Moving in with Mervgotti (again)

I should be writing in my novel right now, but I’m not. I’m sitting on Mervgotti’s couch, watching him play my PS3.

That’s right: his couch, my PS3.

Yep, I moved into Mervgotti’s apartment yesterday, though somewhat apprehensively.

Though his place is a dump, it is a great near-downtown location. It’s on the ground level and there is mold growing on the bathroom walls, but my favorite stores and restaurants are with easy walking distance. It is the same building we lived at in college and it is just as poorly maintained. (During our first year in the building, someone vomited on the hallway wall. No one cleaned it, and it dried to a yellow cake. The next summer, painters painted over it instead of wiping it away. Its contours are visible to this day.) The parking lot is desolate, littered with garbage from the usually uncovered dumpster in the corner, and full of huge potholes. The main street entrance to the alleyway is known as “The Castrator” because cars almost always bottom-out at the peak where it crosses the sidewalk. Oh, and there’s mold growing on the bathroom walls. But, as I said, it is within easy walking distance to the glories of downtown. It is even a medium hoof to Kinnick.

Plus, there are oodles of free PBR.

After a lot of reluctance and personal deliberation, I agreed to move into the room Clintoris was vacating and signed a lease with Merv way back in February. In all, this will be his third straight year in this apartment and seventh in the building. It will be my third, and last, year in the building. I am not living here again, and, sadly, am in certain ways actually looking forward to when my lease expires.

But it is a new beginning and I am once again apartment living after 13 months in my parents’ basement. It’s okay, but I will say it is a little annoying living in such proximity with an absolute pig. Seriously: Mervgotti lives like a pig. It’s awful. I spent all day cleaning the kitchen. I have not even gotten to the bathroom…where there is mold growing on the walls.

Sure, the location’s great, but the condition is pretty bad. Such is the case for many, many places in the downtown area. The local slum lords love grabbing up as many old houses and apartment buildings near campus as they can, partitioning rooms and floors to cram in as many people they can, and charging through the roof for rent, but they sure as hell do not like the cost of upkeep. But it is not all their fault. The incompetence and irresponsibility of tenets has been piled along the curbs of the inner grid for all to see the past couple days. Couches without cushions, broken end tables, and stained mattresses; computers, TVs, and all sorts of crazy, busted up shit. If that is what the curbside looks like, imagine the inside. My sister, who cleans units for Apartments Downtown (IC’s most notorious property management company), says many apartments are in an awful state. But I mean, what do you expect when people live in dumps?

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