Karma Komplaints

I've really let my karma go.

Five years ago I was shown an apartment by an elderly Rastafarian. One of those uber-cool, feel-good, sun beaming out the no-sunshine-hole types. We talked for five or thirty minutes (accounts vary). I made him laugh, he said he liked my energy, and I got the apartment.

Back then I had no job, no higher education, no real style to speak of. Today I am a "young professional" (shudder) with a law degree (rounded up) and an array of nice shirts (six and counting).

But my karma credit, apparently, is in the red.

There have been complaints.

It started with a phone call, as so many conversations have before. Our beloved landlady  wanted to show our apartment that upcoming weekend. She asked me if we would clean the apartment first. She said that she was willing to come in and clean it herself, but would prefer if we could do it ourselves.

I said, sweet Jesus no, we will do it ourselves. Apparently she heard something else altogether. We'll get there.

Andrea and I go to Bluesfest that night. We come home, and the place is spotless. Suspiciously so. The furniture is rearranged. And Andrea's clothes and personal effects have been, um, gone through. At first I suspected a very large and dextrous rat. Then, a particularly volatile yet orderly water heater explosion. Then my thoughts went to June.

The next day I had a shower. This was nothing out of the ordinary. Except that I stepped out of the shower and into a screaming fit. June and Andrea were going at it full-tilt in the entrance way. I came out in my towel and tried to mediate, like a true Roman senator, to little avail. June was livid, positively livid, because a) we live like pigs at a paint orgy, and b) Andrea had the audacity to ask her not to enter our apartment and rearrange our world without permission.

Well, we had to get to our jobs and I had to be less naked to do so, so I told her to leave and told her that we would settle this the next day.

The next day, June invites me up for tea. That old tactic. She explained to me that she may have flown off the handle. She explained that she doesn't rent her basement for the money but because she lives alone and she likes to know that other people are moving about the house. She likes to steep herself in the good vibrations that drift up from downstairs. But, lately the vibrations haven't been very good. There's been a lot of negativity going on. And it's been getting to her. So she snapped.

Well, that explained everything to my satisfaction. Sarcasm font.

Apparently she recalled me giving her permission to enter and "inspect" the apartment. She was listening in between my words I suppose. I told her clear-as-day that a) I did not intend to give her permission, b) I never would give her permission, and c) any further actions of this sort will be met with swift and immediate bad karma. 

In regards to the filthy details she mentioned the two breakfast plates left on the kitchen counter, the shirt that Andrea left on her bed, and an empty salad container that she found after some forensic detective work.

I asked her to imagine, for a second, that she was a prospective tenant. Imagine walking through an apartment, admiring the spacious kitchen and living room, the faux hardwood floors and sanitarium-yellow walls, convinced that the place was a go ... until you spotted the shirt on the bed! The shirt that would surely be there upon moving in, and would never, ever, ever go away no matter what you did!

June explained that the concern wasn't our deterring potential leasees. If someone were to see the Caligulan madness in which we lived, she said, they would assume they could live the same way. Then calamity and whatever would ensue, and she would lapse into some karma-non-kardiac-koma. MmmmKay.

This all made more sense the following day. Four youngsters came by to view the apartment. This consisted of a five-minute tour of the apartment itself, and a two hour screening interview upstairs. I met them briefly. They were very nice, polite, well-mannered and attractive. They didn't get the apartment.

Who knows? Perhaps one of them sneezed. Perhaps one of them laughed at a joke.

Perhaps it was the karma.