My DiaryLand Diary

2008-03-22 - 2:35 a.m.

Oh what a Good Friday-Gotta Vent
Sorry, sorry, sorry, haven't written in a while, but there are truly stressful going-ons in this building as it makes the transfer from the Dead Slumlord to the Rich NYC slumlord - no less than a slumlord in a suit - and all of us who pay low rent albeit legally rent stabilized by NYC and have been here for over 25 yrs. are being slowly pushed out. They took the two apts. on the second floor, two three bedroom apts., where the tenants (who were my friends) died, above me, and were at most $200 a month, and are
transforming them into one apt. and advertising it on Craig's List at $4,500!!!
And they have no clue how this is going to work. Let me 'splain.
This weekend it began to rain in my living room. I ran upstairs to alert them and they said, oh, OK, we fix toilet exhaust pipes. Eventually it stopped. This morning it rained in my bedroom, and the closet room, saturating two throw rugs, opening up rifts in the ceiling, and sending the GSD running in a panic to the other side of the apartment, thinking she would be blamed for peeing on the floor. I went outside in the hall and said, Excuse Me, but it's pouring in my bedroom! "Oh, we know," the "foreman" said. "It is leak." I had to throw out the rugs (my sister laughed and said, that's why they're called throw rugs).
But I had no floor in my bathroom - it had collapsed into the basement - so they sent their expert team of Mexican illegals to work on that. "Only take a couple of hours," they said. I ended up having to have to stoop in my living room over a plastic bag to defecate and then dash outside to throw it into the garbage really fast...and they were installing a waste pipe for the bathroom in the new $4,500 de-luxe apt upstairs, and drilled anchor holes through my apt electrical wires, so NOW I HAVE NO LIGHTS IN MY KITCHEN OR BATHROOM, the whole west side of my apt....and they worked on it for several hours while I sat in the dark, and then said, "Oh, 5:00, quitting time," and left, so all weekend I have no lights in that part of my apt. The city is so corrupt that if I put in a complaint, all they ask is if the management is aware of the problem and offered to fix it...OK, yeah, but man, what if I had (even though I don't) people coming over for Easter, who had to stumble in the dark?
I've been so forgiving and sweet and everything I've been taught to be, but I am seething inside. Mucho stress. I say that tongue-in-cheek, because they keep asking me why I don't speak Spanish at all. They seem incredulous about this fact. I say, "I just don't." But I want to scream, "BECAUSE I LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES AND I AM NOT AN ILLEGAL WORKER LIKE YOU GUYS!" But that would be politically incorrect. My upbringing says, be Christian.
To end off my perfect day, I stopped at the neighborhood Chinese food place and waited for my order. Some guy in a long black sweeping coat and a big curly mustache and a floppy black hat sat opposite me at the table in the tiny oriental bodega noisily slopping down his food. Suddenly he jumped up and demanded extra napkins from the woman behind the counter. "NAPKINS!" he yelled. He then sat opposite me and blew his nose several times, then walked up to her counter and said, "So, where do I leave my garbage?" She quietly said, "It's OK just leave it there." Then he yelled, "BITCH!" and turned to go out the door, but stopped in front of me to yell in my face, "Look at this cunt! She's a bitch too!" I went over to my friend behind the counter, who I've known for over 20 years, (I remember maybe five years ago when she was breast feeding her tiny girl and still cooking up meals) and I said, "Definately, whoever he was, he was on something." She shook her head in disgust, and without missing a beat, said "OK, you take a free soda for your meal."
PS...I STILL love New York!