PONS

Food with Benefits: don’t get too attached.

As Californians, our car culture puts everything at our fingertips in record time. We’ve thought of everything -except how to just slow down and share a good meal.

When I was searching for a housemate, sublet or rental share, many of the ads specifically stated that people were looking for tenants who either “don’t cook” or “cook lightly/infrequently”. This respected expectation became so normal that it’s included in small, Craig’s List ads - without irony, an explanation or an apology.

We’re not progressing as a species - though we’ve got the hurry-up-and-wait part down pat. Traffic is slow, food is fast and people are defiantly devoted to their comically beautiful but “look, don’t touch” kitchens.

Of course we’re supposed to live for work and eat to live. Sometimes we just eat to drive or drive to eat…We want our friends, wives, husbands and housemates to do the same…perhaps we do these things so we don’t notice how hungry we really are?

So much has happened and I’m closer, further, closer, further and further from where I thought we’d be now.

You think you know what you can and can’t control and then you remember the old adage- control is but an illusion. What I wouldn’t give for an inch of illusion!

We moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with high hopes, plans and expectations. But I quickly found out that nothing can be rented without parlour games, mirrors and sleights of hand. I wasn’t getting anything without a fight. The only good news here is that fighting makes you stronger. It really does.

I thought I’d researched and sorted through the muck and finally found a room rental in a shared house that not only accepted bears but had a golden one of its own to offer as a companion for Baxter. I marveled at my private bedroom and den with an office. The enclosed backyard in a forest seemed like the perfect location for a bear to rest and play with no extra cost to me. The house, location and amenities seemed too perfect to be true. I controlled costs by agreeing to a commuter week. I figured I could get to know the area by staying at AirBNBs on weekends.

My landlord, a renter too, was an entrepreneur and she seemed gentle and peaceful. She liked yoga, healthy food and ballet. She smiled a lot at our first meeting and she had a gentle golden retriever who could’ve been Baxter’s friend, in theory. The two gentle souls got along well - when they first met. They didn’t know that one woman’s complex way of distorting reality could make both of them go from comfortable and friendly to awkward and suspicious in a nanosecond.

My bedroom was furnished - as was the rest of the house. That alone was a big deal because my furniture and belongings are still mostly in storage back in Maryland. I was drawn to this naturally well-lit, contemporary home in the woods on a hill - with high ceilings, wood floors and beautiful decor. The location was in the tawny bedroom community called Lafayette, next to Oakland, Berkeley and Orinda - just on the other side of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. The price, location and amenities exceeded my best expectations. I competed to live there and won. And lost.

I wanted and found a house next to the BART station which would’ve allowed me to cost effectively get anywhere I needed to go without parking problems.

It all seemed too good to be true. And it was. But I never could have guessed how badly things were going to get in such a short period of time. My landlord, a female renter in her 30s who seemed content and good mannered on first glance, was actually quite fragile on the outside and barren to the core of her soul….the next day.

Natalie was a vegetarian anorexic who spent a lot of time in the kitchen making things but not eating. She mixed teas and made kombucha. She boiled things and left traces of her activities everywhere - but, in the end, I never saw her actually eat anything. She cleaned nothing - unless she needed the dish because she relied entirely on her cleaning lady - a helper, who really needed to wait on her hand and foot but only came every other week.

Natalie was sliver thin and wore contemporary clothes with artfully wrapped scarves and draped tops. “Euro Trash” is a good style description- it’s an old term- used to describe people who emulate an arty European dress code. It’s not the clothes that are bothersome- they’re usually casual and elegant. It’s the attitude- the wearer wants to be known as “well-travelled”, a “poetry officionado” who looks down on everyone else - usually while nursing an espresso at a cafe in San Franciso. A starving artist - with no art skills - but with a peculiar penchant for deriding passers by.

She learned, spoke and taught Spanish after leaving college but she’d never been to Spain. She said she loved dancing ballet and doing yoga. Once I got to know her, I was certain she’d break in two if she bent in too many directions. I pictured her suffering from consumption if she dared leave the house.

Initially, I thought she’d started her own coaching business and provided unique services - but that was when she first explained her business to me. I later learned that her sister bought the business, hired her, then sold it. She was handling the books one day a week for the new owners from her posh rental home that she had to sublet to make ends meet. The truth wasn’t bad per se- just oddly different. Her last tenant (someone who ominously tried to warn me in advance of my moving in) later told me that Natalie borrowed lots of money from her for food. Well, that explained why she thought the groceries I picked up for her at the grocery store- were a gift. I never asked her for the money- I was too incredulous. I had to laugh a little really when she sneered about my shopping at COSTCO….but it’s not worth going on about, now that I’m out….

She had pale skin and a shock of black, short, slightly wavy hair that she tied and wrapped in elegant ways. I noticed that she admired / perhaps emulated Audrey Hepburn, whose biography lay open in the living room- read - but unfinished. I also thought she reminded me of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind or a tragic woman in a Charles Dickens’ novel that Oliver Twist or Nicholas Nickleby had to live with before growing up.

I saw many pills in the kitchen cupboard and I’d venture to say they calmed her fragile nerves - a bit, but not enough. She was cold and vulnerable / weak and proud. She literally dressed like she couldn’t keep her core warm- perhaps because she was starving. She travelled ghostlike around the house looking for a purpose. I thought she worked from home but I later found out she only worked one day a week in her home office with the standing desk chair.

After happily unpacking, I noticed that my private bathroom was unclean. It was across from my bedroom and her office on the second floor. The garbage was overflowing. My tub and drawers had hair in them. I texted her that this may have been an oversight but could she help soon - I asked. No response. I couldn’t shower. I didn’t want to use the bathroom until she could take care of it. I’d been a landlord myself and had taken great pride in making things nice for my tenants.

The second day, I knocked on her home office door and she lowered her square black glasses on her nose and looked imploringly at me. “What did [I]want?”, she said. When I mentioned the bathroom again- she answered quite resolutely- I could clean it myself and when I left- I could leave it dirty. I was incredulous but eager to get going so I scrubbed the bathroom to my liking and took a shower. At least I knew how clean it was- I thought as I searched for a upside to it all.

"Could you please keep your dog in your room and on a leash in the house for at least the first couple of weeks?", she asked. This was a new concept. Her dog sat outside our bedroom door all night and stayed there when I tried to walk out. He followed us everywhere. Baxter Bear isn’t normally skittish but her plan to slowly integrate the two was backfiring and making Baxter Bear fearful and unable to feel at home. He wouldn’t be the only one.

Our meeting on the second night established her preference that I never be home during the day. But she “knew I’d come to interview and network?”, I asked. “I don’t care where you go during the day- but I can’t have you here”, she said blithely. Sorry? “This won’t work”, I said to myself- she was proving to be the housemate from hell.

In truth, I really couldn’t talk with her after she laid out her instructions for me. I had to cooly establish my thoughts and feelings in a letter to her. I pointed out that her expectations were not specified in advance.in fact, for several days, I didn’t want to see her face at all. I didn’t think I should cry or yell to her face. Her boyfriend explained her many idiosyncrasies. He shared some of his as well. For one- they weren’t in a hurry to make me a key and told me where I could find the emergency one- under a rock- outside the door.

I found out later that she really didn’t want me in the kitchen or living room while she was using them. She and her boyfriend had a cold stare that ate right through me when I saw them….she wanted money but not a tenant. Eventually- she appeared with a new lease. She’d charge $300 more per month if I’d have to be at home during the day. I reluctantly signed the document because I was exhausted from the move and her many surprises -but mostly because I wanted to start my new life. My lease was for a trial 6 months anyway. I thought I could survive. I was wrong. No one could’ve withstood her ire.

I lasted three weeks. I had to get out without feeling defeated or risking my not getting my money back. So for three weeks I was pleasant, followed her rules and kept to myself. Why did I leave so fast? Perhaps because I was made to feel like a rent-paying intruder? Or was it because Natalie’s boyfriend kicked Baxter Bear for barking to come in from outside….? Or was it because I was paying rent in one place so I could find another place to live ASAP? Honestly- I couldn’t afford to not be advancing my life in other areas. I didn’t have any reason to stay longer than I must. Baxter and I were miserable in this contemporary castle made of thin glass. We needed a home.

My head was reeling from the painful knowledge that I was leaving but had no home to go to. But I resolved in my mind that I had to get my money back and escape that house as quickly as I could pack us up again.