Concrete Bathroom: The Aftermath

Last Sunday, I moved to my new apartment, which was an all day marathon event. This is the second time I had to move in the last two months because I previously lived in a concrete bathroom. And our landlord was a spawn of the devil disguised as an old lady. No one has any idea what it is like listening to this woman. She is the worst. She is the devil. Imagine the worst person you've ever met, then multiply that by 3525329503502 and cover them in gyros. That's this woman. There are people who annoy me (like, pretty much everyone I know), but I don't hate any of them. I never really hated anyone. Except for this woman.

It's a long story, but here's the Cliff's Notes to how we got to last Sunday.

About two months ago, my roommates and I were desperate because we're idiots and didn't start looking for an apartment until like a couple weeks before we were supposed to leave our old one. We saw this house owned by this weird old lady with a heavy Gretalian (Greek and Italian) accent, and we figured "hey, a house! That would be cool!" and it had a basement, which I chose to live in because Joey Gladstone is my hero and I want to be just like him. Not really, but my cousin has a basement in his house that is really nice and I figured with a little work living in this basement would be cool too.

Unfortunately, the lady lied to us when she said that the basement didn't flood, because it flooded not once (the first time happening a WEEK after we moved in) but twice while I lived down there. I tried to make the most of living there, but after the second flood enough was enough. Noah had an Ark, I had a concrete bathroom. So we decided to move out. We didn't sign a lease or anything, which I thought was odd when we first moved into the place, so it shouldn't have been as big a deal. We paid rent for the time we stayed there, we would just get the security deposit back and be on our way. It should've been easy. It shouldn't have been like going to war with the devil.

But it was going to war with the devil. It turns out, that the weird lady was a demon of biblical proportions and she kept threatening my roommates (I had moved out to stay at my parentses place because living in a concrete bathroom was slowing killing me) to not give back the security deposit if we didn't move out a week early and cleaned the place, and in general made life hell for us.

Because we weren't allowed to start moving into the new apartment until 5:00 on Sunday, we were up until really late trying to get stuff out of that house. We were moving the last load, when the old lady shows up and yells at us, rambling that we were supposed to move out this morning. When we tried to explain to her the situation and that moving day usually takes all day, she told us we were supposed to move out the week before. My roommate was worried that she'd screw us over because he thought he lost the receipt for the security deposit, but he found it while we were packing. We were ready to take the lady to court. The battlelines were drawn.

On Monday, my roommate and I took off from work because we needed to finish cleaning up the backyard. We'll take responsiblity for this one, because we decided that there was no point in buying a lawnmower just to use it once, so we let the place turn into a jungle. My roommates tried to hire a landscaper to cut the lawn, but no one wanted to go near it. They were afraid that Simba would jump out from the tall grass and attack them.

We were finishing up trying to clear out the weeds that we had pulled the day before, when the old lady comes and starts throwing stuff on the lawn, rambling on and on. Here's a rough transcript.

Old Fucking Hag (throwing plastic bag onto the lawn): You lie! You say you clean the yard!
Roommate: Could you not throw stuff onto the lawn?
Me: We're cleaning it now.
OFH: You lie! Everybody lie to me!
Roommate: Could you stop calling us liars?

My roommate was worried that I would get pissed and throw a rock at her ugly fucking face, because last time we talked I ended up screaming at her because she said I caused the flooding by leaving the door open.

Old Fucking Slut: You lie! The basement never flood!
Me: I'm not lying, lady. I had to clean that up myself.
OFS: You leave door open!
Me: What?
OFS: You leave door open! That why basement flood! The basement never flood until you come here!
Me: Why the hell would I leave the door open?
OFS: You leave door open!
Me: I did not leave the door open!
OFS: I fuck sheep because Satan tells me to.

That's exactly what she said. Word for word. Nevermind that it would be such a fucking coincidence that we move in, and one week later the house floods for the first time in 40 years, then a month later floods for the second time, and a couple weeks after that for the third and fourth time. Nevermind that you could see the water damage on the wall and see exactly where the water is coming from. This lady was either a liar or had no concept of logic whatsoever. Or more likely, both.

I surprised myself by remaining relatively calm throughout the day, because I didn't really give a shit about what she was saying. My roommate on the other hand ended up getting pissed. She made unreasonable demands regarding our security deposit and kept calling us liars. He called our realtor (who knows the old fucking hag), who came over to try and reason with her, but you can't reason with the devil.

Now I don't agree with George W. Bush on anything, but I can now see his point that sometimes you can't negotiate with some people. You just have to bomb them and hope everything works out. While I stood there, watching this old lady talk to our realtor, I realized this logic, however insane and ridiculous it may be. And it was then when I reached into my bag and shoved a stick of dynamite up that old fucking hag's ass and blew her off the face of the planet. As bits and pieces of her carcass trickled down from the heavens, I let out a victory scream while sirens roared in the distance.


Actually, I went to the store to get more trash bags, thinking that there was no chance in hell we're getting the security deposit back and whether cargo pants are suitable to wear in court. I came back, and the realtor was gone. The old fucking whore was deathly silent, and my roommate said to wear my Sunday best, because we're taking the bitch to court. He seemed excited about it too. Turns out, she wanted to charge us for the extra week we stayed in the place. Our realtor tried to haggle it down to giving us back the security deposit minus the ruined rug from the flood and the water bill. She wouldn't listen, so we were set to take her to court. We worked in silence for once, which I thought was odd because that old fucking shithead seemed to love repeating the same shit over and over and over.

We finished cleaning up the place and were ready to leave when the old fucking shithead stopped us and handed my roommate an envelope full of money. My roommate counted the hundreds, but it was about $700 dollars short. He said that we weren't going to accept this, laid the money down at her feet, told her that we'd see her in court. And we started to walk away...

...and the old lady panics.

She ran toward us, saying "What you want! What you want!" She actually started pulling money out of her pockets, asking us how much we wanted. I was absolutely floored. My roommate and I had a quick conference trying to figure out what to do next, and we decided to take the money. It turned out to be the security deposit minus the water bill and the plumber and the ruined rug.

That's not even the most amazing thing. In the end, she actually apologized. She said that we were nice boys, not liars, and she was sorry for everything that happened. This was Osama making peace with America, Red Sox and Yankee fans holding hands after Game 7, Paris Hilton without a dick in her mouth. It was a complete 180 from everything we knew and hated about this lady. We walked away, vindicated and amazed by the entire sequence of events.


That's how the concrete bathroom saga ends. In the end, I learned a lot from this ordeal. You can't help but learning from these experiences. It's the only way you better yourself as a human being. Every situation you live through leaves pieces of a grand puzzle, you just grab the pieces and figure out where they fit.

And the most important thing I learned from this whole experience is that the cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its claws, and that's why you don't fuck with cheetahs. I read that on a website a couple weeks ago because I had a lot of my time on my hands staying at my parents' house. Fascinating stuff.