There is this one particular stretch of highway on my drive home that is just a meatgrinder for my sense of human fellowship. Basically, it's the point where one highway merges into another. So the left lane of the first highway merges into the new highway, and the right lane ends. Knowing this, most drivers kindly position themselves in the left lane as they approach the merge, leaving the right lane mostly open. This is obviously the perfect situation to see some grade-A dickbaggery. Like, if you were setting a trap for a vampire, you'd definitely get a nubile, nightgown-wearing virgin, and you'd put her in an old Victorian house, in a bed that's way too big for her, with lots of pillows, and with one of those curtains around it. Maybe you'd make sure the moon is full, because you don't really know anything about vampires but they probably dig that shit. And just as surely, if you were interested in seeing a straight-up parade of asshole cars, you would crowd up the left lane that they've been comfortably speeding in, and leave the right lane open, and put up a sign saying it's going to end in 1000 feet, then just sit back and watch the goddamn show. Because inevitably they'll get tired of crawling along in the left lane, and out of some dickheaded sense of entitlement they'll jump into the right lane and zoom by everyone in front of them, eventually picking out the pussiest person in the pack and cutting them off just as the lane ends. It is infuriating. I would sooner die than let my car be the one that one of these person-shaped shitstains cuts in front of. I have literally come inches from crashing just to keep this from happening. And in the event that such a wreck ever occurs, I make no promises about my subsequent behavior.
It's not like I see this every once in a while. Every single time I drive there, it happens. So when I went to that stretch of highway on Google Maps, I was not surprised to see that it happened to the gMaps Beetle, too. Now, I'm willing to grant that the gMaps Beetle is probably slow and it might be tempting to pass it. But the picture still speaks to me.
I know that everyone sees this type of thing every day, and we all have a few "It was so awesome! This guy was weaving through traffic, and I was all 'I hope he gets pulled over', then later on I saw him PULLED OVER ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD! I was so happy!" stories. And while I do enjoy such mild schadenfreude, my thoughts in these instances tend to transcend a simple hope for a slap on the wrist and dive straight into crazyland. I sit there and actually, really, not-just-saying-this wish for these people to have awful, awful things happen in their lives. I don't just want them to get pulled over up ahead; I want some Biblical, contrapasso-style shit to happen to them. Like maybe all the time they shave off their commutes by being inconsiderate shitheads allows them to get home just in time to find their spouses in bed with their best friends, or, if they're really egregious offenders, just as the robbers are leaving, and they get stabbed for their bad timing. That would be poetic. Or they could just get colon cancer - I'm not that picky. But harboring these thoughts can't be healthy.
Obviously I need to stop commuting so much, so I went into this apartment showing on Tuesday with an open mind. The location was close to campus, which would limit my driving and allow me to rehabilitate my tattered soul, so I was willing to overlook many potential flaws.
I showed up at the apartment and met the guy who was doing the showing, a kind-of-awkward, bohemian-looking guy about my age named Garrett. I would have been surprised that a shy hipster would be walking me through the apartment, if not for the fact that he had called a little earlier to confirm the appointment, and the conversation started like this:
I showed up at the apartment and met the guy who was doing the showing, a kind-of-awkward, bohemian-looking guy about my age named Garrett. I would have been surprised that a shy hipster would be walking me through the apartment, if not for the fact that he had called a little earlier to confirm the appointment, and the conversation started like this:
Me: Hello?
Garrett: ... Um, hello...
Me: Hi. What's going on?
Garrett: Um... Not much. This is Garrett (blah blah blah)
I think the phone call was Garrett's way of giving me fair warning that this was going to be an awkward showing, and I appreciated the heads-up.
My apartment-searching experience is pretty limited, but I'm guessing that any time you're looking through an apartment that someone else is currently living in, it's bound to be a little weird, and this was no exception. The guy who answered the door cut a depressing figure: mid-40s, wearing a wifebeater, with hunched shoulders and a mopey, hangdog face. It might have been presumptuous to deem his life depressing this quickly, but when you are over the age of 40 and you let strangers see you in a food-stained wifebeater, you're kind of asking for it. I know I'm not an important guy, but come on - throw on a bowling shirt or a KISS '95 Reunion Tour T-shirt or something. Anyway, I'm going to call him Gus because I was too busy judging him by his cover to remember his name.
And the tour of the apartment vindicated my snap judgment (It was a studio, so by "the tour" I mean "my first three steps inside"). My task, then, was to try to separate the merits of the apartment from the depressing way that Gus was inhabiting it. This was easier said than done, because this guy was really a bummer. For instance, there was this mildewy smell, and I couldn't decide whether it was the apartment or if profound sadness just smells like mildew (read on for the answer). And he had a gift for answering my apartment-related questions with anecdotes that made me even sadder for him. In response to a question about how much electric ends up costing, I learned the following things:
- Electric can be 25-40 dollars a month, depending on the time of year. (Useful)
- He tries to be frugal, and he doesn't run heat during the winter. He just wears hoodies. He also likes to turn the lights off whenever he can because sunlight does the same thing for free. (Semi-useful, or at least relevant, albeit long-winded and obvious)
- Expenses add up, man, and this place is out of his price range these days. (Less-useful, very rueful)
- That's why he's moving out, and he wants to stay in Boulder but he doesn't know where he's going to live. Everything is expensive. He's hoping he can stay with a few people, but he's not sure. (Irrelevant, very sad)
Even in my empathy-damaged state, I really felt for the guy. As he was talking I got this really vivid picture in my head of him sitting on his floor (there was absolutely no furniture) in his underwear watching Olympic speed-walking on his 13-inch TV (also on the floor), eating Spaghetti-Os out of the can. I am 56 percent sure it was a psychic vision, and it was chilling. But his penchant for volunteering depressing information - stuff that other people would keep buried deep down in the recesses of their souls - actually soon came in handy. When Garrett pointed out the bed that was folded up into the wall, Gus told us he never used it, because it was uncomfortable and rickety. I asked him where he slept, then. He said "Just..." and then pointed to a specific part of the floor, and I wept inside for him. Then he told us that he used to have an air mattress, but it was ruined by the flooding. He not only said this like I already knew about the flooding, but also as if apartment flooding is just a fact of life - like the apartment was next to a South American river during monsoon season - of course it's going to flood sometimes. When I pressed him further, he told me that the apartment had been sporadically flooding with toilet water from the unit above him. This was game over for me. I was mentally checked out the second he said "toilet", but the guy had a good head of steam now and just kept complaining. We got to hear all about how the property owner declined to buy him a new mattress, and how next time they wanted to set up a showing they should call him a little later in the day because he's on sleeping pills and he can't get back to sleep if they call too early, and something about his caller ID not working. I'd imagine that Garrett wanted to strangle him; I just wanted to give the poor bastard a hug and get the fuck out of there.
While I waited for Gus to take a breath, I thought better of the hug and inched toward the door, fully prepared to leave Garrett to fend for himself. He tried to rent me a lemon apartment; I had no sympathy for him. But Garrett was having none of it, and he rode my coattails out the door. When we got outside I told him No Thanks, and as I walked past the staircase that led to the unit above, I smelled cigarettes and heard a girl talking way too loudly on her phone. And I couldn't help but smile, content in the knowledge that I would never, ever have to clean up that girl's poopy floodwater. And for just one day, the goddamn drive back didn't bother me at all.
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