apartment-hunting in the cesspool: trolls piss and minnows swim

Page Seven

It began on 5th July in the current year of 2011, this most recent screwing I’ve received from yet another seriously unstable turners falls landlord. He’s a small man, and as so many small men suffer so much ego damage from being small, this could be one reason for his mincing and toxic psychological landscape. Another reason could be that he was, I’ve been told, spawned and raised in this place. Generationally and perhaps also genetically old-time turners ignorant and old-time turners nasty. Did I mention duplicitous, like every troll in turners? I’ll call him Minnow Slisky.

On July 5th, a woman who knows I’m looking to leave this ponystall and who also knows Minnow, told me that he had a sudden vacancy in his building. On the 7th I went to the place where this woman works with her boyfriend to get Minnow’s number. And here comes trick number one. Instead of just giving me the number, boyfriend, while girlfriend and I are yakking, calls up Minnow and tells him I’m right there, and in a little while, Minnow shows up on his bicycle. Ambushed I am. Why not just give me the number and let me proceed from there? No, no the three of them have to trick me into this surprise encounter, when I have already made it very clear to boyfriend and girlfriend that I want the first contact to be by phone. I’m not granted the respect these three people would give any other adult: to let the adult handle the situation in their own way. No, there must be an ambush because three ignorant and controlling denizens of turners falls decide that that is what they want.

This encounter doesn’t go well on my part. I’m angry that I’ve been ambushed in this way, I speak rather sullenly, I do not make a socially acceptable good impression. It turns out that Minnow is a very long-term fixture here, and I recognize his face as one that I’ve seen from time to time since 1985. But I’ve never known his name, or that he has rentals, until now. After Minnow sails away on his bike, girlfriend says sarcastically, Well that went well. It most certainly did not, and she knows it.

I pass Minnow’s phone number and some other information on to the social worker who is supposed to be spearheading this apartment search, and then try to put the apartment out of my mind, because the ambush did not go well.

On July 10, a mere three days later, I see Minnow again, swimming down the sidewalk on his bicycle again. He is distinctly chilly, keeping his face pointed groundward in a hard sternness, saying Morning to me in a rather sarcastic tone. I say to myself, that’s that. He doesn’t want to rent to me.

It should have ended right there, after wasting only five days wondering if I would get this real apartment and be freed at last from the ponystall. But no. Despite the fact that he seemed not to be at all interested in having me as a tenant, Minnow apparently needed for his own disturbed reasons to prolong both the drama and the discomfort for me. I kept in touch with social worker, but for a week there was no word from Minnow.

On Saturday the 16th, all out of the blue, there’s an email from social worker saying that Minnow is showing her the apartment on Monday the 18th. They have set this up completely without consulting me as to whether or not Monday at ten is a good time for me. Again I don’t matter. Again I don’t get the courtesy or respect they would grant any other adult. Nope, he is showing her the apartment, and if little old me wants to tag along, well fine.

I tag along. There is a lot wrong with the apartment. It’s clear he hasn’t put a nickle into it in decades. It’s very dark, with few windows. The stove and tub I’m certain must be official antiques by now. The linoleum is ugly and dark. There is virtually no counter in the kitchen. There’s no porch. All of my apartments in turners have had porches, and I long to have a porch again. No porch. No yard. Yes, there’s a postage stamp of grass out back that one of the other tenants has already commandeered for herself and her grandchildren (this female is one of those long-term turners falls hunts).

I tell social worker to proceed trying to get this place. It is depressing in the extreme because of all its negatives, but I have been in this claustrophobia pit that the government tossed me for sixteen months and I want out. I want space to move around in. The ponystall is actually quite light and pretty, but a stall is a stall and a cell is a cell and I do, in fact, have claustrophobia. It’s not just some sardonic thing that I toss out. I also want a dog and a cat. If this landlord, despite his oddness and the drawbacks of the apartment, will allow me a small family, then I will go there. Having a family to ease some of my extreme isolation is more important to me than any feature in any apartment.

I go to the library to use high-speed internet for a while on Friday 22 July. Who’s sitting at the computer beside mine — Minnow. He tells me he’s received my social worker’s message that I’m interested in the apartment, and he asks me for her email address. I give it to him. On Monday 25th, only three days later, I go to the library again and there he is. Gives me a big smile and says Hi Anne and says he’ll accept me as a tenant, and that he is filling out the landlord paperwork for the Housing Authority. I tell him they will need to inspect the apartment before I can move in, but he knows this. He’s had rent subsidy tenants before.

A mere three days more, July 28, and I get an email from him. I’m nonplussed by this, because I have never given him my email address. I realize the only person who could have done so is my social worker, whom I’ve already asked not to give out personal contact information for me without my consent. She did it anyway. She says he wrote to her on the 28th saying he was renting the apartment to someone else, and she didn’t want to give me the bad news. It’s been a week since then. She’s apologized numerous times for giving him that info, and I think she truly is sorry and realizes she made a big mistake, because now this man won’t leave me alone.

On August 1 I get an email from him saying that the “other people” (who never existed, by the way. who were a complete fabrication. I went by the apartment often between 28 July and 1 August: no one was moving in) changed their minds and the apartment was still available. I write back to him that I need his answer regarding pets before I can proceed, and I ask him to write his response to my social worker, not to me. 

There’s a response next day, sent to both my worker and to me. He wants a letter regarding a psychological need for the pets. We have already shown him such a letter on the day we viewed the apartment. He didn’t even keep it, but tossed it back into the worker’s folder after he read it. I don’t see this August 2 response until August 5th, as I am boycotting my email account for fear of more crap from a person who should not even have my address in the first place. August 5th is today.

This morning I read his response, and what he was trying to say wasn’t clearly expressed (he can’t spell, either). He wanted a different letter about the animals, but I wasn’t sure if he meant one letter covering dog, cat, guinea pig and birds, or one letter for each. I asked him to clarify, and again asked him to reply to my social worker. 

This afternoon I decided to go to the library for the high-speed again, and I deliberately went for 2:00. The other times I’ve seen Minnow there, he’s been done by 2:00. But at 2:30 he swims in, swims by me and says Hi Anne, but this time I can see distortion and nastiness in his face that had not been present before. He wrote me an email at 2:36, as soon as he sat down, but I didn’t find it until I got home to the dial-up on my own computer. He continues to write me emails, despite the fact that I’ve twice asked him to stop. He tells me in this email that he wants one letter for each pet.

This is what I write back to him, here at the dial-up: Mr. Slisky… I don’t believe you wish to rent to me. This up and down, yes and no treatment has been going on for a month. If  this is indicative of how I would be treated as a tenant, this constant silliness, then I do not wish to walk into such a situation. Please dispose of my email address and cease using it.

After that, I wrote to my social worker. I told her what action I wish to take if this very small, demented fish doesn’t stop writing to me, and that I’d like her to take that action with me. We’ll see what he does.

Any of you who read these posts and refuse to believe that the trolls of this town are as toxic as I say they are, you are practicing denial. All I did was look for an apartment where I could have a rent subsidy and a few pets. All he had to say was No, at the beginning, if he didn’t want to deal with pets and with Housing Authority rules. But his choice was to dance me around for a month, jerk my chain, lie, etc. Meanwhile I’ve heard from five different people who know him the following things: Several buildings he once owned have been taken away from him. He doesn’t make repairs. He has a bad reputation both with tenants and with the Housing Authority. And he’s another stinking, sneaking, lying christian, active in one of this burg’s churches. Spare me the bloody sick christians.

All I was doing was looking for a place, and what do I reel in? Yet another deeply disturbed, deeply nasty turners falls troll, dressed in a minnow suit. Yet another. It’s twenty-six years this month since I first came here. In all that time I’ve had only two landlords whom I would term sane. I’m not talking about nice landlords, or conscientious ones, or landlords who treat their tenants like human beings — maybe landlords like that don’t even exist. I’m just talking about sane.

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Update:  … today is august 27. three weeks since I wrote this post. three weeks since I went to the email account where minnow reeves was writing to me. haven’t been able to face going in there since that day. to deal with the anger if there should be a new email from him. so today I went back to that account. little christian, deacon minnow slisky, swimming along on his bike and doing the god-thing on sundays, is nasty and dishonorable and a scuzz. I wonder how that fits with his churchy teachings. he has hacked into my email account and deleted every single message he ever sent me. from that account, he can read all my incoming and outgoing messages, and he can find out about every website I use. and if any reader wants to dispute with me the fact that this turners trolls “christian” minnow isn’t a garden variety piece of toxic filth, you would have no luck making a case for that with me.

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read…    Scealta liatha…   Lucked out…

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