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Get naked

So there I was. New York City spread out before me like a vast frontier, and I was temporarily homeless. And so I was overjoyed and thankful to find a gorgeous apartment for rent. I moved in immediately, happy like a bird whose just found her nest in the middle of a storm.

The landlady seemed nice enough—at first. But as the days turned into weeks, it soon became evident that something was wrong. Ornery, senile, and cantankerous don’t come close to describing her behavior (which I won’t get into here), but the doorman described her mentally ill. He said I should have asked him about her before I moved in. “Always ask the doorman,” he said. “He knows everything.” This is sage advice.

My living situation grew gloomy, claustrophobic and, well, a little cuckoo. To my chagrin, I started looking through the catalogues for a new apartment. I was shocked to find that my landlady was advertising my apartment room. My room was about to be rented out from underneath me unawares! Well, that afternoon I heard my landlady interviewing a potential renter for my room, and just outside my door. This had been going on a long time, and I didn’t even know it! I

So what do you do when your landlady is off her rocker and about to rent your own room out without any forewarning? Well, I don’t know what the professionals might suggest, but I got naked. I put down my work and stripped off my clothes, and swung open my bedroom door facing the living room where my landlady was interviewing a tenant for my room.

There was a moment of stunned silence. We stared at one another like deer in the headlights, and I’m not sure who was the terrified doe or the roaring car.

“I hate to bring terrible news,” I said in a firm voice, trying to hide my sudden alarm that I was indeed naked. “But this woman is clinically ill, and after she rents my room out to you, she’ll rent your room out to somebody else!”

And so that’s it. Sometimes things spin out of control and you don’t know what to do. But if you’re in your own house, and if you’re at your wits end, sometimes you just have to get naked. Toss your inhibitions and your jeans to the floor, and stand up for what is right.

That was the end. I put my clothes back on, called movers, and moved into another apartment within a week, and into an apartment where the landlady isn’t insane and where the leases are handled lawfully. And yes, I asked the doorman for wise counsel before moving in.

Tyler Blanski & Sherri Rosen, Sherri Rosen Publicity, NYC

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 25th, 2011 at 7:58 am and is filed under Friends and Colleagues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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