The Devil is a Landlord
essay

I've always held onto the idea that I am a firmly confirmed nothing, no religion at all can touch me. The argument used to go like this: my mother was a Christian, my daddy was a Jew. Since Christianity typically descends through the male side, and Judaism through the maternal, I was destined to be an atheist. My two heritages roughly cancel each other out.

I should have no gods. I certainly don't have any ambition to be even a nominal adherent to anything – However. . .

I know a secret.

The devil is a landlord, and he's out to get me.

I've got the experience if not the evidence to prove it.

Take one landlord I had, delightfully but psychopathically anti-social, and anti-tenant. I wish the rape charge had stuck, because the only way I'd ever take legal action of my own against him would be if he were safely behind bars.

It was dreadful naivety on my part, I know that. But he was my first landlord. I didn't know any better. Still, I must admit I'm surprised by just how badly I was taken in.

For example, did you know it's illegal for the landlord to leave bare, live wire hanging from your light sockets? Actually illegal?What else? Oh – your landlord has to heat your apartment, even in the winter. He's not even allowed to put you on the same boiler as the business downstairs, bill you both, and let them turn the heat off weekends and evenings – even though I admit it's a wonderful energy-saving idea.

The devil is a landlord, and he comes in all shapes and with all sorts of manners. This last one was shorter than me, and wandered up to my apartment one day to harass me for six months back rent (when I'd been there less than two weeks) and kept calling me by a completely unfamiliar name. Eventually, I realized he had ended up at the wrong building – in the wrong city.

Yes, the devil is a landlord. Perhaps understandably, I didn't leave that particular incarnation of him my forwarding address. Better to lose some mail than to have him show up one day calling me "Beverly" and demanding money.

Still, that expression about "the devil you know" is all too true, as I found out at my new place.

I thought this landlord would be different, better even. He was, after all, a pillar of society. I mean – he was rich. He had to be. He was a lawyer. And he had to be respectable. He ran for Board of Control. You can see how naive I was.

And oh, just wait. I see the problem. He's just bought a house. Hmm. And a new car. And he's got a nice new wife too. Well, it's easy to see what he has to do. Pass the spending on to the tenants. It's Old Nick showing his true colors again, and me without some of those little necessities for another winter.

The heat and hot water ran out when he became unable to scrape together his pennies for the gas bill. Might have had something to do with the new wifey's brand new car.

I'm back to heating the apartment with an open oven and strategically placed buckets of hot water.

And while my heart goes out to the rat-in-debt, I have to admit that dead cat on my lawn is giving me ideas.

The devil is a landlord, and I wish I could force him to walk a good old Imperial-style kilometre in my shoes, or at least to sleep a night between my icy sheets. I won't be there, God only knows. I hope he won't mind that I've been billing the hotel room to his office.

The devil is a landlord, and it's time for a mutiny in Hell.

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