Unsafe New York: Part Ten: landlord troubles

"SQUISH 'EM" OR: I SHALL WITHOLD THE LEASE!!

I lay down on my back and try not to move too much. There are bruises on my hip bones. My knees a black and blue. My elbows cannot be touched without sending an impusle of pain through my arm. All the way up. The impulse.I turn my beaten body sideways, so that the pressure of the hard (as in "not soft") linoleum floor does not enhance my affliction...
I wake up in the middle of the night from a crawling sensation on my face. I turn on my side and hear a nauseating "crump" or "crisp" depending on a day. My dreams are full of color red and an act of running. In reality, my body is covered with red spots. I look like an AIDS patient from "Philadelphia." I am skinny guy/gal (read previous posts) and with a shaved head. My body coloration alternates between blue, black-green and red. "Hey, man, are you sure you don't have anything?" asks my new lover of a few days ago, suspiciously eyeing me. I think I'm a hottie - and clean, oh so clean, so I am offended by his comments. What made him think this? I go to the bathroom mirror. Indeed. The bruises from sleeping on the floor have shown themselves everywhere, and the red spots have turned into hives. "Yeah, clean. No problems." I sound uncertain. He is suspicious. But horny and nice, I guess? ..Or is it me? A week of expectation and a need for great sex that is never met. Sex sucks now. With all the unspoken suspicion hovering in the air. He is not performing. I am not performing. We part in haste and I listen to his voice mails and look at his e-mail, realizing sadly that there was a potential... And now a lover I could have had, providing company and energy I so greatly need for my work to go well - now where have you seen a chaste artist or a celibate bohemian, is gone. Bu the way, on the matter of Bohemian lifestyle, you kids need to learn how to live with yourselves and be proud of yourselves. But not haughty, like you are. In any case, I get home and lay down on my floor. I look up at the ceiling. I pick up my favorite comic book.
They slither out of the pages. I take care to not move abruptly, but nevertheless, even a slightest touch of paper against their plump skin makes them...burst. The two characters who are kissing now have blood on their lips. They turned from heroes into people with kinky relationship tendencies. My manga! My gay lovers! Damn! Or maybe they have become vampires. The comic is ruined. It was a present given in good faith.
I close the book and my eyes. I open my eyes and observe the following: they are walking around me. Some are climbing over my feet. They are there and will not relent. They are so big and fat by now, they don't even stop for a snack. They are just crossing over- (and I am simply there) -To my curtains that hang next to my bedside. To my desk that stands in the vicinity. To my books that are on the desks. They've got to lay the eggs. They've got to breed. They've got to take territory. They will contaminate and spread. And they are.
The space on the floor was once my bed. It is the same now, but literally speaking. My bed is no more. And they, like acrobats, jump off the curtains. Into my bed-spot. On my belly that they love to nimble on. They eat my little fat and I don't even have enough to eat. Hey, stop! Stop! I need this little fatty fold, it will last me three more days. Until I get some food. From somewhere. Magically.
I go into the kitchen to fix me some food. This is the day of food. My roommate is out, in the kitchen too. For her, every day is a day of food. She makes good food that smells good and I am sure tastes good too. Once, she let me taste it. I wanted to eat the whole contaiener with the bowl, and a fork.
Her face is sad. Her neck is red. Her lips are swollen. Her arms are red. There are dark circles under her eyes: she hasn't slept. She sits down on the coutch and silently eats.
"What's wrong?" I ask. She is so cultured she'll never tell you, I have to dig. She smiles politely. I get upset because I know she is not telling me something. I ask some more.
- They are everywhere. They have found her. Her favorite bed she had for years, with a big thick great mattress to rest on after a long day- is their home now. They are in her closet. In her leather jacket. Maybe, in her art supplies as well?... I dare not bring it up. If there will be black spots on her newly commisioned piece, we will know, I guess. Guess we have to wait till then, and then she can go out and buy some more of those art supplies that are kind of expensive. And she, although eats every day, a city college student, money is not that lavish, though enough, just enough. Who cares about the price, right? We are, after all, two stupid kids from Brooklyn. And ARTISTS, on top of that. What do we know about life? Will pay the expanses for the damage that has been done to us! Because this is how it is, how it is, right?
I shake my head in disgust, listenning to her story: waking up in the middle of the night about 5 times, before she had to be up at 8am to go to school. To travel an hour and a half on a wonderfully slow and messed up both psychologically and physically, # 2 train. The train that makes about 5 switches on a regular basis before it gets you to your destination, a train with loud, unintelligible speakers that alternate between mumbling and speaking Alien, people that eye you up and down and hate your race. People that eat smelly food, fat smelly farts, pick their noses, cut their nails, pick their genitalia and stare at you all throughout.
Something falls off my head as I am nodding at her story. Maybe food, somehow got there? How...I run my fingers on my hairless head, catch roommate's eye: no, she nods in disagreement. It is not food. I sigh. I head over to the fridge and check for alcohol. There was some beer left...There aren't any now. I am not a big drinker and now I regret it. I take out milk instead. Make some cereal bowl. Sit down to eat. We are both eating in silence. She silently points out to my arm: its crawling. I try to shake it off but its in my hair. Shall I shave my arm hair now too? Head is not enough? I finally get it out and in the process it squirts. Blood. My blood. Some get into my cereal. I don't observe Kashrut but if I did: blood (human) and milk? I doubt ancestors would approve. But I am disgusted anyway by the combination. It is somewhat, gross. I dump the cereal. This was my last milk. No, I don't have any more cereal. I guess I'll starve. Money's coming in in 3 days. Or so. Make some pasta. Again. Thanks a lot.
Roommate leaves to school, and in a hurry to get out of the contaminated house, drops her keys on her way. While trying to look cool and nonchallant about the whole thing, she scratches her feet and legs against the door, and her beautiful stylized sandals get some of it. ,
I go back to my floor. I try to sleep. I...scratch.
Landlord finally returns my call. A day later. I get yelled at. Meanwhile, they are hanging from the curtains. Landlord yells and they hang. They hang on the curtains as the landlord is yelling at me on the phone. I scratch.
Later that evening my neighbor comes to visit. We watch a movie and scratch. He was scratching as he was walking in. But now he scratches more.
I go down one day to repay the visit, we sit on the couch and eat delicious home made oatmeal cookies and scratch. We talk about healthy nutrition both of us uphold, and scratch. We talk about taking care of ourselves and bodies given to us by God, and scratch.
We scratch through the evening and I go back up. To scratch on my floor.
Landlord calls back. After a day. I scratch and hold the phone away from my ear. I can't talk. There is yelling and a shower of degrading remarks. I, at 26, feel like I've 13. "You brought them in!" Observe, I've been in my apt for the past 6 years. "Really? Why do the neighbors have them too? Two apartments below."
-"They don't. " Very certain tone. Very categorical - there is no discusion here.
Silence. Two minutes later:
"I am going to come in to look at it. But you should talk to X (my neighbor's name), she had the same problem. She got rid of them."
???-Didn't he just say the neighbors don't have the problem with the bed bugs?...
The neighbor calls. Her voice is cautious and sweet. "You just have to squish them with your fingers. You know, I had them too. And I kept after them. And killed them. And now they are gone."
-"What do you mean?"
(Patiently, as one would to a child or a mentally retarded):
Just press them with your fingers. And throw out your bed. And put plastic on it (I guess the new bed for which I have to conjure up the money. And on top of that cover that new acquisition on plastic cover to which I am psychologically allergic, and it is against my religion really to use things of that sort to sleep on...)
-"But they might come back?" .. I half ask half suspect.
-"They might. You just do that again. Gotta pay attention. Remember, just squish them with your fingers. Just squish them!"
-"But I don't think I can do it!"
Silence. Thought process. Sudden, angry, sharp tone:
"I am not going to argue with you, Dana. I was asked by the landlord to help you. You don't have to get help if you don't want it." Disconnect.
Hmm...
I call the landlord to report that I do not intend to squish bugs with my fingers.
He gets enraged:
"See, see, you don't want help. You want to complain. And I tried to help you...Its your fault. I am not obligated to keep the apt clean"?!?. (From bugs?...Really, now? I am not asking him to wash my floor for me, you know...)
"No, I want a fumigator or an exterminator." I stand my ground.
"No you don't." He equally stands his.
"Yes, I do. And you can do it yourself and save the money, or I will have to call the services and have them do it, and then bill you." I make the outrageously bold move and bite my tongue.
"What!! You can't do that!! You have to get my permission! Its no big deal, you brought them."
"Sir, they are coming out of the walls, they live in the wood - did I put them in the walls as well?"
"You just want to argue! You can't fumigate!" The landlord commands and would not relent.
"But it will help to get rid of the problem, Aziz. I already through out my bed, I had blankets but even that I had to get rid off, now I sleep on the naked floor - I can't afford to buy a new mattress, I have to pay your rent, and my cloth is infected as well."
"You are a troublemaker. You want to keep the house clean? Go to your father and keep his house clean!"
???!!!//>M>?
[Ok. Right. Only you are the landord and I am a tenant. And I don't even have any back rent. And in 6 years not only I fixed your place, I called you for repairs only in dire circumstances. When my bed was flooded by water coming down from the ceiling, and when the problem kept recurring over a period of a year. When a window in the master bedroom was broken and I almost got a pneumonia, sleeping in the wind, and now, when the toilet bowl broke and we couldn't flush the toilet. By the way, your approach to fixing the toilet bowl consisted first, before I was an asshole and got on the phone like fifteen times and would not relent off: put your hand inside and flush it! ]
"You have to cooperate. Your lease expires in this month, and you are so demanding, and diffucult, and disrespectful, I will not extend the lease. " Says the landlord with a complete satisfaction and cruelty.
[I though this was called "blackmail." ]
Ok. I think.
Silence.
"You have to cooperate. I will buy some things for the house - to help YOU, with YOUR problem. Since you don't have a father or a boyfriend (?!?!KDKJwer>/) I will take care of it, but you will have to pay for it."
Ok. Whatever could he mean?..
"There is a website you can read," continues the landord. (Aha, so he is educated then) There are natural ways to get rid of bed bugs. You just have to wait. And put everything in plastic."
"Sir, it may not work - they live in the walls. But if this is the measure you suggest, I will try it. But if that doesn't work, understand, I cannot eat and drink bugs, sleep in bugs and be beaten by bugs. I am smelling them in my apt, and I may develop an allergic reaction later. (I will provide a link to the site that demonstrates the validity of my statement - some people, indeed, do develop an allergic reaction to bed-bug bites. Besides, being beaten continuously by a vampirical entity that feeds off you, you can also actually die from it if your body decides it's had enough and wants to cut off the air supply via constraining the muscles of your throat. But also, use your simple logic, an insect feeding of you, bitting you, releasing toxins into your blood stream, straining your system to continuously fight off infection AND at the same time, repair the damage inflicted just can't be good. It can't. Do you know how much effort a continuous disease takes? The body releases cortisol, an extremely poisionous to your body substance, over a prolonged period of time. It weakens your supplies of immune arsenal, and just generally tires your system. Fatigue, nausea are all logical outcomes of bodily exhaustion that follows. Bad mood, sleep deprivation.
PEOPLE, THESE ARE BUGS FOR GOD'S SAKE. NOT A CUTE LITTLE PUPPY TAGGING AT YOUR COAT TAIL TO TAKE YOU OUT FOR A WALK IN THE PARK. )
On this our conversation has ended. He will come today and will deny the corpses hanging from my curtains, plastered on my walls, and dry bodies on my floor. He will ignore the 3 (Three!) big plastic bags with my bed spreads and cloth in them. He wil watch me untie the bags and see the listless bodies drop on the floor,in quantities, and yet deny them to be bed-bugs. He will deny he sees anything at all. He will claim its "dirt." He will pretend its dirt. He will believe its dirt. He will be impervious to argument. To reality. To his responsibilites. I hope I am wrong. He will deny. He will call me names. He will threaten with a lease. He will degrade me and make me feel small. He will say all this happened to me because I don't have a man. He will say this all happened to me because this is not my father's house. He will say all this happened to me because I am dirty (a. cleanliness does not affect bed bugs, they are from a different source of arisal, and b. we have a cleaning schedule to which we adhere fervently. Each washes the apt every other week. Meaning, each week the place gets washed and scrubbed, so..) He will say this all happens to me because I am X, Y,Z. Not a girl. Aggressive. Argumentative. Shit. He will conjure up ghosts of the past where I called for a toilet repair, using it as "evidence" of my badness. Presenting it as a favor. Speaking degradingly. Denying responsibility for bug infestation - "its not my responisbility."
-"But its Eliot Spitzer's provision, it is New York state regualtion." - I told him on the phone.
-"Well, let Eliot Spitzer fix your problem" was the answer. Hmm, maybe it is not such a bad idea. Or, if my landlord fails to prevent my life being further affected by BUGS WHO LIVE ON ME AND OFF ME AND ARE EVERYWHERE, I will seek help from the state and city of New York. I am just following the suggestions - Sir, you have recommended that yourself. Maybe it will be easier to ask the city for help and not to inconvinience you? Will see.
UPDATE: Landlord just called. From a restricted number. And he kindly offered to BUY me a mattress- since I had to get rid of the one that I had. "And you can pay me back slowly,"?! he added. Pay back? I got rid of my mattress because your building was infested. Now you are "offering" to buy it for me and I have to pay?! Damn. And when I say "no" you say to me: you don't want to live like a human being? You bring shit in the building? You don't really want help. I am going to hang up on you? No you're crossing the boundaries and actually conducting abuse. I am awaiting his visit with impatience. Finally, I am hoping, me and my apt will be free from bug infestation!!

JUST LET MY CAT GO OR NO! DON'T!

Oh well - I just let my cat go. For the second time, by the way. And I finally realized what it is that made us incompatible, shall I say. This cat is amazing: for a 7 year old he is rather agile in a very youthful sense - he acts like a kitten. It could be very cute and endearing but when you find yourself eating and suddenly almost die from heart atack because kitter jumped on your lap out of nowhere, or when your entrie artwork and the insides of your room-mate's bag (!) are filled - dripping with very smelly cat urine, and when you wake up in the middle of the night from sharp claws being stuck in your chest...Moreover, there is incessant strange meowing and crazy running tours through the length of the apartment sometimes at 3am, sometimes ever. I found it always so easy to have cats - we had cats in SU all the time! They were very smart and rational animals. I never understaood why people said "cats are bad." They understood everything we told them and never did anything on purpose to irritate us. But here...Goodness, I've never had a cat more diffucult than this one. So come to think of it - I was doing really well for a while, training him, and then suddenly - complete annihilation of years (6 or so!) of hard work. What has happened? I'll tell you - women have happened. People might think - what is it? At one point he/she defends women, and then turns around and accuses them of spoiling cats. Well, I don't defend "women," I defend people-who-are-wronged. And the wronged are not gods and can do wrong themselves. What I am against is lumping it all indiscrimiatorily all-together, and loosing a track of who did what and when, and connecting wrong and unrelated incidents, and using a huge big fallacy called posto-ergo-hoc: after the fact, therefore, before the fact. People, just because someone did something that was wrong to a person A in a place B, does not unleash a permission to a person C to do bad to that person who did wrong to person, now in a place D. Meaning, if someone fucked up with you, it doesn't mean that they should be abused by a compeltely different, unrelated and unconnected ti you person in a totally different setting and place. People like to make stretches and even now I hear them say some common wisdom: everything is connected, this is Karma, or this serves them right. Yes, maybe Karma. Maybe connected. Maybe. But we won't know. So, some people say: oh, she was bad to her daughter, now look at her getting fired from her job for no reason. Ok. She may have been bad - but it doesn not absolve the person who fired her for no reason, from responsibility. She is still wronged at that aspect. Playing that game of allowance will quickly play us into chaos, a fervent desire of many a power monger, but who can blaim them and the story is old as the world.
So, the cat. Do you evcer wonder why is it that dogs - aka wolves-in-the-past got trained, but cats - didn't? I'll tell you why: women trained the cats. Women lived with the cats. From experience - no matter how many times and how hard I tried to explain to my female friends that cat needs to know and respect the rules like we all do, and he did before, its not hard, cats even get toiler trained ! , there would always be strange unexplained refusal in their eyes. A compassion of sorts, a denial of necessity of that. They would encourage what I've dissuaded, pet the cat after violating the rule, and smother him. As a result: the cat that became the terrorizer of the household to a point that I couldn't even tell him not to jump on the table without incurring the hate he would dish out to me by his looks. C',mmon now, people - I love you, no really, I do, otherwise I wouldn't be trying to tell you things I know you might not like to hear, but do you know that artists are highly sensitve people? We really are a different creed. We live in a different world. For years, I had diffuculty using words as a means of expression. but I always wanted to. We feel. We sense. So, a hate is a hate. One could tell. Especially after nursing a being like I did my cat and living with him for years, sleeping in the same bed and falling asleep with a purring black ball in your lap. But hatred, man. Hatred so strong I never got over it. Why? Why doesn he hate me so much? - I say no. I say: there are rules. I say: don't go and disturb the roommate. I teach. I train. I forbid. I limit. And moreover, someone else in the smae space - like all my roommates did, for which I don't blame them - some felt bad for the cat, others felt they had to be nice to the sucker, and others yet didn't know the whole situation, no, I get it and don;t blame them ,but "blaming" and "fact" are two different thing. The fact is the cat knew that I was the asshole and stood in front of a place he wanted to enter, and someone else wasn't and didn't. To what is this all leading- surely not to vent about the cat and get some cheap-shot compassion, I'll tell you where this leads. Why some men get so spoiled and unruly. Why they may be tyrranical and unable to take "no" for an answer. Because dave the rod spoil the child. Because before you react emotionally, men do too, we are all Homo Sapiens, check the situation. Think. And by the way, as for my kittie on the street now dealing with a local bully - and is he a typical bully, big flat strong head, oversized blown body and short, stocky legs, and this absolutely staring and one ecpression only glance, maybe stronger women could be better for them. And for society. And for themselves.
As for me, all I want is a cubicle with paint, arts supplies of sorts, a computer to write my crap on, a fridge full of food, good gay porn, a good bed and three beautiful LEGAL boys. One Japanese. One British. And one Chinese.