Over a decade ago, I finally partook in the American Dream. Drowning in a vat of Bud Light? Winning a lifetime supply of deep fried Twinkies? No, I bought a house. Well, actually a condo, which like a house, but for lazy people. It was great, I had a brand new build, with my own furniture and appliances like a big boy. I was ten minutes from work, I didn’t have to mow or shovel snow, and even had a workout center and pool a couple hundred yards from my front door. Me and Stringbean were living high on the hog. Then a little something called the housing crisis came along and condos were harder to sell to Tabasco lube.
It didn’t matter at first, but when I moved into my wife’s place, I had a place “underwater” so I had to perform the Black Sacrament and become (shudders) a landlord. It was at that time I realized all the shit that was falling apart. My first renter was my buddy and his family, just needed a temporary place, so it was cool. Then they moved into their house and the fun began. The first serious renter to be no showed on me for the lease signing, then asked to meet again and no showed again. When she reached out a third time, I told her to kiss all my ass and ta da! She signed with my next door neighbor that night instead, leaving me two more months of mortgage before I found a renter. (Author’s note – she was later evicted for having different gentleman callers make too much noise all night. In other words, she was likely a drug dealer or hooker.)
I finally got renters in and the fridge died, the dishwasher crapped out, the disposal took its own life and the carpet ripped. Did my renters call for most of those, no! They called for the tub not draining…after they were there for almost a year. In other words, it was full of body hair, so they thought that was my job to clean out their drains. Sigh. (I didn’t, by the way.)
Well, after five years of trying, I finally got a buyer and that old hall of memories will be for someone else now. I had a lot of good times there – it was where I lived when I started stand up, most of time I had Bean, and countless parties, from my annual Halloween Hijinx to random nights of Catch Phrase, cards, Insult Jenga and Guitar Hero sessions. I made my washer boards there, proudly displayed copies of America’s founding documents on the walls and used to sit on the balcony deck and BS with buddies who had came into town for one or two nights while we had cigars and beers listening to old music. Of course, I won’t miss neighbors calling the cops if the volume went over three or renters calling me to clean their pub hairs or the crippling fear of carrying two mortgages, but hey, memories, right?