Thursday, 19 September 2002 | Meet Sleazy

It wasn't until I met him that I could tell he was sleazy. On the phone he'd seemed eager and informative, but in person it was clear that his helpfulness was his way of getting what he wanted, that is, for me to sign the lease and give him 11 percent of my total yearly rent, in exchange for telling me about the apartment and for being an unnecessary intermediary between me and the landlord.

I've never found an apartment totally on my own before, and I found it hard to trust myself, to know whether I was getting a good deal or getting screwed over. It was made worse by working with someone whom I totally didn't trust, and by looking for a place in a city where it's pretty much a given that the apartment will not be sparkly clean. The trick is to recognize Cinderella before she gets all decked out.

It wasn't instant love; I had to recreate her image in my head after I'd left her (probably erasing some of her blemishes and getting her measurements all wrong), and on Tuesday night I dragged Beau out of the house to walk around her property at night to see what creatures appeared. We checked out a couple other candidates from the outside, as well—one in a brownstone, stumbling distance from the subway, and another in a brand-new row house. They looked safe and clean but almost sterile, which actually drove me closer to the crooked little peasant I'd seen earlier that day.

I went to Sleazy's office Wednesday evening to give him a deposit. He had another client sitting across from his desk, and when Sleazy left to take a phone call, the client and I (from my bench in the hallway) began whispering about what a used car salesman the broker was. The client was young, wore muddy sneakers, and a white boy afro. He said his name was Dave. He crept over to me in the hallway and sat down. "So there's this loft I found but I need a roommate to move in with me. You wouldn't want to go check it out, would you?" For a second, I considered it, feeling defiant and rebellious, wanting to walk out of Sleazy's office and start my new life with this...stranger. "Well, maybe. But I think if I don't take this place now then I'm going to lose it." And, just like that, he said okay, told the broker he wasn't interested in whatever place they had been discussing, and walked out the door. The stranger-door, not the roommate-door.

After I signed my application, Sleazy commented that I must feel good, now that I have an apartment, now that the search is over. I nodded hesitantly. Actually, I felt sick.

Today, though, I'm really excited. Arranging furniture in my head, picking out colors for the walls, making lists of things I'll need. This will be the first time that I've lived alone.

(See part II, Getting to know Sleazy)

***

I haven't had time to check my voice mail or open my snail mail or write email. I wonder how I'm going to manage moving. I have figured out what I'm going to do with Ingo's car.

Also. I got my hair cut; I left a really big pile of it on the floor in a place called The Beehive. In the middle of the job, my tattooed Portuguese hairdresser received a phone call, during which she found out that she was suddenly a new dog owner, information that made her really excited and distracted. She laughed and talked to her coworker and slung her scissors around and told me all about the way in which she'd found the dog, somehow making me feel like I was one of her friends, rather than her customer. When I walked out of the salon, I didn't scrub my head with my palms, in an attempt to undo what she had done. She actually got it about right. It's a little bit jagged, which is what I wanted.