Misery Loves Company

Every city has its underbelly. It can’t all be glossy photographs of the Capitol and fancy five star restaurants. No, no…there is a sadder and much scarier part of the city that you should pray you NEVER have to experience. I have seen hell and lived to tell of it.

Here was the ad:

$600 $585 & $600 rooms in GREAT LOCATION on Capitol Hill

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Location, Location, Location

Large, sunny, non-smoking room in my corner Victorian home 1/2 blk off Pennsylvania Ave on second floor. Four blks to Eastern Market Metro, 1/2 blk to buses . Three blks to large Safeway grocery store. Two blks to Harris Teeter grocery store. Close to coffee shops, cafes, bookstores, farmer’s market, flea market, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, even the National’s baseball stadium. Share kitchenette on same floor.
Contact Mrs. Black (There were no pictures attached, a very bad sign indeed.)

We drove past the “Victorian home.” It was the shittiest looking house on the street, however it’s dismal glory paled in comparison to the massive fenced compound across the street, known loving as “the projects.” As we sat in our car trying to squelch the small voices in our heads screaming “Ruuuuun!!”, a man walked passed the car and asked us for some spare change before heading into the aforementioned compound (friendly neighbors, sweet). We, like fools in desperate need of a home, decided to press on and check the place out. Maybe it was fabulous on the inside???

After ten minutes of waiting on the front stoop (crowded with overgrown and under cared for potted plants), Mrs. Black finally answered the door. Mrs. Black looked liked death. She vaguely resembled this (but about twenty years older, forty pounds heavier, and a million times scarier…plus she had a cane…I never knew canes could look so frightening):

Mrs. Black’s home was filled to the brim with shit (half a baby grand piano, boxes overflowing with disheveled papers, plants brown from neglect, useless knick knacks, piles of dusty books, and everything else you always imagined would be in the home of a seriously disturbed pack rat). We inched inside the house, stepping lightly over the missing floor board in the entry way.

“You girls go up the stairs first, I’m quite slow,” Mrs. Black whispered in a sickeningly sweet and seriously frightening way. As we walked up the dark, cramped stairs, we both without an exchanged word had the same feeling that we were walking to our deaths. At the top of the stairs, Mrs. Black prompted us into the room. She had appeared behind us with such shockingly quick speed that we both jumped and begrudgingly entered the first bedroom.

Light filtered depressingly into the room, which was furnished with 1940s furniture. I felt sick inside. Everything about the room made my body ache for whatever desperate soul was forced to live there. Bad things had happened in this room, it is where you go whenever there is nowhere left.  We lied and said it was nice.

We quickly moved onto the next room. Mrs. Black rapped on the second door with her cane before plungeing her key into the lock and opening it. (Thinking that Mrs. Black would have a key to ANYTHING of mine gave me the chills.) If it was possible, the light in this room was even more depressing. Perhaps it was because someone still lived in this room. Mrs. Black said he would be “moving out” on Saturday. I have no doubt that the former occupant of this room was secretly decaying in a black garbage bag in the basement.

After a seriously disturbing visit to the “shared kitchenette” (barf) and a run in with Mrs. Black’s all black cat, we hauled ass out of that place. As we hit the fresh air, the projects across the street never looked so beautiful. Hell, a box on the street looked beautiful compared to living with Kathy Bates.

Lucky for me, my best roomie had given her name and phone number, when we set up the appointment. I am so thankful that scary ass lady does not have my number. I drove by that street the next day and still got shivers. Please pray for the poor souls that actually call that place home.

I also considered calling this post, “OMG, Holy f’in shit, I am so happy to be alive.”