painfully awkward

here’s one that i somehow forgot to put into painfully awkward - it probably would have made sense somewhere between the last chapter and the chapter before that. at least it all made sense to me, i think. anyway…

Identifying and generally taken out of context lyrics that can be related to this story include:

“no alarms and no surprises, please” - no surprises, radiohead

“we hope that you choke, that you choke” - exit music (for a film), radiohead

“they act like romans, but they dress like turks” nyc cops, the shitty beatles

Down Broadway close to SoHo one can turn to the left or right and be unable to distinguish between the stores. With the exception of the barber shop that offers cheap haircuts and boasts pictures of celebrities on the window (to serve as proof to some of the more distinguished clientele that they kind of now what they are doing) there is very little to differentiate the remaining stores. These are stores that offer cheap trendy items with the claim to ‘always be on sale.’ These stores offer identical merchandise from Puma shoes to FuBu jeans, an urban dream if ever there was one. Most of these outlets offer a contrived hipness that anyone with any knowledge would dismiss instantly as a pitiful ploy to make the buyer believe they are part of something bigger than they actually are. As the walk continued The Young Man came across a skateboarder who cut him off as he merged from the street, which at the change of the light had just grown quite busy, to the sidewalk. Out of fear that the skateboarder was going to hit him The Young Man temporarily froze, his heart leapt and a burst of anger ran through him with the same momentum the skateboarder breezed by completely unaware of the anger he had just caused The Young Man. The youngster made every attempt to offer his dirtiest look, but what good could it do, the skater was already gone, and besides would the skater really care? Probably not. As he sat still watching the skater continue down the sidewalk he thought of the old skater mentality, ‘skateboarding is not a crime’ and instantly began to feel old. He had once been that kid on the skateboard and now he found himself wishing bodily harm on him. More appallingly he found himself watching the skateboarder weaving in and out of the foot traffic hoping to see him fall and crack his skull wide open. To make matters worse nobody else walking down the street seemed to have experienced such an agitated and adverse reaction to the youthful activity of the kid on the board. Though what did they know, and what could the other people on the street really count for anyway? They were walking through a once vibrant, now touristy (depending on who you asked) part of New York, these people were probably from the Midwest or even worse the south, thus their reactions and opinions could be discounted by at least…how much did they used to say? Three-fifth’s of a man? Yep. These people were spending their Friday afternoon shopping for items that could be purchased in any mall across America, visiting New York and seeing nothing of any real significance. The Young Man’s head began to rush with ideas with what these philistines should be doing to make the most of such a glorious day. There was a wonderful exhibit at the Metropolitan Art Museum, and he had read something about a 9-11 exhibit at a gallery in Union Square that the some literary magazine or another claimed was a ‘must see’ event.

Walking off Broadway he sat down on the corner of Bleecker and Lafayette, felt a vibration in his pocket and he wondered who was calling him. As usual he had hoped it was The Girl though after two years without a phone call from her he was quite sure it wouldn’t be her, though it was a number that he didn’t recognize, a ‘718’ number which made him think the call was from either a bill collector, or even worse an extended family member. It was the first night of Rosh Hashanah and he had no plans, not that he was disappointed about it, and besides he had told his family he had many plans for that evening, too many to count, only a Rabbi could have more houses to visit on this the first night of Rosh Hashanah. All of this ran through his head as he went to answer the phone and when he answered it he found the caller on the other end to be from a far lower walk of life than a debt collector, and far more annoying than a family member, it was Cleve Yuck, a real estate broker. Cleve was the man responsible for putting The Young Man into his trendy Lower East Side apartment (for a small two thousand dollar fee – “but what is two-thousand dollars between friends anyway?) and was calling to wish his client and his parents (the kind souls who sprang for the small two thousand dollar fee) a happy Jewish New Year, but that while he had The Young Man on the phone there was a small (not in the sense of the small two thousand dollar fee) matter he would like to discuss…
“Well Cleve what can I do for you?”
“It’s about your friend Rich, you know your friend that you referred to me.”
Of course I know who he is you fucking asshole I referred him to you
“Yeah, I talked to him the other day, he really likes that apartment at Seventh and Avenue B. “
“Look, I know he likes that apartment, but here is the problem, that I am hoping will not be a problem, though it might be a problem”
Well, Cleve I can see why you are a broker…anyone unintelligent enough to put together a statement like that couldn’t have had much of a career in anything else.
“What is it Cleve, maybe I can help?”
“Well, as a favor to Rich, because you referred him to me, and you are my friend, I brought him to see an apartment that another broker has as an exclusive on, which means he cannot co-broke it. Initially the fee was supposed to be fifteen percent of one year’s rent, which comes out to…this is just in my head, about three thousand and five hundred dollars, for Ian the other broker, and nothing for me. Rich being a friend of yours and because he is a good client I was able to talk Ian down to a twelve percent fee, which is roughly two thousand five hundred dollars for Ian, and I assumed Rich would throw in an extra something for me. You there? Can you hear me?”
So let me get this straight you scumbag, you expect my friend to pay four thousand dollars for the opportunity to pay two thousand dollars a month for a five hundred square foot studio? Do you realize that this is more than most people pay for the mortgage on their house?”
“Yeah Cleve, I’m here, and terribly sorry about this turn of events.
“I mean, I am not even taking a whole fee, the other broker is going to make most of it, I just need a thousand dollars, five hundred for me and five hundred for my agency. As a favor to you and your friend I took him to see the other broker’s apartment, expecting Rich, who the other day mentioned he makes more money than most people’s parents, to throw a little something my way, you know wet my beak a little, just so I can make a living…I don’t work for free.”
Wet your beak, who do you think you are - the fucking Godfather? You should surely go to hell and I love that Rich, though he clings to his salary as if it were his blood, is really getting to you.
“So is that the problem that Rich is not willing to pay the whole fee, or that he is not throwing enough your way?”
“Hold on, only now can I get to the problem. While there are not a lot of ethics in this business of mine there are a few and Rich is attempting to break one of the most important. I have called him at work several times today and have had no answer from him all morning; I have left messages yet have not heard back from him. A few minutes ago I received a call from Ian, the other broker, and it seems Rich has found time to call him twice this morning and once this afternoon, trying to pay him his twenty five hundred dollar fee, effectively cutting me out of the deal. Does he think I work for free? I mean I introduced him to Ian, without me he doesn’t know this apartment exists…”
Once again you savage, you really believe that because you took a few minutes from your day and introduced my friend to one of your friends, or connections as you prefer to refer to him, that you are entitled to a thousand dollar fee? Are you totally out of your mind, that even by New York standards you are absolutely wrong and ridiculous, that I wish death upon you and your entire family, and a slow and painful one at that!
“So Rich is trying to cut you out of the deal and save himself one thousand dollars, leaving you with nothing for making the introduction. It sounds as if he is acting more like a t-r-a-i-t-o-r than a t-r-a-d-e-r. (The Young Man spelled them out for the idiot, though with his lack education he might have needed flash cards as illustration for the clever play on words). Why don’t you just show him a better apartment than the other broker is showing him and then you can collect the whole fee?
“I don’t have anything that he would appreciate right now. He really expects a lot in apartment, he wanted least two windows, a hardwood floor AND full sized fridge - all in a studio in Alphabet City for around two thousand dollars a month, is he out of his mind?”
Indeed he is out of his mind to even consider paying a low life like you, or your friend Ian, such an outrageous fee, especially in such a soft market. The trader’s evil twin brother the I-Banker had a brutal year and accordingly received no large bonuses rendering them financially paralyzed, unable to move into the over-priced trendy downtown neighborhoods and ruin them with their bland personality and extreme lack of character. You may have noticed a ripple effect in your bank account Cleve, which has surely suffered as well though you would never acknowledge it.. For you to have expected a fifteen percent fee was simply irrational, on the same level for you asking for one thousand dollars just for a mere introduction. I have introduced friends of mine to their future wives and not charged them, and a wife, though she won’t come with laundry an elevator, or rooftop access, is clearly a more important relationship, though you couldn’t know this…people in your business have no soul. Upon receiving the brokerage card your soul is sacrificed. Also stop referring to me as your friend!
“Well, Cleve I can’t believe Rich would try to two-time you out of your hard earned living, after all without you none of this would have been possible. Let me apologize for him, and hope that I can speak to him in order to right his wrong. Please do not let this reflect poorly on our relationship, I only referred him to you because I thought he would be easy to place into a nice apartment, and that it would be fun to have a friend in the neighborhood.”
“That’s ok, it isn’t you fault, you understand the business, Rich just doesn’t get it, I mean what is an extra thousand, or even a few thousand dollars for a great apartment?”
Well Cleve to put it to you clearly, a few thousand dollars is more money than I make in two months, and a thousand dollars is enough for me to take a two week cruise to Mexico, or to buy a new laptop computer, or television, all things I would rather put the thousand dollars in your lying pockets. I would actually rather burn the money than give it to someone of your low caliber and social standing and while the money means significantly less to Rich than to me I am sure he feels no differently.
“Point well taken Cleve, you know me, I’ll try to talk to Rich, and we’ll get to the bottom of this…now what about the new apartment we are supposed to be finding for me?”
“What’s that Young Man? I can’t hear you.”
“What about the apartment you are supposed to find for me?”
“I think my phone is dying, I’ll call you on Monday.”

The reason Cleve’s phone died and the reason that The Young Man opted to treat him in a somewhat dignified manner can be directly attributed to the fact that Cleve owed him a free apartment placement, without collecting any sort of fee, not even a few hundred for being such a nice guy. The free apartment stemmed from an argument with both Cleve and the management office he represents, Mistrusty Realty, the kings of the Lower East Side. Mistrusty owned almost all of the buildings on the Lower East Side, many of which had been purchased for nominal fees in the seventies or eighties, at a time when building owners found it more profitable to burn down buildings than to find tenants to place in them. Over the past couple of years, the neighborhood had become very trendy, as can be seen by inhabitants such as The Young Man and many other so called starving artists, who flocked in to pay extremely overpriced rents, for tenement like dwelling, making Mr. Mistrusty and his force of real estate brokers extremely wealthy. To emphasize just how wealthy they had become, when The Young Man had entered into his agreement to pay one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars a month rent he could not have known that he was paying almost one thousand dollars more a month than the previous tenant, one Juan Esperanza, who had only vacated the building a year ago. Thus in one year the rent on The Young Man’s and many other three hundred square foot studios tripled in price, all of the profit falling solely into Mr. Mistrusty’s pocket. He wasn’t just keeping up with inflation, he was burying it. Of course just as The Young Man and the countless others couldn’t have foreseen in the neighborhood, there were a lot of Juan Esperanza’s that had vacated their apartments, though nobody knew how by what method they had done so, or if they had even chosen to leave on their own. This left the remaining members of the buildings very skeptical of the new tenants, As if Mr. Mistrusty had his hand in their pockets, and he very well may have, New York City newspapers including the liberal grey old lady, and the neither equal nor opposite daily samples of yellow journalism provided by the Post, only focused on events that would help Mr. Mistrusty to increase his rent and consequently his fortune. Articles on the Lower East Side were quick to mention the charming new bistro that had opened on Rivington Street, or the happening music scene at Pianos, but they seldom made any reference to the fight between the new tenants and the very disgruntled (rightfully so through their eyes) groups who had grown up in the area. The newspapers rarely ran articles of people like The Young Man coming home to find the front door of their apartment smashed in, or even worse super glue placed in the lock so that they could not get in. Though less significant but certainly no less aggravating the papers didn’t mention what it was like to hear a constant sub-woofer blasting Mexican music throughout the night, or to experience a full contact game of soccer, el futbol if you rather, going on above your head as a wake up call on a Sunday morning – nope - the papers never had time for this. It was such an event as super glue in the door that had driven The Young Man past the point of sanity, and into Cleve’s office, ready to both annoy and anger him just as he had been the night before when he was forced to find a friends place to stay with after a night of drinking because through what he saw as no fault of his own he could not get into his apartment. Walking into the Mistrusty office doors he had a brief flashback to a day a few months ago when The Young Man, with his mother had signed the lease to the overpriced tenement and Cleve had offered congratulations, even mentioning what great tenants there were in the building…That day he had been anxious to see Cleve, to sign the lease, and to get his first official New York City apartment, in what the papers had lead him to believe was the equivalent of Paris after World War Two. The next Gertrude Stein might be anywhere, and in his mind and heart The Young Man felt that he would eventually be discovered as the next cross between Fitzgerald and the great DFW. Though he didn’t drink during the day, wasn’t very adventurous, and didn’t attend any sort of good college he felt as if the two great authors had fused into him. By reading their stories he had accumulated them into his own, and who could argue? On this day as The Young Man walked through the doors of Mistrusty Realty he walked with a fury that could have been fueled by the alcoholic binges that Fitzgerald was notorious for, he was out for blood, or at least some sort of monetary compensation.
“Hello, can I help you,” the secretary asked at the intercom. Though she could see him through the window she was still required to hit a buzzer to open the main door to let him in. The buzzer was a new addition to the Mistrusty office that had been placed as a security precaution against pretty much everyone in the neighborhood. Though the new and old tenants did not like each other, they both took solace in having Mistrusty, his brokers and his office as a common enemy. A few months ago Mr. Mistrusty arrived to work on a Monday morning and found his windows shattered and his office marked up prompting him to install both a metal sheet to protect the office when it was closed and a buzzer to give him the option of who to let in and who not. On this afternoon the receptionist, who should have had enough experience in this situation (dealing with irate tenants) to not let The Young Man in, paid no regard and without hesitation buzzed him in repeating in an annoying fashion, “welcome to Mistrusty Realty what can I do for you today?” In a rage that could have driven a lesser, or less healthy man to a life ending heart attack The Young Man began his harangue towards the secretary who sat quietly, as if she enjoyed it, waiting for him to finish before calling Cleve and Mr. Mistrusty out to help. The other two brokers in the office also poked their heads out to see who, or possibly what, was making all the commotion. Cleve and Mr. Mistrusty looked at each other as if they had handled this situation a thousand times before and it was entirely possible that they had and Mr. Mistrusty began to speak.

“Well, Young Man I feel bad that you were locked out of your apartment, I can’t imagine why somebody would do such a thing.”
“You know damn fucking well why they did this. Last week when I complained that people were throwing the garbage out into the hallway and that there were mice and other rodents running rampant through my hallway you fired the super who happened to be friends with everyone in the building. What did you expect to happen?”
“Well we didn’t expect them to find out it was your fault?”
“Are you serious? Everyone else in the building has lived there for years! They all know each other, and I think the super, what was his name…Gregario right, was the son of on of the other tenants in the building, how could they not find out?. For all I know that was their only source of income and because of me they no longer have it. I will be lucky if I get out of that building alive. I can just see it now, I will come home drunk one night and they will be waiting for me, all of them, waiting to show me what happens when I move in on their turf, have you ever seen West Side Story, I don’t want to be involved in any turf wars. It is not my fault that I can afford to pay the rent to live in the neighborhood. The real estate is far too valuable to keep at rent stabilized prices, those people should praise me, I am paying three times what they pay I should have a whole fucking floor in that building, then it would be close to a deal that even FDR might certify as fair.. At the same time these people despise me and everyone like me, they don’t want to move, they have lived in this building their whole life, and view me as a spoiled piece of shit who is ruining their neighborhood. They will definitely try to kill me and probably end up kicking my head around as a soccer ball in the next early morning Sunday game, rudely waking up the next sucker you finds to take the apartment”
At this point the two men looked at each other again, trying to control the laughter that they so badly must have wanted to burst out into. They were witnessing an offensive, though predictable, breakdown of the product of a wealthy suburb, failing to integrate him into a more urban environment than he could have ever envisioned himself in. Through the first twenty five years of his life the only Mexicans he had ever seen worked at McDonalds or mowed his lawns, in Cancun they had sent him to the ‘casa blanca’ a Mexican whore house), and on occasion poured shots of tequila mixed with sour mix down his throat. He had learned about their way of life in his junior high accelerated Spanish class, though he had slept through most of it…surely none of this had been mentioned, come to think of it were Mexicans Spanish? This time Cleve began to speak, acting as if he emphasized with The Young Man, it was a form of damage control that he employed often as sales professional. Sales people were full of such tricks, though their job descriptions often included the actual selling of a product to a client, in reality a sales person was nothing more than professionally nice. In the same way that a model was professionally good looking, or an accountant was professionally anal, a sales person had the distinct ability to look you dead in the eye and lie to your face, or at least the good ones did.

“Well Young Man, you know you love this neighborhood, did you see that new bar that just opened up? I’ll bet a good looking stud like yourself could get a lot of trim there. You like trim don’t you? Of course you do…”

Where are you from Cleve, the word ‘stud’ should not be applied to any thing that isn’t in a wall, even when they term may have been cool it would have never applied to me. Furthermore your usage of a word such as ‘trim’ only strengthens my prior convictions that you are scum of the earth, it also explains why you are three times divorced. It probably kills you to be making so much money leasing these shit hole apartments and having to give it all to your ex-wives, the money serving to remind them of the gross mistake they made getting involved with someone as worthless as you.

“Let’s not change the subject Cleve I am really pissed off. I never swear (at least out loud) or lose my temper (publicly). You lied to me to get me into the apartment, took advantage of my parent’s generosity to get that exorbitant fee and now you owe me what you promised - a livable apartment. By livable I mean an apartment that I can enter as I desire, that won’t have hallways filled with garbage, and most importantly where I won’t have to worry about my neighbors beheading me to defend the honor of their fallen friend Gregario!”

With this Cleve and Mr. Mistrusty burst out laughing. Through his peripheral vision, The Young Man could see the receptionist laughing (apparently she had let him in knowing it would proved her a good laugh) and he could also see the two other brokers bobbing their heads back and forth, all having a good laugh at his expense. This wasn’t this first time he had been put into this situation in the Mistrusty house of realty and this time he had come prepared. Though it was apparent that he had done a lousy job in choosing his apartment, maybe even an equally bad job of choosing his neighborhood, (his parents would argue that he had made a mistake moving to New York all together, his doing so had cost them a small fortune), there was one very minor, yet significant thing he had done right, he had gotten a rent-stabilized apartment which as he would soon learn gave him some rights. In his fist job in the city he had an extraordinary amount of free time at his disposal, so that when he wasn’t busy typing what he thought were insightful emails to The Girl, he was searching for apartments, or reading the housing forum on Craiglist. Craigslist was an interesting page that had started on the west coast during the dot com boom and made its way to more intelligent New York City. The website had quickly become a forum for locating an apartment without a broker, getting a job, and it offered a forum to complain about both, in addition to anything else on one’s mind. Sitting in his miserable dead end job The Young Man found the ‘employment forum’ too depressing to read, later he would realize that is was made up of mainly ex -dot comers who had made ridiculous amounts of money relatively quickly and easily and were having trouble adjusting to what life in the real world was like. The Young Man had never experienced any such luck and accordingly felt no sympathy towards them, in fact though he would never admit it he was happy that they were suffering. They had been brought down to his level. Nothing easy ever came to him, and he was glad that others could be welcomed into his world of having a miserable, totally irrelevant in the scope of the world job. After reading through the ‘employment forum’ he would often venture into the lowest of low, the bottomless pit known as the ‘real estate forum.’ Here, in between bitter rants against brokers like Cleve and his cohorts, one could find answers to important questions ranging from ‘where the hipsters live’ to ‘what a reasonable price for a three bedroom apartment in Jamaica Queens (wherever that was) would be.’ The housing forum also offered an enormous amount of information in regard to the laws governing rent- stabilized apartments. The amount of free time The Young Man had at that first job allowed him to spend enough time on Craigslist studying those laws that he may well have had a better working knowledge of New York City real estate law than those who made a living as professional arguers. He also had an extreme passion for the law as he hated being taken advantage of, a feeling he had experienced all too much, in dealing with Mistrusty Realty and Cleve. He had seen numerous posts regarding these insidious individuals though it was one of those things like getting struck by lightning or being on a hijacked airplane that he never believed could happen to him. He was smarter than that and when his time came to get an official New York City apartment, and by official he meant a lease between him and a landlord he would be sure not to get taken advantage of. He had also sworn never to pay a fee, but had ruled that out, and though technically he did not pay a fee, his parents did, though he would never admit that to anyone, though they had to have known. His salary was too paltry and his life style so far above his means that there could be no way for him to have put together enough money to save for the fee. It was his knowledge of how the rent stabilization laws worked that put him in the position to silence the laughter that Cleve and everyone else in the office was enjoying so much. It wasn’t that The Young Man was even that annoyed by people laughing at him, in many ways he had grown up with people having fun at his expense; however two thousand dollars was far too much to pay to be insulted. With revenge on his mind he went to work on turning their smiles upside down into frowns, or so he remembered a saying of sorts…

“I am glad you find this all so very funny…hopefully the Department of Housing and Rent Control will find this so funny. I have documented all of the problems I have had with this apartment with written appraisals and photographs. The photographs have all been dated and certified, they are really quite incriminating. I have also researched the legal rent on the apartment. Did you know that by New York real estate law the landlord is entitled to raise the rent twenty percent for the change of owner plus one fortieth of all renovations? What this means to you is that the prior rent of four hundred dollars a month entitled you to raise my rent to five hundred dollars by the change of tenant. You can add that to one fortieth of the total amount of renovations you have done to my apartment, which appears to be less than one thousand dollars. Now pay attention Cleve, Mr. Mistrusty you listen close too, because this is when we all laugh. The penalty for over charging a tenant is the difference between the illegal rent being charged ($1350) and the legal rent that should be charged ($520), which creates a difference of seven hundred and thirty dollars a month that Mistrusty Realty has been overcharging me.”

The smiles had effectively been wiped off their face. The two men stood silently, Mr. Mistrusty looked green, a darker tint than that of the money he had ripped The Young Man off so badly for. It was shocking that these men really figured that they would be able to get away with such an unethical move, but this is where the fun really started, The Young Man continued.

“Do you know what the penalty for such disgusting greed is? Well, believe it or not the penalty can reach up to seven times the amount of the overcharging, which amounts to roughly five thousand dollars, just for me! Can you imagine if I went door to door throughout all of your buildings and informed all of the new tenants in your building what was going on? I think that would be a lot of money, just for the over charging of the rent. Eventually the DHCR would make their investigation and find out just how poorly you manage the buildings, my untrained eye has picked up on several major infractions. All things considered I think you guys should really take me a little bit more seriously.”

They did appear to take him more seriously. In exchange for not following through on any of the threats, they agreed to place him in one of the best apartments in the neighborhood…with a decrease in rent. It would be normal to question why The Young Man settled for such a small settlement when he seemed to have a much larger victory won and the answer was simple. He knew that most of what he said was true, but never really took anything he saw on Craigslist seriously. He was also aware of how slowly and unfairly the judicial process moved. He wanted the nice new apartment while he was still young enough to live in a studio, and could enjoy all the spoils of the downtown nightlife. The case could have dragged on from years and more than likely Mistrusty, as he had done so many times before, would have found a way out. The Young Man expected it was from the mob, but this suspicion rose more from watching too many gangster movies, than from actual logic. Cleve, along with a consenting Mr. Mistrusty agreed to the deal and The Young Man feeling most satisfied with himself, finally recognizing the spoils of his miserable first year and a half of work in the city, thanked the men and walked out, feeling rather vindicated. As he walked past the secretary she did not utter a word, she sat with her head down as if her spirits had been broken. Walking out the door of Mistrusty Realty he realized one more item of interest, a tiny golden mezuzah hanging above the door. The Young Man found it embarrassing for people to know Mr. Mistrusty was Jewish as it played into the hands of the stereotypical Jew, an image that he laughed at, but also despised. He wondered why Mr. Mistrusty bothered with religion, surely if there was a god he would be an omnipotent one who would have witnessed Mr. Mistrusty’s business dealing. There was no amount of praying that could save Mr. Mistrusty, much like Angus Young he was clearly headed on a ‘highway to hell.’