Life Lesson #42: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me six times, shame on me.

I believe the clichéd phrase that means to inadvertently cause a problem for one’s self is to shoot yourself in the foot, no?

I think I might have done just that.

Not too long ago, I wrote how things were going well. And while they still are, generally speaking, I might have thrown caution to the wind with my number one thing to be excited about: getting an apartment.

Now, I’ve lived in some ridiculous places. I think the worst, hands down, was my first apartment out of college, down on Madison Street. No, not Avenue; Street. Never heard of it? Yea, neither had I. Wedged in between Chinatown and a giant low-income housing project, it wasn’t the classiest, safest, or prettiest of joints. But being fresh out of school, money was tight and standards were low.

Liberace, our other roommate (another friend from college) and I managed to ignore the blaring yellow BEWARE signs from the start, beginning with the sketchy guy who showed us the place. A mix between Kramer and an aging porn star, he didn’t even give us an actual lease to sign. Instead, he went to Staples and got one of those one page things meant to be nothing more than a contract for a doll house or something. To make it ‘official’, we all signed it in a bank. Although I’m still not sure how that made it official; maybe because they have security cameras?

Anyway, we moved in to our three bedroom digs that was actually documented as a one bedroom. The management company got away with this by leaving giant cut out squares on the wall between my room and the living room and Liberace’s room and our third roommate. Who, by the way, lived in a makeshift square that was simply built into Liberace’s room. I could imagine this is hard to visualize. So just believe me when I say it was totally illegal and very non-private.

Besides us three very poor and naïve tenants, we had what I believe to be ten or so furry rodents residing with us. Let me tell you; the set of balls on these guys were enormous! No matter the time of day, people in the apartment, whatever, these little bastards would come sauntering through the place. They moved so slow, we could actually catch them ourselves. On more than one occasion, someone would be cooking in the kitchen, a mouse would come out to check what was for dinner, and with the simple toss of a pot or bowl, we’d catch the little sucker.

Oh – and our neighbors! Besides the single mom and stripper next door, whom Third Roomie tried to get in the g-string of on a regular basis, we had the drug-dealing dude downstairs who had an alligator that sketchy Porn Star Kramer suggested we borrow when we complained to him about our mouse problem. And then there was the weird I-hate-the-world chick who hung – as in suicide style – a giant fuzzy Hello Kitty doll off the fire escape a floor above us. She actually put black ‘X’s on the poor thing’s eyes. Talk about freak.
I think the icing on the cake, when we really knew we were in No Man's Land, occurred during the Black Out of ’03. We were literarily the last neighborhood in all of New York to get our power back. The first night was spent on our roof with the cast of characters we called neighbors and my poor dad who got stuck downtown after work with no way up to Westchester. As blunts and forties were passed around, we made a vow to never speak to mom about that night. The second night was spent at South Street Seaport, where full power and air conditioning had been restored in order to keep tourists at bay. We drank ourselves into semi-comas and stumbled back to our bleak apartment, only to pass out in ninety-plus degree rooms lit by Santa Maria candles we bought at the Dominican deli on the corner.

Liberace and I sat on our fire escape for the third hot, sweaty, and eerily dark night in a row, listening to a tiny battery-powered radio. When the disc jockey from one of the local stations congratulated the mayor and local Con Edison crews for restoring power in all of Manhattan, we realized we had been completely forgotten. As garbage cans were lit on fire and riot like behavior rumbled in the projects across the street, I made a silent prayer that I had all my affairs in order and a nice pair of underwear on.

But that was years ago. And while each consecutive apartment has had its glitches (including a bar across the street with patrons who loved to have bar-stool fights in the street, a medicine-cabinet-turned-dirty-sex-motel for cockroaches, a Spanish restaurant below that played I’m Too Sexy at one in the morning, and a fire escape that, similar to the x-rated medicine cabinet, hosted a constant pigeon orgy), I feel that with each move came a slightly better environment. I mean, this is Manhattan, and problems are to be expected.

Nevertheless, things have gone too far at the current abode. A brief list as to not bore you with mundane details:

1. No hot water for, as of last night, the fifth time since I moved in. This most recent incident was met with the following comment from the super: You know, it’s winter time. This happens. To which I respond: Bull shit.
2. An attempt to fix the boiler that led to it smoking, the fire department coming and trampling through the apartment, and coming home to what I thought was a robbed apartment. Once I noticed the computer and television were still there, my next assumption was someone had to be hiding in the bathroom ready to kill me. When I called the woman I lease from, her response: Oh, I didn’t want to alarm you by telling you the fire department had to come. To which I respond: Because thinking I’m about to get raped is a better way to go about this?
3. We lost heat in the apartment because something happened to the chimney. Then the hot water became non-existent. Again. The super explained the situation as follows: Well, when the heat went out they realized the building needs a new chimney, but the workers tripped the wires to the boiler while they were installing it. So we have to fix both. To which I respond: The chimney is on the roof. The boiler; in the basement. Separated by five stories. Did a giant come to fix the chimney?
4. Centipedes. Seriously. I have giant, fuzzy, slow moving centipedes that come from god-knows-where and crawl on my ceiling. I notice them in bed at night. It’s almost like the ceiling is moving. Hansel will look at me and ask: What are you looking at? To which I respond with: The fucking biggest centipede in the world is about to crawl into bed with us.
5. The toilet is much like a rocking chair. At one point, the super must have tried to fix it by wedging a giant, now dislodged piece of marble underneath the base. A good friend from college who has been living in Amsterdam the past few years came to visit last week. After she came out of the bathroom she noted: You know your toilet is really shaky? It moves back and forth when you sit on it. To which I respond: Yep.
6. The brick wall behind my bed was wet last week. I have no further comment. But trust me; touch it and your hand will get wet.

Life Lesson #42: I know there could be worse things with the apartment, but I feel as if I might as well throw my rent money into a bonfire. There is just one too many problems for me to be okay with actually paying someone to live here. So while the place has its endearing qualities and I will miss my miniature size dwellings, it’s time to throw in the towel and start the search again. Because staying any longer would make me an asshole.

And even if I get the sickest place ever next time around, I’m staying mum. I don’t need it to come back and bite me in the ass three months later.