I’m a Masochist . . . So You Can Stop Worrying About Me

Following is a little story about something weird that recently happened to me (And it’s not a lie) and my analysis of it vis-à-vis the self-revelation that I may or may not have had, mentioned in the last blog.

Recently I found myself in possession of a most-coveted thing: a vacant apartment that was already paid for. I was in the process of moving out of my old house and into a new one, but I was also traveling for work during the week. When I came home on weekends I only went to my old house to get loads of my stuff to schlep to my new house. There was no hurry, because I couldn’t get out of my lease for a couple of months.

So I met this woman. She was a friend of a friend, and a psychoanalyst. She seemed okay. Now that I think about it, though, I realize that when I first met her I found her scary, but there was an internal logic going on that went like this: this woman always seems to be looking right through me. She is seeing terrible stuff. I should not acknowledge that she makes me uncomfortable, because that would be like acknowledging that I am full of terrible stuff. (Note that this is the kind of deep down reasoning you are never aware of until later when you have to see . . . a psychoanalyst)

I saw her several times over the course of a few weeks, often where cocktails were involved, and I guess I just forgot about my initial impression of her, and she was just, well, just a person who was always there. Sort of an acquaintance/friend who, by virtue of being a friend of a friend, I considered to be a reasonable human being. We’ll call her Mrs. Q. Anyway, it turned out that she needed a place to stay for a short period of time because she was between housesitting gigs, and I told her she might as well stay at my place, since it was vacant.

Well . . . (and I don’t mean that in the Ira Glass kind of way where “well” denotes a moment of unsureness [well, it wasn’t clear whether the pig had a human’s arm, or whether a human had a pig’s entire body except the arm] No, I mean it in the dramatic-pause sort of way. [the horrible creature took one giant step toward the hay loft where little Jimmy hid behind a snow shovel. Well. That was the last we ever saw of little Jimmy.])

On the day she moved in, I asked her to do some barter, helping me with moving, as a trade, and she balked. She balked at everything that resembled payment or barter of any kind. She complained about the dust, the condition of my apartment, even the size of my refrigerator. And she did it in a way I can only describe as frenzied, desperate, manic, and enraged.
Why did I let her move in? That’s a good question, but then again its obvious—in the course of this conversation, which was conducted in my living room while she was already cleaning my fridge and stuffing her many special-diet items inside—she seemed to be implying that I had done something terribly wrong. The complaining was more of a harangue, and it came on so suddenly and so out of the blue that I figured, yet again, that I must have done something really wrong to deserve this, but I wasn’t sure what.

The upshot of her ranting and raving was that she was so very very poor that she needed help and couldn’t be asked to do things or pay hardly anything in return because she was so busy trying like hell to get her life together.
She didn’t even seem to understand how much an apartment really costs, and that there are utility bills to pay, and all that. But I sympathized with trying like hell to get your life together when you’re all f***ed up, like she pretty obviously was, and so I had her write me a check for a mere $200 bucks and let her move in for one month, with the caveat that I had to come on weekends to move my stuff.

I thought she was like a backpacker, you know, not like a proper tenant with a house full of stuff. I did not, however, clarify this.

The following events then transpired:

1. She called me the next day saying she had had a headache all day and wondered if the house had mold. She wanted to contact my landlord and discuss it.

2. She moved so much of her own stuff into the house that is was essentially refurnished. I couldn’t tell where my stuff ended and hers began.

3. She bought a cover for my couch, which I guess she didn’t care for. “You can’t have it” (the cover) she pronounced. She also noted that she was looking in local stores for a cover for the chair as well, which was not up to her standards either.

4. She took several of my personal belongings and put them outdoors in the unprotected sideyard, on the woodpile. She thought they were dirty and didn’t want to live with them.

5. I confronted her about putting my stuff outside and she apologized. When asked about the mold problem issue, she insisted that if there had been mold she would have just MOVED OUT. Remember that.

6. She apologized like this: “I’m sorry you were upset about your stuff being outside.” If you call that an apology.

7. At the end of that conversation she was very apologetic and said she would rather MOVE OUT (remember that) than make me feel uncomfortable, but I told her she could stay because you have to understand that when she is in apology- and nice-person- mode, somehow she is so so nice that it is very hard, basically impossible for me to tell her to f*** off.

Okay, so the next weekend, I came to do some moving. At this point she had so much stuff in the home that it was very hard to know how much moving I still had left to do. In fact, she had the place set up like a delightful Montessori school custom made for herself. She had a yoga area, a playing-violin area, and now a painting area complete with a set of brand new pricey paints with price tags still on them.

At this point, I became of the opinion that she was not a poor person trying really hard to get her life together, but actually a free-loader who manipulates people to get cheap or free places to stay so that she can live a life of leisure. I had had enough.

I called her and told her I had other plans for the apartment for the following month, so she should make her arrangements to leave by the 30th. At this point, she insisted that she was staying until the fourth and that I had said that she could.
This is how she insisted: YOU SAID I COULD! YES YOU DID! YES YOU DID! KATIE, YES YOU DID! Now, I don’t know if I said that or not, but keep in mind that every single thing I had said to her previously, she had misremembered in a way that benefitted herself. In discussing the expenses of my apartment, My $550 became her $200. My $950 became her $550. Every single time I had mentioned money, she had come back claiming that I had cited a number that was completely different and much lower. So why should I believe her memory now? My main fear though was that “the 4th” would soon become “the 11th” then “the 20th” and so on until my lease ran out.

Anyway, since she had several times offered to move out if she was really bothering me, I assumed that she did have a place to go. So I insisted that she had to be out by the end of the month, and that was that. She screamed at me: YOU’RE ONLY THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF! YOU NEVER EVEN THINK ABOUT ME! WHAT ABOUT ME! YOU’RE KICKING ME OUT AND I HAVE NO PLACE TO GO! ALL YOU EVER DO IS THINK ABOUT YOURSELF! I WILL STAY UNTIL THE FOURTH! I WON’T LEAVE! I WON’T LEAVE!

This woman was like a form of torture come to life, but when one day I tell you about the other extremely petite lesbian con artist that I once knew, you will see why I wasn’t just going to sit back and see what developed.

Now for the point of the story: all of this happened gradually over some time, and each week, at work, I would have some new tale of terror about this woman and how she was haunting me. Each week I would grow more and more frightened that I had invited some con-artist into my home and she was building up to doing something really terrible that I couldn’t even forsee. I was even afraid to kick her out. What would she do? Exact some revenge? It was a nightmare for a while.
Things like this have happened to me before. Worse things, actually. I have been ripped off and generally bamboozled by numerous charlatans, freaky people, and fake friends in the past. So when I started telling people about this latest situation, my friends started asking me—why do these things keep happening to you? What is the lesson you are meant to learn from this? And that kind of thing. Which is a perfectly legitimate question.

But the thing was, during the time that this story about Mrs. Q. was evolving, I had a new chapter of the saga each week. My stories of my most recent torture weekend arguing with Mrs. Q would make people enraged and excited. They would say, “Here’s what I’d do! . . .” or they’d just get these wide eyes and ask me questions. They wanted to know more. They wanted to know what I said and what she said and then what I said to that, and then they’d give their opinion on my course of action and nod sagely and shake heads disapprovingly and, sometimes, literally gasp at her audaciousness. It was exciting. I found that while I was really and truly under extreme stress from all this, I also really and truly enjoyed telling the ongoing saga of Mrs. Q.

That’s because I’m a born storyteller. I go out in life and seek out unpredictable situations just to see what will happen, and then I tell stories about it. I practice my stories in my head, out-loud while driving, in the shower, as I’m falling asleep at night. I rearrange the information for maximum effect and decide where the pregnant pauses will be. I practice giving thumbnail versions of the more complex tales. The thumbnails themselves evolve into mini-masterpieces of conciseness. Then other times, I sit silently at parties because I realize that I can’t always have myself and my storytelling be the center of attention. It’s just rude. And that: having to sit silently with tons of fascinating stories in my head that I could be telling but I’m choosing not to-- that’s almost MORE satisfying than actually telling them.

So the answer to the question “why do you encounter these freaky people? Why do you cease to avoid trouble?” I think (and this is the revelation I mentioned in my previous blog entry that may or may not be true) is that I encounter them because, deep-down, I want to. I want the stories. I don’t want the stress, but without stress there is no suspense to the story, frankly. So, deep down, I meet these people and bring them into my life because, deep down, all I really really care about is having good stories to tell, even if I am the jackass of the story. Especially, in fact, if I am the jackass. Those are the best kinds. But not too much of a jackass, because then the story elicits sympathy, which is not a fun and comedic emotion.

Anyway, this is not to be interpreted as an invitation for all the con artists and manipulators in the world to come knock at my door. But its just to say—don’t worry about me . . . somewhere deep down, I’m a little bit of a masochist.