The Tao of Habitation Compensation

"How do you document real life when real life's getting more like fiction each day? Headlines, breadlines, blow my mind and now this deadline, eviction or pay. RENT!"



So begins the longest running broadway musical of all time, RENT. I would just like to start off by mentioning that this blog really has at best a tenuous connection to the broadway musical RENT and even less to do with broadway musicals being gay. What exactly do singing and dancing have to do with being gay, other than the fact that all three of those things are in the musical RENT? Exactly. My point being theres nothing wrong with liking the musical RENT, that "Seasons of Love" is pretty badass, not that I would necessarily know anything about that.

On to the actual topic of my blog: RENT (the act of paying money to live somewhere, not the broadway musical that is based on this practise). Specifically a story about getting ones first apartment. Now, this may or may not actually have happened to me. Like most things I talk about, theres a good chance that this actually happened to someone else I know, someone else that probably doesnt know that I have a blog. And for that latter reason I will relate this story to you as if this may or may not have happened to me, it may have happened to a close friend of mine that doesnt know about the existence of my blog, or it may be a complete fabrication, only time will tell.

A young man, in his early 20s, not particularly attractive, with an unnaturally dry scalp has just made the decision to move out of his parents apartment for work elsewhere. With but a few scant weeks of summer left before he starts down a new career path he travels down to closer to the vicinity of his new place of employment with his family to find an apartment he can rent.

All great things happen in threes, like the Back to the Future trilogy, so he finds three apartments to scout out one weekend. The first one he goes to he finds too uninviting, the building is very dirty, it looks like its in a demilitarized zone and the building superintendant has a cigarett affixed to his lips, a snake tattoo on his arm and just one of those looks that says, I have the keys to every apartment in this builidng so dont be shocked if you get an unwelcomed surprise visit from me in the middle of the night. As they say in south central LA, thats one cold bowl of porridge homie.

Unhappy with how the first encounter went the young man and his family go to the next apartment, located in a much more serene part of the city. There they are greeted by a kindly old shoemaker who is renting out the main floor of his small house. The man seems pleasant enough, and while the bed and chair of the room he is rent out seem a tad bit too cofortable the young man is intrigued by the offer, if only to be off put by the fell meaning intrusiveness of the clearly dim witted yet kindly old shoemaker.

Upon leaving the apartment the young man recieves a phone call from the old shoemaker suggesting that he is prepared to cut his rent in half if the young man agrees to twice weekly tutor his daughter who one can only assume is somehow horribly flawed in one way or another. This event highlights the earlier mention of the elderly shoemaker being remarkably dim witted, a point to be mentioned again later in this story. The young man listens to this offer and considers it. Given his options, this offer is considerably warmer porridge than what else he had available.

Shortly before entering his third and final potential apartment he recieves yet another call from the old shoemaker this time with the financially retarded proposition of letting the young man live in his house for free on the condition that he tutor his daughter (likely defective) twice weekly. This second phone call from the dim witted shoemaker though clearly with a genuinely impressive if not dim witted offer made the young man realize what is all too often heards in the streets of south central LA, 'thats some hawt porridge yo......bitch, pay my bills'. Pay my bills indeed. Out of fear of being of being sold as a love slave to the dimwitted yet kindly old shoemakers daughter (read: no refund policy), the young man realized that this porridge was clearly too hot for his liking and politely turned down the offer.

But like a modern day Goldilocks he soldiered on to the third apartment. The apartment was in the city's infamous 'hookers and pie' district. While there was plenty of pie to be had by all, and good pie at that, there would be the odd hooker too, so it had both good and bad. Having found a living accomodation he could live with he happily accepted this as his new place of residence, now that porridge is just right! As well the woodsman killed the wolf with his axe freeing granny from his stomach whom he supposedly ate whole.

Whats that? You want an encore?

"Theres only now, theres only here. Give in to love, or live in fear. No other path, no other way. No day but today!"