Day 3, Continued

We stopped by the Hawthorne next.  This was in the neighborhood of the single 30-year-old apartment and had a lot of similarities.  It was modern and carpeted.  To me, that made them practically the same place.

The manager was a small, squirrely gay man with a sweaty handshake.  I was immediately turned off.  I almost left right then—“forget it, sweaty man!”—but Ken wanted to go on the tour.

The hallway smelled sweetly musty, like cheesy mildew.  Strike two.  The apartment was small (again, my perception of space is unreliable), had a window that faced the interior courtyard looking out onto the cement walls of the units on the other side, and the bedroom wasn’t completely closed off from the living room.  Meaning there wasn’t a door at all.  The couple currently living there used a curtain to separate what cannot be legally listed as two rooms.  On the plus side, the kitchen was big and open, and Ken loved that.

After the tour, Mr. Sweats took us to his manager’s office to share his philosophy and more details about the building. He described himself as a “fun, laid back guy, who gets the job done.”  He throws monthly “parties,” funded by the owners, using the popcorn maker that was on a shelf behind us.  “It’s important for the residents to get to know one another.  And if the Seahawks win a game,” he told us, he pays for beer out of his own pocket.

“I’m told that you can’t be nice and be a good manager, but I think that’s the only way to be a manager.  I don’t want to be the ‘bad-guy’.”  He wants to be the guy who throws lobby popcorn parties!

I was appalled by everything going on, and had no idea why Ken was asking so many questions.  We were in there for almost half and hour before excusing ourselves for our next appointment.

When we finally left, walking past the obese woman sitting in the lobby whose outfit matched the couch color exactly making it difficult to determine where clothed flesh ended and furniture began, Ken turned to me and said, “I loved it.”

What?  I was about to turn to him and say the same thing, only I would have been saying it in the way I say, “I love dolphins, do you want to see Dolphin Tale?” after seeing the preview in the movie theatre.  That is, I would have been joking.

“The manager seemed really cool.”

“But he had sweaty hands!”

”Oh, I didn’t notice.”

“That was the first thing I noticed!” 

Before diving into my list of grievances against The Hawthorne, I asked Ken to tell me what he liked about it so that I wouldn’t bias him.  He liked the manager, it was inexpensive, it had parking, the kitchen was big, and honestly, he thought that I would have really liked it since I wanted a modern, convenient apartment. 

“Well, let’s just hope the next one is the perfect combination of charming and not falling apart.”