Tenemental

by Vikki Warner

  Title T. P.

  I am not proud to inform you that I once sent this text message, verbatim, to my tenants: Dudes. Please don’t flush anything other than poo, pee, and toilet paper. Line will get blocked again. Thanks bros!

  I trotted out this memorandum—mortifying on so many levels—after a messy sewage backup situation that allowed me to meet several new repairmen. It cost $667; it was dirty, infectious, and aromatic. So, despite my discomfort, I had to let my tenants know that it must not happen again. Dementedly punching out this text, I laughed to myself: I would send them something so embarrassing and impolite that they would heretofore treat the plumbing with extreme respect, if only to have me never discuss their toilet habits ever again.

  Living with tenants is about facing their emotional upheavals, their hygienic idiosyncrasies, their fetishes and pet peeves, their tastes and volume preferences in music, all of it. Sometimes down to the level of telling people explicitly what can be placed in a toilet.

  Rather than doing the sensible thing, i.e., renting the apartments in my home to quiet, pleasant, law-abiding working folk who turn in early and don’t make trouble, I’ve chosen to live with an unpredictable but entertaining mix of lovable freaks. It really ups the potential for human and financial calamity, but it’s how I’ve always chosen to roll. My tendency toward trusting people is a bit bruised, but remains largely intact. I’m aware that most people are unbearable and some are routinely evil. I just keep believing that the good ones will somehow find their way to me.

  After several years of haphazardly running the show at PennHenge, I ran into a friend who had just bought a two-family house in town. I congratulated her, welcoming her to the landlady club. We commiserated for a hot minute, and in doing so, she made a few offhand comments like, “When I was checking my tenant’s credit . . .” or “On his rental application he wrote . . .” I nodded along, like, of course, references and credit checks and applications, yep, ha, the tools of the trade, right? Meanwhile, I was mortified that I’d never done any of these things. I’d been speeding ahead just assuming things would work out, while everybody else had been exercising their due diligence.

  I can’t pin my tendency to dodge standard protocols entirely on my Gen X birth year, but I can say that I was irreversibly affected by the cheeky slacker mentality that prevailed during my teenage years. Music was the trigger; music showed me both a level of sensory depth that I hadn’t yet been exposed to and approaches to life that were unlike my tidy small-town existence. Getting into punk and post-punk in the nineties—Fugazi and Pavement and P. J. Harvey and Sonic Youth—and observing the witty side-eye these performers squinted at society was a potent signal; I picked it up hungrily. It pointed the way for me at that skeptical national moment in time. Sure, they all sold records, but these bands were just as interested in unifying people, in working within a meaningful scene. They toured like maniacs, often hitting the small cities like Providence; my friends and I lobbied our parents for ticket money for months ahead of the shows.

  Their influence decisively changed my friends and me. They made us willing to proudly step out of line.

  The thrill of going to a record store to pick up a brand-new LP by a band you’d discovered—having maybe heard one track from it if you were lucky enough to catch it on college radio—was pure, always new. Selecting one from a fresh stack, weighing the thing (bound pleasingly in shrink wrap), reading the track names, tucking it under your arm, then plunking down the fifteen bucks you’d saved up, nodding to the counter dude: heavenly.

  You were taking a chance; you couldn’t stream it on Spotify. You had to go home and cross your fingers as you put the needle into the groove.

  You could not Instagram your purchase. You could not buy it on Amazon.

  The time before the internet is hard to recall, but when I get a clear moment of it, I feel like I’m gazing at a slow, pink sunset. It’s that light that everyone looks good in.

  In my teens, I became smart and cynical; I objected to conspicuous consumption and barcodes and being marketed to. Among my crowd, “selling out”—making art or music that appealed to the masses, that could make money—was an unforgivable sin. I’ve been trying to get out from underneath my seesawing slacker-versus-overachiever expectations ever since. Buying PennHenge and selecting a long line of opinionated outsiders to live in it with me has added up to a series of proclamations: I’m tough and capable, and nobody can tell me how to live; I want to be with my weirdo brethren; we spit on your plywood mansion out in the suburbs. Even when none of the above is particularly true—when the experience of owning the house is terrible and I’ve stopped wholly believing in it—even then, I’m happy it’s not ordinary.

  So the framework I’ve built my tenant relationships on is convoluted. It’s not predicated, as most are, on the simple exchange of money for space. In my mind at least, we’re all on a loose but spirited mission together, united by our tendency to resist blending in with the pack. Therefore, I hate to chastise my tenants, even when they act like boneheads. I don’t raise their rent. There’s a silent agreement on all sides to live and let live.

  Still, I am the (female) quasi-authority figure in a house full of males who dislike authority. Conflicts rear up, and somebody has to deal with them. I thus maintain an air of nonconfrontational, jocular innocence 90 percent of the time, with 10 percent mild toughness thrown in when warranted. This carefully calibrated elixir works sufficiently most of the time, but when it fails, it fails hard.

  That’s because you cannot predict how the tenant-landlord relationship will evolve once the wheels get to turning—once theoretically sharing a house becomes actually seeing each other in the hall in various states of undress. Invariably, we start out with pleasantries, as everybody puts their best foot forward, striving with every shred of their being to seem nice, normal, and responsible. With some people, that lasts just until the final box is moved in, and then they careen immediately off the tracks.

  When someone doesn’t like living here, I sense it quickly. When things aren’t working out with a tenant, the house is hollow. And then there are the ones who are completely willing to destroy you and your home if you let them in. The exemplar of such erratic behavior, the gold star Most Shitty Award winner, and the tenant to whom all others compare favorably, is Neil. I dragged him in during a moment of weakness, and things only got weaker from there.

  On a summer afternoon, I drop by a friend’s house. There is a skinny, pallid, tattooed, prematurely gray-haired, seemingly jovial dude outside. He’s moving stuff out of a beat-up car into his friend’s first-floor apartment. I hear him say he’s looking for a place in town, hopefully right in the neighborhood. Without a moment’s further consideration, I pounce, yelling out maybe a little too eagerly, “HEY! YOU’RE LOOKING FOR AN APARTMENT? I HAVE ONE FOR RENT!”

  The dude’s head whips around; he grins. We chat for a minute. I evaluate: Quick and dark sense of humor? Check. Some level of employment? Check. There’s a bit of the witty bastard-slash-asshole in him, but this is a male personality type that I am accustomed to handling. I invite him to come see the place later that day. He shows up holding hands with his ladyfriend, Carrie, who is sweet, funny, and friendly. She doesn’t have a job at the moment—they just moved here from the Southwest—but she has three interviews in the coming week. Sensing that she is a stabilizing factor in his life, I’m sold on them. They are sold as well. They agree to move in right away.

  Neil and Carrie sign a lease. I self-congratulate—turns out, a touch too early, for a couple of days after they’re in, Neil announces that he is unhappy with the bathroom and the kitchen in the apartment; they are too worn and dingy. I agree, but tell him there is very little I can afford to do at the moment, and this relative semigrubbiness is why their apartment is such a bargain. He says he is very interested in doing some renovations. Although he has “super limited” experience, he is excited to learn. He’s explicit that the apartment really needs to be fixed up i
n order for him and Carrie to enjoy living here, an opinion he did not voice when they looked at the place. (The rent was seven hundred dollars a month and the space, while not fancy, was at the time certainly habitable, clean-ish, a decent place to live.)

  Sniffing a foreboding note in the air, but determined not to let these new recruits slip through my fingers—and also thinking a little renovation wouldn’t be the worst thing—I agree to help Neil find an antique clawfoot tub and an old farmhouse sink that we will then put in together. Carrie and I begin combing Craigslist, emailing each other photos of tubs, sinks, chandeliers, and other random furnishings. So far, it’s all leisurely. But then the schedule changes. On a whim, Neil gets my sledgehammer out of the basement and destroys and removes the current bathtub from the apartment. Just like that. He figures this will spur us to get things done quickly.

  With no place for Neil and Carrie to shower, the tub search is accelerated. For a few days, they shower at the Y or at friends’ houses. Inevitably, I feel irrationally guilty and offer them my shower. For another couple of days they appear at my door with towels and toiletries, apologizing, at various times of the day and night.

  The two haven’t paid their first month’s rent in full yet.

  It is only too clear that the tension between Neil and Carrie is escalating. He drinks heavily. He is erratic and lashes out at her, while I try to run interference and keep them both pacified with tales of how awesome the apartment is soon going to be. The Craiglist trolls with tubs for sale keep flaking out on us, changing appointment times or flat-out disappearing. I still have foolish illusions of hanging on to these two, of watching them settle in and chill out and stop pushing the stress meter into the red zone. But then Neil gets pissy with me, red-faced bitching me out because he’s “not seeing the results he expected,” and a lengthy email volley begins. At some point I write to Carrie, Please realize that you guys were the ones who decided to do all of the work you’re doing. I’m perfectly willing to go along with all of it, and pay for it, and I really want you guys to enjoy living in the house, but I didn’t actually ask you to do anything. And you guys still owe me more than half of the rent for August. Which, again, I’m willing to wait on, but it’s not exactly ideal for me, either. Relations are frosty, but Carrie and I make up, rededicating ourselves anew to our shared mission.

  Finally, a tub is procured. Neil and a friend-with-truck go and pick it up. I pay for it. It is brought into the apartment and dumped in the living room to await the plumber’s arrival. I purchase several hundred dollars–worth of fixtures in order to connect the tub to the plumbing.

  Then Carrie breaks up with Neil and moves out, in the space of a single day.

  Smart woman. But Neil is wrecked. His self-destructive streak flares. I hear thrashing and crashing downstairs. With her calming presence having split the scene, there’s no buffer between him and me, and his testiness, in line with his inebriation, hits new heights. His rage is white-hot and scary. I barely know the guy; I don’t know how to react.

  A week or so later, Neil calls and informs me that he has lost his job; he cannot pay me the remainder of that month’s rent; and he is moving out immediately. I yell at him, via my cell phone from a Home Depot parking lot, in a cathartic, out-of-body style I have never since had reason to employ.

  Neil and Carrie’s total time in the apartment: just over three weeks.

  Neil left a bunch of pitiful stuff behind, and as I cathartically slipped his stained mattress out of a tall, skinny second-floor window, watching it bounce and land in the street below, I stuck my head out the window and laughed down at it. I’d been so indignant, which suddenly became very funny to me. Taking back Neil’s short-lived, soon-to-be-renovated space, felt good too. I turned the process of dumping his garbage and pee-filled beer bottles (Wasn’t it the shower that was missing, and not the toilet?) into an only slightly depressing party for one, blasting Kanye, and grinning as I yelled “THAT’S RIGHT, ASSHOLE!” and slammed the lid on the trash can, feeling like I’d mentally hitched a ride on Neil’s raging coattails for a bit but could see a way back to being in control again. The adrenaline of taking charge now dazzled my nerve endings. I hoped Carrie was feeling the same way, wherever she was.

  At my yearly appointment with the very nice doctor at Planned Parenthood, all seemed to be pretty routine. As a last catch-all question, she asked, “Anything else you want to tell me, just generally?”

  It’s likely a totally standard question, but it’s also possible she saw how pale I was, or the strange hollows of my eyes.

  “Uh, I don’t think so.” Pause. “I mean, I have been kind of tired.”

  Apparently, “kind of tired,” by my definition, was falling asleep repeatedly in the car on my evening commute, then being unable to get out of the car upon pulling into the driveway; I’d recline in the driver’s seat and take a half-hour nap right there. “Kind of tired” was stubbornly insisting on riding my bike, but stopping to cry at the side of the road upon encountering a hill. It was being totally out of breath at the top of the stairs to my apartment. Falling asleep at a very loud show or in a cranked sauna—sometimes standing up.

  I’d had my wisdom teeth pulled recently, and the staff at the surgeon’s office had “a hard time” bringing me back out from under the anesthesia.

  And there was the digestive stuff—which was pretty much ruling my life at this point—but I didn’t mention that, because gross! and also, she was a gynecologist; she didn’t want to know about my rotten intestines.

  “Okay, well, let’s check your iron levels; maybe that’ll give us a clue.”

  She did the test, left the room to check the results, and came back shaking her head; “That test was faulty,” she said, it had given her a funny readout. She tried it again, and this time when she came back, she’d realized the tests were correct. It was my worn-out blood that was faulty.

  “Okay. Listen. Your iron levels are dangerously low. You have to go to the hospital right now.”

  I’m sure I looked like she’d smacked me in the face, because she kept going: “I’m not sure how you’re functioning right now. Don’t even go home to pack a bag. Just go there.”

  I had awoken that morning thinking it was just another day.

  Despite my physician’s warnings, I went home to get a few things. I felt my chances of survival would be much improved if I had a stack of books and an iPod.

  I called Seth at work on the way to the hospital. He was shocked, unable to understand exactly what was happening from my imprecise rattlings, but he said he’d come to see me later on.

  At the hospital, more tests were done and more questions asked of me. Seth arrived while I waited for a room. We joked around while I tried to feel hints of this sickness I had. I called my parents, told them not to worry. Called out sick from work. Late at night, I was admitted to a peach-colored room in “Jane Brown,” the oldest and creepiest building in the hospital complex, an ominous 1922 mansion originally built for private (read: rich) patients, and now outmoded, dwarfed by steely, modern buildings.

  In the morning, I learned that the amount of hemoglobin—the protein that transports oxygen—in my blood was at levels insufficient to keep me upright. One nurse confided, “I can’t believe you haven’t passed out cold by now. I’ve worked on oncology wards, and people with late-stage cancer have more hemoglobin than you do.”

  I felt like all of this was going on without me. I swore to the doctors that I felt fine, my periods were normal, I wasn’t bleeding from a secret location that I wasn’t telling them about. I felt tired, had skin problems, got hobbled by frequent leg cramps, and had ten years’ worth of toilet issues that were once diagnosed as IBS, but I felt fine.

  I was not allowed to stand up. It was that bad, I guess, though I reminded my fave nurse that I’d not only stood, but worked all day, swam, and rode my bike a couple of days ago. “Well, now you have to lie down, and that’s that,” she said, tough-love style.

  The next mo
rning, an aide wheeled me, flat on a gurney, into a new part of the hospital. I received a transvaginal ultrasound; the female technician kindly showing me the skinny white wand, with its perky little spelunking light, before starting the test, the results of which showed no problems. They tested me for a bunch of rare blood diseases. All negative. I was allowed to get up to go to the bathroom for the purpose of stool sampling, but what I provided could not correctly be called a stool because that would imply it had the properties of a solid.

  Guys, I’ve had diarrhea for ten years straight. Perhaps the problem lies there.

  The doctor on my case was not my friend. He acted jolly and told me they’d figure me out, but my initial level of trust devolved quickly, and I grew to dread his visits. Like the male doctor who’d diagnosed me with IBS, he looked at me sideways, like he’d never seen a woman before and had little real desire to figure out how they worked inside. All he could do was provide a short-term dose of what my blood was lacking and send me on my way to a primary care doc, who would work out a proper diagnosis.

  That day, I had a blood transfusion, just to bump me out of the dead zone. I lay in my bed watching the blood drip from the bag into my IV, half-fascinated, half-disgusted. Seth and I joked about how I’d suddenly get ripped, bulging with power, now that I had “that new blood.”

  The next day, they let me out. Since I’d had little to eat other than underripe honeydew melon and oversweetened yogurt during my stay, I made Seth stop immediately at a pizza place so I could load up. It was late July. It had been a gorgeous lazy summer in Providence. I wanted to go to the beach. My birthday was the next week, so we went to Martha’s Vineyard. We didn’t take it easy—we brought our bikes and rode them all over the island. I was still exhausted, but the short-term effect of new blood in my body, plus some B12 injections, plus the joy of not being in a hospital, buoyed me.