How Racists are Made or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Transience

First of all, I’m very proud of that title I just came up with. Now to ruin all of your unearned goodwill with what will surely be a mediocre blog post:

So, I have been living here in New York for a few months now, and, while moving to a new place every three weeks or so is great, I figured it was probably time to stop lying to the HR department at work about the address I put on my tax forms, and get an honest-to-god one year lease for a place. I had been staying in Cobble Hill since the end of November, and really loved the area, so I decided to try to find a place there. And, lo and behold, craigslist came through: a 4 bedroom apartment a couple blocks away from where I was currently staying, very affordable, very spacious, and the current tenants said there weren’t really any issues to speak of. Great!

Well, no (obviously).

The man who showed me this apartment, let’s just call him David (because that is actually his name). David happens to be of Asian descent. If I had to guess, I would say he was Chinese (other Asians have confirmed for me that the name David is very likely to be taken by a Chinese man). I met David outside the place, and he brought me up to see it. It looked great. I wanted it. I worked for the next week or so scrounging together 4 roommates, and eventually I brought them all back to see the place. It was that visit that I learned that David was the building’s superintendant, and his in-laws with the owners. OK, fine. He was a little hard to understand, but he seemed like a pretty nice guy, and we really wanted this apartment.

Later that week, we meet up with him to get the leases and to provide our credit check materials. The leases need a little editing, and a few days later, he provides the final lease. Clearly, these were downloaded off of a lease template website, but I was told by others that they would do the trick. This was last Friday. By the following Wednesday (yesterday), we are to have the signed leases and deposit in to him, and the place is ours. Great!

Well, no.

Because I have a new job, I have no vacation time to speak of, so while all of my other future roommates traveled this week to faraway, warm lands, I was stuck here dealing with David on my own. Not a big deal. On Tuesday, after my travelling roommates had finally gotten all of their money and leases in to me, I made the call. “David,” I said, “we are ready to do this.” I said this with the excitement of a man who, for the past few months, had been moving 3 suitcases worth of belongings around various New York boroughs using 1 suitcase and multiple trips on the subway. I was ready for this apartment.

“OK,” he said. “Can you meet tomorrow?”

“Yes. Does 6pm work for you?”

“6pm is good yes.” (See, his English is fine)

“OK, I’ll call when I get out of work to confirm.”

“OK, I see you then.”

It was all happening. Until the following day, when I called David while leaving work. No answer, but no big deal. I left a message, and started my journey over towards the apartment (the agreed upon meeting place was actually a Dunkin’ Donuts down the street from it). When I got off the subway, I called again. No answer. Getting slightly concerned, I entered the Dunkin’ Donuts. There was another Asian man there, but he was not my David.

I waited, called a couple more times, sent some texts, and a growing sense of dread began to come over me. Around half an hour after we were supposed to meet, I went home. On the subway ride back, I got the idea into my head that David might be trying to avoid me for some reason. Why would he? Doug (who was going to me one of the four roommates) works at the Apple store, and had told David he could hook him up with a discounted iPads. At this prospect, David had been ecstatic. The guy loved us. Well, the idea persisted enough that when I got my paranoid self home, I used the voice dial option in Gmail to call David, so that it would come from a different phone number. David, of course, picked up right away.

He was busy, he said, and would call me back in a few minutes. After 25 minutes, he had not called. What did it all mean? What had we done? I tried to avoid thinking the worst, but I was growing very concerned that I was losing this apartment. I called several more times. No answer. Emails, texts, everything. Nothing. What was there to do? I went running for 45 minutes, because of some unexplainable health kick I’ve been on (surely to be explained in a later post), but that didn’t clear my head. So I came back home and went to bed, hoping all the bad things would go away in the morning, and a very apologetic message from David would be on my phone once I awoke.

Well, no.

I went to work, gave him until 10:30, and then used my work phone to call him, just in case he was still avoiding my phone number. He picked up. (Excitement!) He made even less sense than usual on the phone, and he told me that because we didn’t get our money in by the Wednesday deadline, he wasn’t sure if the apartment was ours anymore. I tried to remain calm, and explained that he had missed our meeting, and otherwise the money would have been in on time. “Yes, but you didn’t give me nothing. No money.” We had a circular argument like this, for a few rounds, and each time we went through it, I got louder and louder. People around the office stopped and looked at me. Somebody came over and whispered “I hate idiots, too!” (thanks, brother). We left like this: he would get back to me, because he wasn’t sure if another possible tenant was getting the place or not. This may make no sense to you, but the good news is, it made no sense to me, as well.

I gave him until my lunch break. Again, no response. I had taken lunch with my friend Slams, and on the way back to the office, I gave David a call. “David,” I said, not so calmly, “you need to tell me what is going on right now.”

“Like I told you before, I no get the money in on time.”

We had the same argument again a few more times.

“David, are you telling me that we no longer are able to sign the lease for this apartment?”

“There is nothing I can do.”

So, once I got that confirmation, that was my cue to lose my shit. If you ask my friends or family, I am known once in a rare while to go batshit insane. One time, the catalyst was getting hit in the balls while sleeping. Another, it was thinking that a man stole my iPod touch out of a dressing room (he hadn’t). Well, this time, you know the cause. I won’t try to transcribe what I said, but just know this: while continuing our walk back to work, Slams kept alerting me that everybody on the street was staring at me. How could they not? I was screaming into my phone various threats, nonsense, and correlational information concerning Jews and lawyers.

And then, as he kept repeating the same bullshit back to me, I took a dip into some minor racism.

I’m not proud of it, but I was possessed. I am sure there were countless Asians around me, staring disapprovingly. I brought up the triads, I brought up climate change, I alluded to child labor. Anything that was remotely related to China in my temporary ragebrain came out. And of course, as a good Jew should, I ended my tirade with “you’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” followed by this coda: “you fucking chink piece of shit.” I never use words like this. I am usually afraid to even say “Jew,” as it just sounds like it could be derogatory if said loudly enough.

There are two lessons I have taken away from this experience.

1. Getting an apartment in New York is Hard.
2. Racism creeps up on you. I look at Tea Partiers in a different light, now (not really, you fucking pieces of shit).

Doug, please proofread this, as I am still so angry that I forgot how to read.