Siddity in the City

I have tried to blog this month a dozen times. Every time the post is either shitty or eaten.

This time, I’m hoping it won’t be eaten, because, really, I can’t take any more. I can’t. Don’t give a whore’s chocolate starfish if it’s shitty, though.

So here, my shitty, baby-Jesus-hates-me, moon-is-retrograde, might-as-well-go Unabmomber-in-the-mountains month in review. Settle in, it’s longish.

Mission: Find an apartment under $1000 with a full kitchen, an actual bathtub, and enough living space to turn around before I leave my job at the end of September.

Cloud: View apartment share in LIC. Location is great, but $600 per month “room” is nothing more than a pile of sweaty blankets on the floor of a 40-year-old man’s room. Of course, it is divided by curtains, and he only has to walk through the spare “room” to get to the bathroom a few times per night… Viewing ends when prospective roommate/documentary filmmaker exclaims “Oh my god, how’d that knife get there!” while laughing nervously and staring at giant kitchen knife suspiciously placed in “bedroom.”

Silver lining: Do not take starring turn in snuff film, escape with life. Get really good iced Americano at Brazilian Coffee House (48-19 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City)

Cloud: View two apartments in Lefferts Gardens–one $775 studio, newly renovated kitchen, is located in the ass of the building, right next to a stairwell with a convenient, concealed “assault nook”; the other, a $650 studio, run down but in a doorman co-op building, is a sublet by a woman who asks for four months up front and proclaims it a “serious business deal” so many times I am convinced she’s in fact planning to steal my money and identity. In Lefferts Gardens.

Silver lining: Nobody throws a rock at my head.

Cloud: Prospect Heights. I call a management firm late one afternoon about an apartment and ask what time they close.

“7 o’clock!” Cheerful.

I show up at 6:04. No one is there. I wait a few, thinking maybe someone ducked into the bathroom and locked up to keep the riffraff from stealing the scotch tape. Turn around. A drug deal is going on behind me. Not…quite…what I’m seeking in a neighborhood. Still, I realize the apartment I want to see is just a few blocks away and I run over. Rusting fire escapes and transient individual on the front stoop, a total dump from the outside.

Silver lining: The building next door is a fire station. Should the homeless set the place ablaze getting high or warming themselves over a winter trash bonfire, the fire department can have it out before you finish crashing to your death from the rusted escape route.

Cloud: Make multiple trips to Astoria to view apartments. View one basement “one-bedroom” smaller in its entirety than the single room I’ve been living in so far in NYC, $850. I almost take it…until I meet the cockroach living in the bathroom. Trek up Steinway to view an apartment only to find that the place has been rented since I called the day before. See one-beds that were clearly studios that have been subdivided, reply to Craigslist ads that turn out to clearly be housing scams (”Application fee of $35 must be paid before you can qualify to view apartment!”)

Silver lining: Get some exercise, crucial since I no longer have time between work and apartment hunting to hit the gym. Figure out where I will shop (Key Foods) drink (Bohemian Beer Hall) and get hair done (Moroccan place on Steinway) should I ever actually find an apartment in Astoria.

Cloud: Give up on hunting for apartment alone, turn to brokers, get short-bus type from Global City who stops to chat with friends in the neighborhood and takes me over to his dentists office because he forgot an appointment and needs to be rescheduled, between showing me an apartment that is bad (ground floor, black carpet and linoleum, next to a garage, owned by a near-deaf woman who speaks only Greek and tells me I can’t use the yard outside my apartment with company or for more than 15 minutes at a time) one that is not ready for habitation, and one that is a third-floor walk-up about 7′x12′.

Silver lining: The garage apartment is literally the best and largest I’ve seen, all utilities are included, most of the cabinets are still firmly attached to the wall, and it will allegedly be ready in two or three days, when I need to move. I am still technically employed full-time, and have all the relevent paperwork on me. I put down a deposit same day. Yay!

Cloud: The next day, Short Bus Broker calls and says the landlord (or at least the English-speaking, younger generation) wants to meet me the next day, is not yet sure I “have’ apartment, despite the fact that he “has” my check for $1000.

Silver lining: Distracts me from panic over state of my uterus. A preemptive, “I’m about to be uninsured so I’d better see every doc now” trip to my GYN a week earlier turns up an enlarged uterus that requires an, um, internal ultrasound. On my last day of work. The last day I’ll have insurance. As in, if anything turns up wrong on the ultrasound? I’m fucked. But there is that impending homelessness thing. That might be worse.

Cloud: I have to pack and move all my shit in three days.

Silver lining: I may grow closer to my father’s family, as they have offered to let me stay with them until I find a place, and even help me move!

Cloud: Three days later, their help has not materialized, nor has my soon-to-be landlord had time to meet me about my application.

Silver lining: Fuck it, I have Fine Cooking class to worry about. Plus, I can squat in old apartment overnight and friend/colleague offers to store my stuff until actual reliable movers can be arranged.

To be continued. Especially since we’re only halfway through last week, and I’ve got a day of homelessness, a housing scam, a black eye, ministorage and an exploded can of hairspray to get through…