one with the porn magazines hidden under the towel in his nightstand.
He wanted to visit me.
I asked Janette if it was OK if he stayed. She was not comfortable with the idea of a co-ed sleepover for her unmarried tenant.
Oh! I told her. I don't want to sleep with him that way! I was going to give him the bed and I was going to sleep on the floor. (Which was true - not only did I not want to sleep with him that way but there was not room for two people in the twin bed.)
She suggested that I sleep in the house while he was visiting. Perfect. I preferred that solution anyhow.
I thought everything had been resolved.
He came, we drove around the countryside (the joy of driving in a car and listening to the radio after you have had a year of only public transportation on crowded busses is enormous), we stopped for lunch in Pucon, a town at the base of a volcano, we bought Chilean cheese from a farm stand, which is not All That, we got stuff to make supper and cooked in Janette's kitchen.
The kitchen to which I had been granted access. I thought.
The next day, he returned to Santiago.
Janette got mad at me.
Why? I asked.
You let that man into my house! she said.
What? Yes. We cooked supper. You were already done in the kitchen. Why is this a big deal?
You let him into my house! Into my kitchen!
She was adamant that I had done something wrong. She stopped talking to me, which made cooking awkward and difficult for me. Our friendship was over.
I had to once again find a new place to live, me with the scarlet "R" for "renter" or "K" for "kitchen abuser" or "A" for "maybe adulteress."
* Remind me to tell you my fish-flavored chocolate chip cookie story some day.
In which I rent a room from Maruja la Bruja, crazy landlady #240
I will tell you all about Michelle McMichael, the worst landlady I have ever had, but first I need to tell you about other landlords* so you can have some context and understand that I am not exaggerating when I call her the Numero Uno Mas Mala.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I lived in four different homes. The first was during my three-month training in Santiago. I lived with a poor family who gave me their daughters' bedroom, which had no door, so they strung a sheet across the opening. A sheet door does give one a place to undress in privacy, but does nothing to keep the noise from two little girls who did not go to bed until midnight out of the bedroom.
The house was unheated, which you would think would not be an issue, but that is only if you know nothing about geography. Santiago is in the mountains - remember, altitude more than latitude (longitude?) determines temperature, which means it does get cold.
The family also did not have a toilet seat on the toilet, something I saw over and over again in South America, which makes me wonder if the toilet was installed that way or if there is a secondary market for toilet seats and if so, what is it? How are they used?
My second living situation was when I moved to Temuco, a city of 250,000. There was a Mercedes dealership and there were ox-driven carts clogging the streets. I moved into a house with Mary, a Scottish college student spending a year abroad, and Louise, an American woman doing some kind of fellowship.
My bedroom was the tiny alcove upstairs without a door. No bed. I put a sleeping bag on the floor and both my head and my feet almost touched the walls when I was lying down.
Mary and I got along great, but Louise was a different story. The bathroom was an interior room and no matter how you positioned the shower head, the shower sprayed outside the curtain. The floor was always wet after one of us showered and there was no easy way to get the moisture out of the room. (Remember, interior room, no external windows.)
I kept a rag in the bathroom to wipe the floor after I bathed, but Louise would use her bath towel on the floor and then leave it in the bathroom instead of hanging it outside to dry.
1. It is disgusting to dry yourself with a cloth that has wiped the bathroom floor. 2. A towel left inside a damp room does not dry.
3. A dirty, wet towel starts to stink very soon.
4. Left wet, linoleum tiles will detach from the floor and Louise will try to make the tenant who has been in the house for only one month instead of the entire year previously as Louise has been split the repair cost. The one-month tenant will refuse.
Louise also had some nasty personal habits. She would sit at the dinner table and pick her toenails, then she would use her hands to eat, sometimes out of a communal bowl. It didn't take very long for me to stop eating meals with her, although really, she was an effective weight control method.
Mary and I decided we didn't want to live with Louise, so we sought another dwelling. I put a "room wanted" ad up at the grocery store. Within a day or two, a spry old lady appeared at my office. She had rooms. Come now! See them immediately! As rental property was difficult to encounter, I did as she commanded.
She had a big house not far from my office where she and her husband lived alone. Mary and I could have the upstairs all to ourselves and would use the downstairs bathroom. We could use the kitchen and put food in the refrigerator, which was stored in the dining room. It seemed like a good deal.
The Problems
The shower, #1
Every time one of us used the shower, the power went out in the house. How is this, you ask? Many showers in South America are heated by what is called a calefont, which is a small box that attaches to the wall and consists of a long pipe, doubled over on itself, passing over gas-powered flames. The water goes through the pipe and is heated as needed.
This is a fabulous system, far superior to a basment space consuming water heater that keeps 20 gallons of water hot just in case you need it. I wish I could have a calefont here. You never run out of hot water, unless you run out of gas, which usually happens while you are in the middle of your shower and have shampoo in your hair. Then you have to get out of the shower, call the gas guy, wait for him to come and replace the tank, and then re-commence your shower. But if you are careful about your gas, you do just fine and you spend less money heating water.
The other shower-heating method is an electrical heater that attaches to the shower head.
This is the kind that can kill you. Think about it: electricity and water. That is usually not a good combination.
That is the system Maruja had in her shower. Poorly installed and a drain on the house's antiquated electrical system. While Mary showered, I would stand at the fuse box. When the heater blew the fuse, I would switch it back on. She did the same for me.
We decided that we were not willing to risk death to be clean and threatened Maruja that we would move out and take our rent with us if she did not install a better heating system. She was in no hurry to do so, which meant that I took sponge baths for a few weeks. I would heat two huge kettles of water on Maruja's tiny stove and then carry them into the bathroom to complete my toilette.
I did not shave my legs.
The shower, #2
I made the mistake of thinking that because I was a renter with equal access to the bathroom that I could leave my shower things in the bathroom.
I was wrong.
I would leave my razor on the corner of the tub. It got dull very quickly. But why?
Then one day I noticed bristly white hairs in the razor.
My legs do not have bristly white hairs, nor does any other part of my body.
Using my superior detective skills, I concluded that Maruja's husband, Pablo, had been using my razor. I marched into the kitchen, brandishing the razor with the evidence. Maruja and her husband sat at the table.
"You've been using my razor," I accused Pablo.
"No, no!" he protested, holding his hands up.
"Look at this hair! It's not mine!"
Maruja stood behind Pablo, making a circle with her finger next to her temple and mouthing, "Yes, he did it, he's crazy" then smiling at him when he turned around.
"Don't use it any more, please," I snapped.
Then I made the stupid mistake of leaving the razor in the shower again only to find more white bristles in it. That's when I threw that blade away and started carrying everything back upstairs once I had bathed.
The fleas or maybe they were bedbugs
Shortly after we moved in, Mary and I noticed little red bites on our ankles. And on every other part of our bodies. We were being bitten in our sleep.
There were fleas/bedbugs in our rooms.
I went to the hardware store for poison. The clerk admonished me as he handed me the bottle that this was very dangerous! Note the skull and crossbones!
Great. I could be bitten to death or poisoned to death.
Marjua, incidentally, denied the existence of fleas in her house.
The poison did the trick, but we had poison dust floating around for several weeks. I will probably get some weird flea poison cancer in a few years.
The other tenants
When we moved in, Mary and I were the only tenants. It was our understanding that we were renting the furnished upstairs, which had three bedrooms.
One day I came home to discover a Woody Allenish-looking (that is not at all a compliment) guy in the third bedroom.
Maruja had rented the room to him.
Remember, one bathroom, Mary, Maruja, Pablo, and me.
Now another renter.
Who stayed up late at night playing music, smoking, and telling me that if ever "got lonely in the night," I could "just knock on the wall."
Mary left for six months in Brazil. Back to two renters. Yes, one of them was very strange, but only two.
Then Maruja rented out Mary's room to a married couple. Who fought all the time about his Other Woman. I know because I could hear everything through the thin walls.
I came home to find a carpenter building a wall between the dining room and the living room. Marjua rented the living room out to another married couple.
Let's do the math on this:
One bathroom.
Six tenants.
Two landlords.
The three male tenants got up before I did. They shaved. And left their whiskers in the bathroom sink. They peed. On the toilet seat. They left the shower dirty.
You guys know how I am about sharing a shower with someone I either don't know or don't like.
I would betray my country if tortured by having to use a dirty shower.
Unless the shower has been cleaned, it grosses me out to use a shower after someone else who is not
1. My husband
2. Another relative
3. A good friend
The other tenants did not meet any of these criteria, which meant that every morning, in addition to bathing myself before work, I had to clean the tub and the sink.
The toilet broke.
Maruja wouldn't call a plumber because it was too expensive.
To flush it, you had to fill a bucket from the bathtub tap and pour the water down the toilet. We all know how to do this. We've all been in that situation.
And we all know that the Polite, Civilized Thing to Do is to flush our own toilet.
Yet I would find other people's pee in the toilet.
That was when I moved out.
Unfortunately, my new situation was not much better. I'll tell you about it later.
* Think about that term: "land lord." So feudal. So obvious where all the power is. With God as my witness, I will never rent again.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I lived in four different homes. The first was during my three-month training in Santiago. I lived with a poor family who gave me their daughters' bedroom, which had no door, so they strung a sheet across the opening. A sheet door does give one a place to undress in privacy, but does nothing to keep the noise from two little girls who did not go to bed until midnight out of the bedroom.
The house was unheated, which you would think would not be an issue, but that is only if you know nothing about geography. Santiago is in the mountains - remember, altitude more than latitude (longitude?) determines temperature, which means it does get cold.
The family also did not have a toilet seat on the toilet, something I saw over and over again in South America, which makes me wonder if the toilet was installed that way or if there is a secondary market for toilet seats and if so, what is it? How are they used?
My second living situation was when I moved to Temuco, a city of 250,000. There was a Mercedes dealership and there were ox-driven carts clogging the streets. I moved into a house with Mary, a Scottish college student spending a year abroad, and Louise, an American woman doing some kind of fellowship.
My bedroom was the tiny alcove upstairs without a door. No bed. I put a sleeping bag on the floor and both my head and my feet almost touched the walls when I was lying down.
Mary and I got along great, but Louise was a different story. The bathroom was an interior room and no matter how you positioned the shower head, the shower sprayed outside the curtain. The floor was always wet after one of us showered and there was no easy way to get the moisture out of the room. (Remember, interior room, no external windows.)
I kept a rag in the bathroom to wipe the floor after I bathed, but Louise would use her bath towel on the floor and then leave it in the bathroom instead of hanging it outside to dry.
1. It is disgusting to dry yourself with a cloth that has wiped the bathroom floor. 2. A towel left inside a damp room does not dry.
3. A dirty, wet towel starts to stink very soon.
4. Left wet, linoleum tiles will detach from the floor and Louise will try to make the tenant who has been in the house for only one month instead of the entire year previously as Louise has been split the repair cost. The one-month tenant will refuse.
Louise also had some nasty personal habits. She would sit at the dinner table and pick her toenails, then she would use her hands to eat, sometimes out of a communal bowl. It didn't take very long for me to stop eating meals with her, although really, she was an effective weight control method.
Mary and I decided we didn't want to live with Louise, so we sought another dwelling. I put a "room wanted" ad up at the grocery store. Within a day or two, a spry old lady appeared at my office. She had rooms. Come now! See them immediately! As rental property was difficult to encounter, I did as she commanded.
She had a big house not far from my office where she and her husband lived alone. Mary and I could have the upstairs all to ourselves and would use the downstairs bathroom. We could use the kitchen and put food in the refrigerator, which was stored in the dining room. It seemed like a good deal.
The Problems
The shower, #1
Every time one of us used the shower, the power went out in the house. How is this, you ask? Many showers in South America are heated by what is called a calefont, which is a small box that attaches to the wall and consists of a long pipe, doubled over on itself, passing over gas-powered flames. The water goes through the pipe and is heated as needed.
This is a fabulous system, far superior to a basment space consuming water heater that keeps 20 gallons of water hot just in case you need it. I wish I could have a calefont here. You never run out of hot water, unless you run out of gas, which usually happens while you are in the middle of your shower and have shampoo in your hair. Then you have to get out of the shower, call the gas guy, wait for him to come and replace the tank, and then re-commence your shower. But if you are careful about your gas, you do just fine and you spend less money heating water.
The other shower-heating method is an electrical heater that attaches to the shower head.
This is the kind that can kill you. Think about it: electricity and water. That is usually not a good combination.
That is the system Maruja had in her shower. Poorly installed and a drain on the house's antiquated electrical system. While Mary showered, I would stand at the fuse box. When the heater blew the fuse, I would switch it back on. She did the same for me.
We decided that we were not willing to risk death to be clean and threatened Maruja that we would move out and take our rent with us if she did not install a better heating system. She was in no hurry to do so, which meant that I took sponge baths for a few weeks. I would heat two huge kettles of water on Maruja's tiny stove and then carry them into the bathroom to complete my toilette.
I did not shave my legs.
The shower, #2
I made the mistake of thinking that because I was a renter with equal access to the bathroom that I could leave my shower things in the bathroom.
I was wrong.
I would leave my razor on the corner of the tub. It got dull very quickly. But why?
Then one day I noticed bristly white hairs in the razor.
My legs do not have bristly white hairs, nor does any other part of my body.
Using my superior detective skills, I concluded that Maruja's husband, Pablo, had been using my razor. I marched into the kitchen, brandishing the razor with the evidence. Maruja and her husband sat at the table.
"You've been using my razor," I accused Pablo.
"No, no!" he protested, holding his hands up.
"Look at this hair! It's not mine!"
Maruja stood behind Pablo, making a circle with her finger next to her temple and mouthing, "Yes, he did it, he's crazy" then smiling at him when he turned around.
"Don't use it any more, please," I snapped.
Then I made the stupid mistake of leaving the razor in the shower again only to find more white bristles in it. That's when I threw that blade away and started carrying everything back upstairs once I had bathed.
The fleas or maybe they were bedbugs
Shortly after we moved in, Mary and I noticed little red bites on our ankles. And on every other part of our bodies. We were being bitten in our sleep.
There were fleas/bedbugs in our rooms.
I went to the hardware store for poison. The clerk admonished me as he handed me the bottle that this was very dangerous! Note the skull and crossbones!
Great. I could be bitten to death or poisoned to death.
Marjua, incidentally, denied the existence of fleas in her house.
The poison did the trick, but we had poison dust floating around for several weeks. I will probably get some weird flea poison cancer in a few years.
The other tenants
When we moved in, Mary and I were the only tenants. It was our understanding that we were renting the furnished upstairs, which had three bedrooms.
One day I came home to discover a Woody Allenish-looking (that is not at all a compliment) guy in the third bedroom.
Maruja had rented the room to him.
Remember, one bathroom, Mary, Maruja, Pablo, and me.
Now another renter.
Who stayed up late at night playing music, smoking, and telling me that if ever "got lonely in the night," I could "just knock on the wall."
Mary left for six months in Brazil. Back to two renters. Yes, one of them was very strange, but only two.
Then Maruja rented out Mary's room to a married couple. Who fought all the time about his Other Woman. I know because I could hear everything through the thin walls.
I came home to find a carpenter building a wall between the dining room and the living room. Marjua rented the living room out to another married couple.
Let's do the math on this:
One bathroom.
Six tenants.
Two landlords.
The three male tenants got up before I did. They shaved. And left their whiskers in the bathroom sink. They peed. On the toilet seat. They left the shower dirty.
You guys know how I am about sharing a shower with someone I either don't know or don't like.
I would betray my country if tortured by having to use a dirty shower.
Unless the shower has been cleaned, it grosses me out to use a shower after someone else who is not
1. My husband
2. Another relative
3. A good friend
The other tenants did not meet any of these criteria, which meant that every morning, in addition to bathing myself before work, I had to clean the tub and the sink.
The toilet broke.
Maruja wouldn't call a plumber because it was too expensive.
To flush it, you had to fill a bucket from the bathtub tap and pour the water down the toilet. We all know how to do this. We've all been in that situation.
And we all know that the Polite, Civilized Thing to Do is to flush our own toilet.
Yet I would find other people's pee in the toilet.
That was when I moved out.
Unfortunately, my new situation was not much better. I'll tell you about it later.
* Think about that term: "land lord." So feudal. So obvious where all the power is. With God as my witness, I will never rent again.
Friday, July 9, 2010
In which I develop a crush on a guy who makes porn movies
After a year and a half of excruciating job search post Peace Corps, I finally got an offer from a large company in Miami that was really a corporate finance/mergers and acquisitions sweatshop but I didn't know that and even if I had known, I would have taken the job anyhow because I needed to be employed with dental and a pension. Beggars can't be choosers. I was tired of looking. I was tired of temp work and being told how to send a fax.
Head secretary: You need to wait for the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE.
Me the Temp: Yes, I know.
HS: And if the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE IS 'YES,' then you know it went through. Otherwise, you have to re-send.
[Repeat simple instructions like this at least twice more with me impatiently saying, "I know, I know."]
Me: You must be used to working with really stupid people. [Oh yes I said that.]
I don't know if recruiters thought I was going to come to work swinging on a vine, wearing dreadlocks and Birkenstocks and singing Kum Bay Yah, but that is not me. I took high heels and suits with me to Chile. Yes, I had to send them back to the US once I realized that I would be traipsing through the mud pretty frequently, but I was not the stereotypical Peace Corps volunteer and I have yet to meet someone who fits that stereotype, so really, it shouldn't even be a stereotype.*
Anyhow. I moved to Miami and made no friends at first. The other singletons at work were pretty much all Florida State and University of Florida grads who were still into being Florida State and U of Florida grads. Being a University of Texas grad, I had no interest in mere Florida alums. We did not have much in common.
One Friday night, I returned home after another long day working for The Man in the Sweatshop that had over 100% turnover in my year there, so it's not just me whining here. Nobody liked working from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The light on my answering was blinking. Yay! Someone had left a message for me to meet at happy hour! Finally, they wanted to be my friend!
It was a sales pitch from a septic tank company.
Fools. I rented. Why would I want to build a septic tank?
There was this guy. Mark. He had a wicked dry sense of humor and seemed fairly intelligent. And he was nice looking, in a rugged, broken nose way.
I liked him.
I tried to flirt with him.
He didn't flirt back, but he would have actual conversations with me. We would goof off for ten or 15 minutes a day, just chewing the fat.
I kept waiting for him to ask me out.
He didn't.
He did, bless his heart, express his condolences after my dad died (two months after I started the job). When I burst into tears after he told me he was sorry for my loss, he backed out of my office, apologizing that he hadn't meant to remind me of the sadness. But at least he had the guts to say something. Most people didn't, even though everyone in my group knew why I had been gone for two weeks. My VP said something in passing, asking, "Oh. Were you and your dad close?" when I got a bit emotional.
Yeah. We were close. That's why I was upset that he JUST DIED. Sheesh. Are there people who laugh off a father's death?
This was the same VP who didn't understand why I thought it was inappropriate for a manager in another group to take his team, which included two women, to Hooter's for a meeting.
"They have good wings," he shrugged.
I asked him how would like it if his seven year old daughter would someday work there.
The blood drained from his face. He got it.
Back to Mark.
We would talk. We would laugh. I silently willed him to ask me out. But no.
Then. He said, "I'm having a New Year's Eve party. Want to come?"
Omigosh. What to wear? I was so excited. Jeans and a shapeless gray sweater that flattered me in no way whatsoever! That's the ticket!
I arrived at his apartment, which was in a high rise overlooking the bay. Very nice. There was a woman - not the kind I am, but the kind with long painted fingernails and long tousled hair and long legs wearing high heels with her tight, dark blue jeans - standing next to him.
"This is Tanya. We date," he announced.
As my heart was falling to my knees, he introduced me to a man who looked like him. "This is my brother, Tom."
Oh. The brother who used to be a priest and had left the priesthood? (Mark had told me the story.) Well, that's just the kind of man I wanted to meet.
I left the party early. Mark was upset that I wasn't more interested in Tom. "I don't introduce every woman to him, you know. I wouldn't have introduced you two if I didn't think you were worthy of him."
Maybe those weren't his exact words, but that was the sense. He meant it to be a compliment, but I got the message: He was not interested in me That Way.
OK fine. I retreated. We continued our friendship in which he would say things like, "I've never been able to talk to a woman like this," to which I would silently respond, "Yeah, that's because you date empty-headed bimbos who look great on the outside but don't have any staying power. And they probably can't even cook."
One morning, my boss, Luke, who is still a friend and is one of the best bosses I have ever had, called me into his office. He knew I had a crush on someone at work because I would ask him for guy advice but I wouldn't divulge the name of the object (subject?) of my affections.
"Close the door," he said.
Uh oh. I was in trouble.
He paused, cleared his throat, then said, "I'm not sure how to tell you this and I wasn't sure I should, but I talked to my wife about it and she said I had to tell you."
Oh good grief. What was it?
"I know who your crush is on."
Well big deal.
"And I learned something about him that you need to know."
He took a deep breath. "He makes porn movies."
What?
"I was scuba diving last weekend and ran into Bill (another co-worker who was a buddy to Mark). We were talking about taking photos underwater and he started to tell me about how he makes these movies and they do casting calls and how would he shoot scenes underwater? It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about and then I couldn't believe it."
Luke was a strong family man. Three boys whom he took camping and sailing and swimming. A wife he adored. A son they had lost shortly after birth after being warned mid-pregnancy that he would not live and whose name was (and still is) included in the signature to Luke's Christmas card. Sunday school teacher.
Not a porn-movie-making kind of guy.
Bill, apparently, was unaware that Luke would not be impressed by the idea of making underwater porn movies and continued to wax enthusiastically about his Art as Luke tried to figure out how to leave the conversation gracefully.
"Mark hangs out with these guys," Luke said. "I wouldn't be telling you this if I weren't sure. I'm looking out for you like a big brother would."
I believed him.
I stopped talking to Mark. My not-talking was conspicuous enough that Mark came by my office to ask me why we didn't talk any more. "You're the only woman friend I've ever had," he said. "Why don't you come by any more?"
"Oh, just busy," I lied.
Which I was. I was busy taking the staples from the autocollator out from the left-hand side of the presentation for the board of directors and re-stapling on the right because evidently, somebody, sometime, had mentioned in passing that that was how the board of directors liked their documents stapled so that was part of the job of financial analyst. That, and to calculate what the company profits would have been if they had sold the aircraft division ten years ago, the point of which was lost to me, but then I am not a captain of industry driving a business into the ground.
But I had never let my busyness get in the way of goofing off with Mark.
I had to harden my heart. I wanted to ask him if it was true and maybe should have, but how do you ask someone if he really does help make home porn movies and then expect to get a truthful answer? I trusted Luke more.
I didn't speak to him again and then quit the job a month later. Ta, ta porn guy.
* Except for my friend Henry's roommate in Chad who got high on nutmeg all the time. Yes, nutmeg. He must have smelled like banana bread. Or just nutmeg.
Head secretary: You need to wait for the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE.
Me the Temp: Yes, I know.
HS: And if the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE IS 'YES,' then you know it went through. Otherwise, you have to re-send.
[Repeat simple instructions like this at least twice more with me impatiently saying, "I know, I know."]
Me: You must be used to working with really stupid people. [Oh yes I said that.]
I don't know if recruiters thought I was going to come to work swinging on a vine, wearing dreadlocks and Birkenstocks and singing Kum Bay Yah, but that is not me. I took high heels and suits with me to Chile. Yes, I had to send them back to the US once I realized that I would be traipsing through the mud pretty frequently, but I was not the stereotypical Peace Corps volunteer and I have yet to meet someone who fits that stereotype, so really, it shouldn't even be a stereotype.*
Anyhow. I moved to Miami and made no friends at first. The other singletons at work were pretty much all Florida State and University of Florida grads who were still into being Florida State and U of Florida grads. Being a University of Texas grad, I had no interest in mere Florida alums. We did not have much in common.
One Friday night, I returned home after another long day working for The Man in the Sweatshop that had over 100% turnover in my year there, so it's not just me whining here. Nobody liked working from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The light on my answering was blinking. Yay! Someone had left a message for me to meet at happy hour! Finally, they wanted to be my friend!
It was a sales pitch from a septic tank company.
Fools. I rented. Why would I want to build a septic tank?
There was this guy. Mark. He had a wicked dry sense of humor and seemed fairly intelligent. And he was nice looking, in a rugged, broken nose way.
I liked him.
I tried to flirt with him.
He didn't flirt back, but he would have actual conversations with me. We would goof off for ten or 15 minutes a day, just chewing the fat.
I kept waiting for him to ask me out.
He didn't.
He did, bless his heart, express his condolences after my dad died (two months after I started the job). When I burst into tears after he told me he was sorry for my loss, he backed out of my office, apologizing that he hadn't meant to remind me of the sadness. But at least he had the guts to say something. Most people didn't, even though everyone in my group knew why I had been gone for two weeks. My VP said something in passing, asking, "Oh. Were you and your dad close?" when I got a bit emotional.
Yeah. We were close. That's why I was upset that he JUST DIED. Sheesh. Are there people who laugh off a father's death?
This was the same VP who didn't understand why I thought it was inappropriate for a manager in another group to take his team, which included two women, to Hooter's for a meeting.
"They have good wings," he shrugged.
I asked him how would like it if his seven year old daughter would someday work there.
The blood drained from his face. He got it.
Back to Mark.
We would talk. We would laugh. I silently willed him to ask me out. But no.
Then. He said, "I'm having a New Year's Eve party. Want to come?"
Omigosh. What to wear? I was so excited. Jeans and a shapeless gray sweater that flattered me in no way whatsoever! That's the ticket!
I arrived at his apartment, which was in a high rise overlooking the bay. Very nice. There was a woman - not the kind I am, but the kind with long painted fingernails and long tousled hair and long legs wearing high heels with her tight, dark blue jeans - standing next to him.
"This is Tanya. We date," he announced.
As my heart was falling to my knees, he introduced me to a man who looked like him. "This is my brother, Tom."
Oh. The brother who used to be a priest and had left the priesthood? (Mark had told me the story.) Well, that's just the kind of man I wanted to meet.
I left the party early. Mark was upset that I wasn't more interested in Tom. "I don't introduce every woman to him, you know. I wouldn't have introduced you two if I didn't think you were worthy of him."
Maybe those weren't his exact words, but that was the sense. He meant it to be a compliment, but I got the message: He was not interested in me That Way.
OK fine. I retreated. We continued our friendship in which he would say things like, "I've never been able to talk to a woman like this," to which I would silently respond, "Yeah, that's because you date empty-headed bimbos who look great on the outside but don't have any staying power. And they probably can't even cook."
One morning, my boss, Luke, who is still a friend and is one of the best bosses I have ever had, called me into his office. He knew I had a crush on someone at work because I would ask him for guy advice but I wouldn't divulge the name of the object (subject?) of my affections.
"Close the door," he said.
Uh oh. I was in trouble.
He paused, cleared his throat, then said, "I'm not sure how to tell you this and I wasn't sure I should, but I talked to my wife about it and she said I had to tell you."
Oh good grief. What was it?
"I know who your crush is on."
Well big deal.
"And I learned something about him that you need to know."
He took a deep breath. "He makes porn movies."
What?
"I was scuba diving last weekend and ran into Bill (another co-worker who was a buddy to Mark). We were talking about taking photos underwater and he started to tell me about how he makes these movies and they do casting calls and how would he shoot scenes underwater? It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about and then I couldn't believe it."
Luke was a strong family man. Three boys whom he took camping and sailing and swimming. A wife he adored. A son they had lost shortly after birth after being warned mid-pregnancy that he would not live and whose name was (and still is) included in the signature to Luke's Christmas card. Sunday school teacher.
Not a porn-movie-making kind of guy.
Bill, apparently, was unaware that Luke would not be impressed by the idea of making underwater porn movies and continued to wax enthusiastically about his Art as Luke tried to figure out how to leave the conversation gracefully.
"Mark hangs out with these guys," Luke said. "I wouldn't be telling you this if I weren't sure. I'm looking out for you like a big brother would."
I believed him.
I stopped talking to Mark. My not-talking was conspicuous enough that Mark came by my office to ask me why we didn't talk any more. "You're the only woman friend I've ever had," he said. "Why don't you come by any more?"
"Oh, just busy," I lied.
Which I was. I was busy taking the staples from the autocollator out from the left-hand side of the presentation for the board of directors and re-stapling on the right because evidently, somebody, sometime, had mentioned in passing that that was how the board of directors liked their documents stapled so that was part of the job of financial analyst. That, and to calculate what the company profits would have been if they had sold the aircraft division ten years ago, the point of which was lost to me, but then I am not a captain of industry driving a business into the ground.
But I had never let my busyness get in the way of goofing off with Mark.
I had to harden my heart. I wanted to ask him if it was true and maybe should have, but how do you ask someone if he really does help make home porn movies and then expect to get a truthful answer? I trusted Luke more.
I didn't speak to him again and then quit the job a month later. Ta, ta porn guy.
* Except for my friend Henry's roommate in Chad who got high on nutmeg all the time. Yes, nutmeg. He must have smelled like banana bread. Or just nutmeg.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
In which I let myself be talked into something I didn't want to do, Part Deux
So I was telling you about Stan, the older guy who was my friends' boss who had moved from Austin to attend grad school and who had necked with me in his car or maybe it was my car in the parking garage on Sixth Street after a happy hour and then called me from Houston the next day because he wanted to see me again that week and I told him OK but he wasn't staying with me but he pushed and pushed and pushed and I gave up, which was stupid of me.
He arrived at my place. He didn't even bring me kolaches from the Bon Ton Bakery on 290 between Houston and Austin. But I guess he didn't need to, did he?
I don't remember if he took me out to dinner. I certainly hope so. So many good places to eat in Austin: Threadgill's, Chuey's, Green Mesquite. I hope he didn't get free milk.
I gave him some sheets and a pillow and showed him the couch, not that it was hard to find because this was a tiny apartment. I had gotten the couch at an estate sale in Houston and had yet to get it re-upholstered, which it badly needed, but its condition made me mind less that someone would be sleeping on it, even though it was white. When I bought that sofa, my mother sighed and said, "I'm never going to be a grandmother, am I?"
10 For I = 1 to infinity
20 He asked why he couldn't sleep in the bed with me.
30 I told him that wasn't happening.
40 Next I
After 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of arguing, I was exhausted and surrendered.
So dumb.
I wish I hadn't.
Because it's like vampires: once you invite them in, that's it.
So yeah. I consented, but is it valid consent when you have been worn to a frazzle saying no? And if you're a man, is that how you really want to get someone into bed? By exhausting her with argument?
I hope that he has a daughter now, thinks about how he acted, regrets it, and prays that nobody ever treats her that way.
Once you've slept with someone, you might as well sleep with him again, especially if he is very persuasive. Even if you realize that he is kind of icky naked as the human body needs some exercise between zero and 36.
I was 23 at the time. Thirty six seemed old. Now I know it's not old. Not at all. I suspect when I am 70, I will look back on me now and think, "Baby! I knew nothing!" But I have not changed my position on exercise. He needed it. Seriously. He did not have a weight problem, but he needed to get some muscles.
I don't want to make more personal attacks on him because that doesn't seem fair, but I will just mention in passing that I find men with a little bit of tan or some sun exposure on their bodies in the past 36 or 45 years and with chest hair also to be more to my taste. Just saying.
He stayed a night or two, then visited me again a month or two later. He got sick while he was there and I went out in the middle of the night to get him drugs and ice cream. No wonder he didn't want to break up. Who doesn't want a woman who will go to Walgreen's for Hagen-Daz chocolate chocolate chip and Nyquil at 1:00 a.m. for him? Plus I am a good cook.
He wrote letters. He called. He told me he had burned his draft card, which disgusted me. If you are sincere about being against a war, then be a conscientious objector. Back up your words with deeds. But telling someone whose father fought in the very war you protested that you burned your draft card probably will not endear you to that person.
While he was gone, I met someone I liked better: someone who did not pressure me to do what I did not want to do, who was easygoing and cooked me supper. I told Stan that I did not want to see him any more. Fair enough, right? That's the beauty of dating as opposed to being married: you have a Get Out Of Jail Free card that you can whip out of your pocket AT ANY TIME.
Stan did not agree. He wrote me a long letter (I wish I had kept it because it was so bizarre) in which he told me I "shouldn't be afraid of my passion" (I don't have the letter, but I have never forgotten that line - I wasn't afraid of my "passion," I just didn't want it with him) and that he had thought I would move to California with him. Not an offer of marriage, mind you (not that I would have accepted it), but just that I should pick up and follow him without any commitment whatsoever.
I didn't answer the letter. He called. By now, I was screening his calls with the old answering machine my friend Terri had given me because I was still too poor to buy one for myself, what with repaying student loans and all, plus my philosophy then, as it is now, was that if it was really important, they would call back. When I didn't answer and didn't answer, he left me a message that he was driving to Austin to see me and would be there in X hours.
I left the apartment. I didn't want to be there when he arrived. I was a little bit scared, actually. This was moving into stalker territory. Yeah, I know I'm a good cook and men like that about me and then the whole Hagen-Daz thing, but honestly? I cannot be the only woman in the world who can provide these services.
For the life of me, I cannot remember what happened after that. Did I talk to him at all? Or did he knock on the door and ring the bell and wait and wait?
No matter. We were done.
Stan later dated a friend of mine (the sister of the wife of my friend Nathan who worked for Stan), which I did not find out about until my friend, C, asked me why I hadn't warned her that my former boyfriend was so weird. I thought she meant my college boyfriend, who was also a good friend of Nathan's, but my college boyfriend was not weird,* so I didn't understand what she was getting at.
"You're dating M?" I gasped. I really didn't think she was his type.
"What?" she asked. "No! I mean Stan! Why didn't you warn me?"
I would have warned her had I known she was interested, but she probably wouldn't have listened. [See: My Landlady/Fairy Godmother warned me about the guy who was so mean to me but I would not listen to her, even though she had known his family since he was a little boy so she was definitely in a better position to know than I, who got sucked in by the charm. I no longer trust charm.]
Nobody ever wants to hear that kind of advice. "Oh, you really shouldn't date him. He's a lunatic."
"Really?" they think. "No, it's just Golddigger. She brings out the crazy in a guy. He's great! I can tell!"
And then, two months later, it's crying in the beer or the diet Coke, which is the first step, after which comes the frantic consumption of Dove Bars and then the dying of the hair. "Why didn't you tell me? Why why why?" is the lament.
But I tried to, you think. I tried. But would you listen? Nope.
And then you can't even say, "I told you so," even though has it ever been so well deserved?
The good part was that I now had two data points, two equations. Stan was the X. C and I were the whatever the not-X part is of an equation. Solve for X and there you go.
X + girlfriend1 = stalkerish behavior
X + girlfriend2 = weird
And then a miracle happens and you get
X = weird stalker
Don't you love math? Anyone who says they will never use algebra in real life is wrong.
It wasn't me.
It was him.
The End
* Maybe a little weird, but in a good way, bless his heart. He is an incredibly organized person, like Primo but without the clutter. Well, Primo isn't exactly organized in the traditional sense of, "Things are in order," but he usually knows where everything is in the structured chaos that is his office. To the extent that you can be organized and be cluttered at the same time, that is Primo.
My boyfriend had all the pens and pencils with their points aligned in the upper drawer of his desk. Notepads were squared against the edges. Everything was perfect. So neat and tidy. He was such a nice guy and he did not deserve the way I broke up with him.
He arrived at my place. He didn't even bring me kolaches from the Bon Ton Bakery on 290 between Houston and Austin. But I guess he didn't need to, did he?
I don't remember if he took me out to dinner. I certainly hope so. So many good places to eat in Austin: Threadgill's, Chuey's, Green Mesquite. I hope he didn't get free milk.
I gave him some sheets and a pillow and showed him the couch, not that it was hard to find because this was a tiny apartment. I had gotten the couch at an estate sale in Houston and had yet to get it re-upholstered, which it badly needed, but its condition made me mind less that someone would be sleeping on it, even though it was white. When I bought that sofa, my mother sighed and said, "I'm never going to be a grandmother, am I?"
10 For I = 1 to infinity
20 He asked why he couldn't sleep in the bed with me.
30 I told him that wasn't happening.
40 Next I
After 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of arguing, I was exhausted and surrendered.
So dumb.
I wish I hadn't.
Because it's like vampires: once you invite them in, that's it.
So yeah. I consented, but is it valid consent when you have been worn to a frazzle saying no? And if you're a man, is that how you really want to get someone into bed? By exhausting her with argument?
I hope that he has a daughter now, thinks about how he acted, regrets it, and prays that nobody ever treats her that way.
Once you've slept with someone, you might as well sleep with him again, especially if he is very persuasive. Even if you realize that he is kind of icky naked as the human body needs some exercise between zero and 36.
I was 23 at the time. Thirty six seemed old. Now I know it's not old. Not at all. I suspect when I am 70, I will look back on me now and think, "Baby! I knew nothing!" But I have not changed my position on exercise. He needed it. Seriously. He did not have a weight problem, but he needed to get some muscles.
I don't want to make more personal attacks on him because that doesn't seem fair, but I will just mention in passing that I find men with a little bit of tan or some sun exposure on their bodies in the past 36 or 45 years and with chest hair also to be more to my taste. Just saying.
He stayed a night or two, then visited me again a month or two later. He got sick while he was there and I went out in the middle of the night to get him drugs and ice cream. No wonder he didn't want to break up. Who doesn't want a woman who will go to Walgreen's for Hagen-Daz chocolate chocolate chip and Nyquil at 1:00 a.m. for him? Plus I am a good cook.
He wrote letters. He called. He told me he had burned his draft card, which disgusted me. If you are sincere about being against a war, then be a conscientious objector. Back up your words with deeds. But telling someone whose father fought in the very war you protested that you burned your draft card probably will not endear you to that person.
While he was gone, I met someone I liked better: someone who did not pressure me to do what I did not want to do, who was easygoing and cooked me supper. I told Stan that I did not want to see him any more. Fair enough, right? That's the beauty of dating as opposed to being married: you have a Get Out Of Jail Free card that you can whip out of your pocket AT ANY TIME.
Stan did not agree. He wrote me a long letter (I wish I had kept it because it was so bizarre) in which he told me I "shouldn't be afraid of my passion" (I don't have the letter, but I have never forgotten that line - I wasn't afraid of my "passion," I just didn't want it with him) and that he had thought I would move to California with him. Not an offer of marriage, mind you (not that I would have accepted it), but just that I should pick up and follow him without any commitment whatsoever.
I didn't answer the letter. He called. By now, I was screening his calls with the old answering machine my friend Terri had given me because I was still too poor to buy one for myself, what with repaying student loans and all, plus my philosophy then, as it is now, was that if it was really important, they would call back. When I didn't answer and didn't answer, he left me a message that he was driving to Austin to see me and would be there in X hours.
I left the apartment. I didn't want to be there when he arrived. I was a little bit scared, actually. This was moving into stalker territory. Yeah, I know I'm a good cook and men like that about me and then the whole Hagen-Daz thing, but honestly? I cannot be the only woman in the world who can provide these services.
For the life of me, I cannot remember what happened after that. Did I talk to him at all? Or did he knock on the door and ring the bell and wait and wait?
No matter. We were done.
Stan later dated a friend of mine (the sister of the wife of my friend Nathan who worked for Stan), which I did not find out about until my friend, C, asked me why I hadn't warned her that my former boyfriend was so weird. I thought she meant my college boyfriend, who was also a good friend of Nathan's, but my college boyfriend was not weird,* so I didn't understand what she was getting at.
"You're dating M?" I gasped. I really didn't think she was his type.
"What?" she asked. "No! I mean Stan! Why didn't you warn me?"
I would have warned her had I known she was interested, but she probably wouldn't have listened. [See: My Landlady/Fairy Godmother warned me about the guy who was so mean to me but I would not listen to her, even though she had known his family since he was a little boy so she was definitely in a better position to know than I, who got sucked in by the charm. I no longer trust charm.]
Nobody ever wants to hear that kind of advice. "Oh, you really shouldn't date him. He's a lunatic."
"Really?" they think. "No, it's just Golddigger. She brings out the crazy in a guy. He's great! I can tell!"
And then, two months later, it's crying in the beer or the diet Coke, which is the first step, after which comes the frantic consumption of Dove Bars and then the dying of the hair. "Why didn't you tell me? Why why why?" is the lament.
But I tried to, you think. I tried. But would you listen? Nope.
And then you can't even say, "I told you so," even though has it ever been so well deserved?
The good part was that I now had two data points, two equations. Stan was the X. C and I were the whatever the not-X part is of an equation. Solve for X and there you go.
X + girlfriend1 = stalkerish behavior
X + girlfriend2 = weird
And then a miracle happens and you get
X = weird stalker
Don't you love math? Anyone who says they will never use algebra in real life is wrong.
It wasn't me.
It was him.
The End
* Maybe a little weird, but in a good way, bless his heart. He is an incredibly organized person, like Primo but without the clutter. Well, Primo isn't exactly organized in the traditional sense of, "Things are in order," but he usually knows where everything is in the structured chaos that is his office. To the extent that you can be organized and be cluttered at the same time, that is Primo.
My boyfriend had all the pens and pencils with their points aligned in the upper drawer of his desk. Notepads were squared against the edges. Everything was perfect. So neat and tidy. He was such a nice guy and he did not deserve the way I broke up with him.
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