toxic turners

friday 20 july 2012 Again, again, the mean-spirited, bullying attitude that is pervasive in this town has landed on me. You will refuse to believe that after 27 years, I am still being treated this way. You'll say I'm exaggerating. Maybe you'll even say I made it up. Bullshit. On February first I moved into my first real apartment in four years. The first since the personal holocaust of 2008. After two years of homelessness and two years of living in an inhumane ponystall, finally a real apartment. And finally a little family: one guinea pig, two parakeets, one cat. And then what. Even before I moved in, the landlady and her spouse, who had presented themselves to me as good christians who try to live the way jesus wants them to, had started to act chilly. So chilly, that I concluded they had decided not to rent me the apartment after all, and was looking for something else. And so I was shocked when the landlady notified me three days after christmas that the heroin addicts had finally left the apartment, and that it was being cleaned. There were a few days of communication and paper-signing, and then silence from december 30th onward. Suddenly on 26 january she contacts me --- after all this silence when I once again decided I wasn't going to get the apartment --- to say the apartment was ready and was I still interested. The next day I got the keys and began moving in, but this coldness that had been going on since december persisted. I move in. I live with the coldness. I live with her failure to provide me trash stickers, which is stipulated in the lease. I live with the month and a half wait for her to lower my mailbox to a point where I can reach it. I live padlocked off my front porch, which she has been telling me since october that I can have, and that I can have flower boxes and bird feeders out there. The lies about the porch go on and on. The trash stickers are sporadic. I wait three bloody months for a key to my second door. Tensions escalate. Lies continue to be told. Since I am a rent subsidy client, I try to enlist the Housing Authority's help with these issues. They are next to useless. Meanwhile, I am the goody-two-shoes tenant. Rent is always paid. I obey the anal landlady's rules about trash not being on back decks, about smoking outside, and about the number and kind of animals I may have. I do not torment the other tenants upstairs or interfere with them in any way. I meet all of my obligations as stated on the rental agreement, and the landlady meets none. Finally I write a letter of complaint, which I give both to the Section 8 director at Housing and to the landlady herself. Four days later I get a notice to quit. Thrown out, after four and a half months. Thrown out, when the rent is always paid and I meet my lease obligations. This is christian. This is the way jesus wants her to live. Yet again, my Asperger's gullibility has caused me to fall for a line of bullshit. I believed in this woman's desire to live by christian principles, in spite of all the phony, sleazy christians I have known. I believed I had a landlord who would treat me with respect, make prompt repairs, and abide by the obligations set out in the lease. What I got was a tantrum-throwing, lying, bullying shrew. And thrown out for writing a letter of complaint, which is a legal thing for a tenant in Massachusetts to do. The poison of this place is intractable. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ read... Poison and snowflake trees... Mugsy's book... ~~~~~~ website outline ~~~~~~~ all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2012 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved.