I have a lot
going on right now. I live with awful roommates. I’m
always trying to not be home so I don’t have to see one of the
pterodactyls. That’s what it’s come to. I’ve assigned a
nickname of an ugly prehistoric bird to the people that I share an apartment
with. I live in an abundantly-tiled Greek house that resembles a
fortress that begins with a nose-bleed angled, city code-defying cement
staircase that leads up to the main floor. The first floor is half in
the ground. They call that “garden level” in New York, which was
probably invented by real estate agents, because all feasible square footage is
rented out in this city. In other states, what towns call a cellar,
in New York is a shitty basement apartment.
The landlord of
said dwelling lives upstairs. He is a plump, talkative Greek man who
speaks as if he has a swollen tongue that’s gotten pinned while wrestling with
the rest of his mouth to spit out the English language. After he
has spoken in his long-winded, overly self-indulgent manner in extreme broken
English for what seems like an eternity, I often say, “what?!”
I cannot begin to
express the violence I feel for all of these people. Because of this,
I realize I do need to work on myself some, while simultaneously feel
completely validated in imagining their untimely, somewhat horrific demise.
Yesterday I heard
a knock at the door roughly around 5:30PM. I had a sneaking
suspicion Aristotle Onasis was on the other side of the door waiting to
proclaim his case for bothering me in grunts that resemble
communication. Avoidance doesn’t really work with this
fisherman. After several tries at knocking with no answer, he walked
back down the hallway towards the foyer, opened the front door to the house – a
grown man mind you – reached his arm outside and rang the buzzer to my
apartment. The shrill, earsplitting decibels of the buzzer could
wake up an entire submarine regimen. He leaned on the buzzer too, to
be extra annoying. How quaint. I still ignore
it. After the fourth or fifth time, I begin to reach exasperation, I
virulently open the door to ask him what he wants. I yell at him
stating that I’m not really dressed and what the hell is so important (clearly
he doesn’t get the hint that nobody wants to talk to him). Even his
wife sleeps in Flushing.
First he asks if
we have a washing machine in the house, which is just “THIS IS WHAT YOU WERE
RINGING THE DOORBELL LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHO FOR ??????? REALLY!!??!!” First of all, the
pterodactyls can’t afford soap or paper towels, so it’s funny to me that he
would even think that they bought an appliance. Then he says he’s
bringing the ladder for one of the roommates (the one I choose to call the Macedonian
whore – she’s in a different blog). I
proceed to just yell at him, telling him to leave it in the hallway because I’m
in my pajamas and then shut the door.
Lack of
understanding American social moors or boundaries might be what he hides behind
as a disguise to get people to interact with him. That aside, describing him as wildly
inappropriate doesn’t seem to stress enough what he is. He tells the
neighbors I’m his girlfriend. He makes offers of taking me to
Greece. One time he and his family had
come back from a wedding (this was before his wife retired to another part of
the borough). It was late. The weather was nice, so I was
sitting outside, smoking. Most likely he spotted me from his balcony
about, then rushed downstairs to bother me. He was in a robe and his
rotund, watermelon-like stomach was sticking out. He made small talk
and then quickly proceeded to show off his construction chops by showing me
pictures on his phone of the Athens condo that he built out. I may
have been indulging him because the rent was late, I can’t remember looking
back. I am a comedian
after all, I can’t really just walk away when people are being
ludicrous). But also I had had some wine and it was kind of
entertaining. In hindsight, I’m
questioning why I was so polite toward Baklava. Sometimes
you have to be gracious in the face of others’ rudeness. He has invited me to go live with him in
Greece on more than one occasion. He’s so lucky I don’t have a gun. It’s just so wrong that I can’t even make it
clever.
I did get him
back though. He asked me how old I
thought he was once, and I said seventy. It’s not clear exactly how
old he is, but he’s arrogant, so in his mind he’s still in his fifties, and by
his reaction it’s clear I was way off (but not by much I
suspect). A hundred bucks says he’s sixty-nine.
