Tonight's forecast

Periods of rain with the occasional shower of ceiling chunks. Growing mold stains and a rotten mood will overspread the region by 2 a.m.

I hope the man who is going to show me a different apartment tomorrow is not as creepy as he sounded on the phone tonight.

"I will have a white van" he said. Will he stay waiting in it until I show up, I wonder. Is the van the most salient feature about him? I doubt it. Something in his voice - "what you wanna know?" he had asked when I first said I was calling about the rental - makes me think there are far more marked aspects of this man. I envision a wooden leg or otherwise modified limb, possibly an illfitting cummerbund over a ripped filthy short sleeved oxford peeking out from under a saggy cardigan. There is dandruff involved in this image, and huge tufts of ear hair.

I've learned to call these places "rentals" since I said "apartment" in a message to the last potential landlord (Bob) and he corrected me about eight thousand times "see, it's a house. It's a charming little one room schoolhouse that someone (perhaps me) cleverly converted into a two bedroom rental."

Ok Bob didn't say that exactly and he didn't say it more than three times but three was plenty and there was definitely ATTITUDE. He also seemed, well, like a mutant. So far, every landlord I've had here in CT is a mutant. Must be something in the air. First was the psycho landlady who rented me the tiny third floor of her multifamily house. She acted like my bestest buddy for about a week, wanting to bond with me about all the stupidity in the world. Everyone was an asshole to this woman, everyone. I lived there for three short months until my sex life marked me as an undesirable. She was celibate by choice (other people's mostly I think).

Then there were The Jims. Jim1 was a history lecturer in NY and an optometrist in NJ. Very chatty, a little hyper, and far too fond of things German. He liked me because I swept leaves off my step. Jim2 was a fat man who drank and sweat a lot. He chronically pissed off Jim1, who never tired of bitching about Jim2. Together they owned and managed property. I'm realizing this could have been an 80s sitcom - except Jim2 would need to be a recent immigrant, preferably from an eastern european country we ignorant americans (including Jim1) could simply refer to as "Russia", humorously raising the drunken ire of Jim2, causing him to rant in a heavy accent about how he miss his country maybe he go back and leave stupid Jim1 to answer to foolish american girl who sweep steps (always she is sweeping the leafs ...who wants to marry leaf sweeping woman?! (insert laugh track here)) .

In between psychonosex lady and The Jims, I had Dave. Dave had a toupee, bad teeth for a rich man, and had inherited anything of value in his life, including the apartment complex and a car dealership. Dave and I and Dave's woman (in that order) got into a screaming match over, um, I think it was the overflowing dumpster but it turned into the neighbor's cat. "That fucking cat ruined that apartment" Dave yelled. Dave was depressed and when he did come close to smiling, he looked unpleasantly deranged. It made everyone uncomfortable and it showed his teeth so thankfully he didn't do it much. Dave also had heart disease, which made the yelling match by the dumpster sort of extra fun.

My latest and current landlord looks like a pilgrim. He talks like a pilgrim too. He's got this slow manner, not laidback, not deliberate, just slow. And he also has a bad toupee. I have pictures of him "fixing" the roof with silicone gel last year. I enjoyed that. Stood outside with my coffee taking pictures and thinking about how I'd feel if he fell off the roof right there in front of me. He recently paid lots and lots of money to have the roof professionally fixed. A roofer came, he brought several young men with him, and they stood around leaning on stuff. Later that day and all of the next they sprayed paint on the roof. "It's got FIBERS in it!" the manager (Herb, another mutant) told me when I said "So paint's going to fix the roof?" Today when I called Herb the mutant to tell him the rain was coming in my leaks harder than ever, I mentioned that probably the fibers didn't work so good on the huge buckling holes.

After seeing Bob's rental, I suspect the two rooms he was calling bedrooms were originally closets they locked bad children in as punishment. Either that or Bob coined the word not so much to refer to the compound which we (nonmutants) all interpret as "a room for a bed and other personal beddy type stuff" but rather to indicate uniquely a room which is big enough for just a bed - like a shoe box is a box for just the pair of shoes (and nothing else unless you count the little packet of desiccant, tissue, and other compressible shit).

I've decided to start taking a camera with me for these ventures into rental properties of NE Connecticut. I'll tell them it's so I can show the pictures to my man, without whose crucial input I am incapable of making a decision. I wonder how many of these freaks would let me get a shot of them. It could be like a nature show. The slumlord in his natural habitat: With the true slumlord, it is sometimes difficult to determine if the white markings are plaster bits or dandruff. Biologists have speculated that evolution has favored them with excessively dry scalps to help mask the pieces of fallen ceiling plaster which, if immediately identifiable, could drive off would be prey. Let's try to take a closer look, quietly now, we don't want him to jump in his white van and drive away...