An Open Letter to My Former Landlady

Dear Former Landlady,

I was shocked and dismayed when you called to tell me that you'd sold the house I rent from you. Okay, I wasn't shocked; the For Sale sign had been up for months. I guessed the feeling was more along the lines of slightly surprised and perhaps a little intrigued. Isn't the real estate market super hot right now? If you can't sell place like this one, then it's clearly haunted, booby trapped, or a breeding ground for Legionnaire's Disease. This brings me to an important question: do I need more health insurance? What about dismemberment/ghost insurance? (Do you have a guy for this? Have him call me.)

Also, it's not a house that you just sold, it's a duplex. Perhaps the contracts for duplexes and threeplexes (triplexes? triceroplexes?) are particularly onerous. You know, not everyone is in the market for a duplex. It's like 3/4 of a house. You get all of the bad parts of a house (the yard, taking out the trash, racoons in the attic) with the bad parts of an aparment (sharing walls, lack of personal space, possibility of neighbors drilling a spy hole in the wall). That's a hard sell to make.

Or perhaps the neighbors had something to do with it. You are an honest woman, Former Landlady. I have no doubt you told all prospective buyers that one side of the duplex was occupied by death metal enthusiasts with a burgeoning interest in spoiled Indian food and a hatred for lawn care. Seriously, I've lived here for months and I still don't know what occurs on the other side of my living room wall. It could be a men's bathhouse, it could be a maquiladora, it could be a meth lab; all I know is, it's loud and stinky. I have a hard time reconciling the fact I even know people like that; I must commend you for having the courage to actually engage in business with them.

Alas, do not let all of this obscure the fact that this little place, the heartlamp you owned and I paid to rent, has switched hands. Well, not hands really, since I didn't see you lying on the floor of the bathroom when the toilet exploded or antyhing. That was Pepe or whatever the property manager's name is. He's pretty good, and he's not scared of direct contact with sewage. (Also, I have hands and I live there.) It's definitely changed wallets or bank books or whatever it is the landlords of the world use to organize their properties. Let's call it a property folder. Yes, it's changed property folders indeed, and with it, it has lost a little bit of its soul.

The lost soul won't show up in the rent check or the muffled lyrics about cannibalism that bleeds through my walls. It'll show up in... I'm not really sure. Maybe in the sheer duplexity of this dwelling? Probably in the air conditioning, since you were always very good about having that fixed. And definitely in the ducts, which were expected regularly. So, from me, the air conditioning, and the ducts, thank you. And for not throwing me out when you learned about my pot bellied pig, I also thank you.

Sincerely Yours,
Cody Wayne Maxwell Powell

Posted by Cody at October 11, 2005 7:34 PM