From the Renters' Perspective:

We prowl the streets all night, gears growling. We are a restless lot, settling in first this parking lot, then that. The lease says the 15th and our old one expired on the 14th. The incoming tenants hungrily scan our electronic goods, poised to swoop down if anything is left unattended sort of near the curb for more than five minutes when, by universal law, it converts to Community Property--the People's Stuff. When we get to the new place, belongings are transferred hand to hand down long, sloping metal ramps. Suddenly the snappy yellow-and-rust plaid couch that looked so good there at the curb where we just moved from seems saggy and what IS that smell? It could be pickle juice streaming from the corner of that cardboard box--or it COULD be--oh wow, man, where'd we pack the cat?

Happy to be done with the old place (which one of you losers stuck gum under the toilet lid?) and full of hope for the future--(But that one bedroom looked so much larger in the Spring when we rented it)--we watch the skies nervously. What's worse that a house full of bad furniture? A house full of wet bad furniture. Dreaming of the Barbie canopy bed in the all-pink bedroom we had to ourselves as children, we are jolted awake on top of a pile of THIS END UP'S, our backs, our backs skewered by a shower-curtain rod (was this even ours? were we supposed to even take it?) and think, "so this is how THIS ENDS UP? You go for a higher education so you can sleep on cardboard sheets in the rain in 90-degree weather and live like a refugee in a too-small apartment with three near-strangers, one of whom smokes ginseng cigarettes and uses curry by the ton (Only mosquito fogging chemicals linger longer than curry in the air.)

We're finally in. Of course, since that ginseng-smoking doofus piled boxes in front of all the light fixtures, the phone has begun to ring insistently. But we can't answer it because we can't find it. There--a flashlight. OH MY GOODNESS--this place looks like Bosnia. They call this clean? did the last tenants keep livestock? Where's that check-in form...


From the Owner's Perspective:

Such a big truck...what could those three sweet girls have that would take up so much space? Are they bringing in livestock or what? WATCH that fencepost!! Whew, that was a squeaker. And that row of hollyhocks that took three years to bloom--oh well, they look kind of interesting decapitated like that--sort of a Dali look.

Well, I'll be seeing that orange-and-yellow plaid daybed in my nightmares when it turns up on the porch. Wait, that daybed does look familiar. It's the same one we threw out of that apartment two moves ago when it was abandoned...maybe a clone. How many of those suckers were manufactured in the fifties anyhow?

How pleased they will be when they see that new "Snoopy print" wallpaper I put up last week. Hold it, is that a DOG kennel I see being carted in? And get a load of the size of those speakers? Are they speakers or refrigerators? Let's see, one, two, three women--okay--and one, two, three, four men. Well, they hired these guys to move them, right? Right? Oh well, roll over and go to sleep. After all, we rest secure knowing how spotless the place is. They're going to be the best tenants ever.

-Gay Davidson-Zielske


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