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The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager -- Part 1 ~1979

Have you ever noticed how someone might appear to be attractive, until you get to know them?

I suppose that’s where the phrase “beauty is only skin deep” comes from, but I never quite figured out how that’s supposed to work. If this oft-used expression is talking about physical beauty, well, yeah, I guess it makes sense – if you didn’t have skin you’d be all gross and muscle-y, with blood oozing out all over the place, like those bug-eyed half-skeleton guys whose picture you see pasted on the walls of the doctor’s office. Not the classic definition of beauty, at all… But if you’re talking about inner beauty, then the expression makes no sense at all – cuz inner beauty is, well, inner, you know? The beauty wouldn’t even start until you got below the skin.

Anyhow…when I first moved to Denver, I had a list of what I thought I wanted in a woman. I suspect it pretty closely matched the lists that most shallow guys have – you know, a certain color of hair, just about so tall, eyes the color of limpid pools (whatever the hell those are), and a body like a brick house (whatever that means). Well, I was stunned when I met my “list girl” at my new-hire orientation on the first day at my new job. She was stunning, and I was pretty sure that she was “the one”.

The only problem was that she was a vapid reefer addict who had no interest in anything I cared about. She looked great, but my wind-up set of chattering teeth provided more interesting company. Our “relationship” lasted about 3 days.

I should’ve known better, because I’d learned the lesson once before. Here’s what had happened:

During my last couple of college years I had lived in apartments. But I never really considered it “independent living” for several reasons. 1) I had a roommate, 2) I still came home to my dad’s house every summer, and used that address as my “permanent residence” on legal forms, and 3) my dad was still paying nearly all my expenses. Therefore, when I finally got a real job (after the whole “joining the Army” thing didn’t work out) I was pretty excited about finding (and subsequently paying for) an apartment of my own.

The place I was looking for had to be 1) cheap, 2) not too far from the Wichita Swim Club pool, and 3) reasonably free of rats, roaches, Communists, and other vermin. Then, if I found several complexes where all other factors were equal, I’d opt for the place with the best looking chicks.

Shortly after I started looking at apartments, I decided to take on Brent Barnes as a summer roommate. He’d be going back to school at the end of the summer, so his needs didn’t play a major factor in the decision, but he came along on the fact-finding tour.

We stopped at a brand-new complex at the corner of 13th & Woodlawn. Two advantages were immediately obvious; 1) it was new, and therefore unlikely to be vermin-infested, and 2) the parking lot abutted the parking lot of a McDonalds. In the likely event that we’d find our not-quite-responsible selves with an empty fridge on a Friday night, having a McDs right next door was a definite plus. After all, it was well-known among swimmers at the time that the Big Mac was the highest rated “performance food”.

But those factors alone wouldn’t seal the deal. We needed more. OK, the price was right…and guess what? The manager was a cute chick.

Well, OK, she was older than dirt, probably getting close to 30, but she had a nice smile, Farrah Fawcett hair, and was wearing a flimsy shirt that somehow didn’t quite button at the top. Even before talking to her, we concluded that she was not only a super-nice person, but that we could trust her to the ends of the earth.

And therein lies the lesson, my friends. This woman (to whom I’ll refer only as “Joyce”) was a pinhead. Oh, she knew how to instruct us in the finer details of filling out the rental paperwork, all right… but we were about to find out how totally clueless she was about anything beyond those simple duties.

“We’d like to look at a one-bedroom apartment, please,” I said. She raised an eyebrow, and appeared to be doing some complex math in her head. After a lengthy pause, she frowned and said, “…but there’s two of you.” I explained that the apartment would actually be for only me, but that Brent would be staying as a paying guest throughout the summer. Since he was still in college, and I had but recently gained my freedom, we were both comfortable with the cramped lifestyle necessitated by frugality.

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “You’re homos, then.”

“No,” I said. “We’re poor. And Brent is only staying for a couple of months. I don’t want to be stuck with a two-bedroom obligation after he’s gone.”

“I’ve had lots of girlfriends,” Brent added.

“You guys can be as queer as you want in a two-bedroom,” Joyce said, “but at least it would look proper.” She wrinkled her brow. “Two guys in one bedroom just don’t look right.”

“Look,” I said. “Just think of us as university roommates. Guys share dorm rooms all the time, and it’s no problem. It’s just like it was at college.”

“Call – idge?” Apparently the concept was beyond her grasp. I imagined that at any moment, there’d be smoke coming out of her ears from all the brain circuits that were frying. The skin of her forehead was twitching.

“Hey, I read Playboy!” Brent said. “I’ve got a copy in the car. Want me to get it?” When no one answered him, he continued, “Well, at least I’m sure I’m not a homo.” Then he looked at me with a newfound suspicion.

This wasn’t going well.

I put on my most mature and comforting smile. “Joyce,” I said, “I’ll tell you what…why don’t you just lease me the apartment and forget about our manly friend over here?” I waved my hand at Brent in the universal “shush” sign, and after a moment’s confusion, he seemed to catch on. He stayed quiet from that point on.

I think she actually did forget about him, and the rental process went smoothly after that. I signed a 6-month lease on a “garden level” one-bedroom apartment. (There wasn’t a garden at that level, or anywhere else on the premises for that matter, but it sounded better than saying that our new place was at “coffin depth” or that the windows had an “ankle-high view”.)

It didn’t take long to move in. My furniture consisted of a TV, a lamp, a twin bed, and one of those saddle-shaped pillows that’s designed to support your back on a sofa, but actually works pretty well as a makeshift chair when leaned against the wall. I had a couple of boxes of random kitchen items – most had “accidentally” found their way into my possession after various visits to the campus cafeteria – and a couple of handfuls of clothing. The clothing was all of the “wad up and stuff into a drawer” variety; none of this fancy “hang it in a closet” stuff for me. I had enough underwear that I could go for several weeks without doing laundry – three pair.

I stored everything in the same dresser that I’d had as a kid. (Though I no longer have it, I regret having let it get away. It was a classic, with intricate woodworking and ornate brass fixtures. I’m quite certain that if I had it today and were to take it on the Antiques Roadshow, a delicately-accented Sotheby’s employee would astonish me with his analytical conclusion that my beloved childhood dresser was a rare example of poorly-painted cheap pinewood crap.)

Brent and I began our free-wheeling lives as independent bachelors. We both swam every day, and I went to work at Beechcraft while Brent stayed home to study the “articles” in his magazines. As far as I know, though, our bachelor pad was severely underused for the kind of fun ‘n’ games romping that most bachelor pads were used for in the late 70’s. In other words, there was no hanky panky going on there, heterosexual or otherwise.

Well, OK, there was this one time. I brought a girl to the apartment with the intention of giving hanky panky a solid shot. But Brent would not leave us alone. I tried subtle hints, such as “we’d just like some quiet time”…followed by less subtle hints such as “leave us alone, Brent”. But he attended to us like a dog watching the chef at a barbecue. Finally, several hours later, he picked up on my implied meaning when I said, “Brent, GO THE HELL AWAY!”

Well, he performed a very convincing fake yawn and said he was tired. He went into the bedroom and shut the door, leaving the young lady and I free to entangle ourselves in the uncrowded living room. I figured I was in for some serious tongue-wrestling at the very least, and maybe a lot more.

But no. She said it was late, and that she was tired. She probably meant that she simply was not attracted to me, but I blamed Brent and his failure to vacate at a decent hour. She may not have wanted to make out with me, but she couldn’t have used the “it’s too late” excuse if my idiot roommate had vanished a little bit earlier. I hurled mental curses at the closed bedroom door.

Later, after parting company with my guest, I silently crept into the bedroom to try to get some shuteye. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised; Brent was wide awake and sitting up in his bed. I’m pretty sure he’d been listening at the door for the never-to-come sounds of whoopee being made, but when none were forthcoming, had decided to interrogate me about the results. “Whad ya get?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“C’mon, tell me. Whad ya get? How far did she go?” He was practically levitating in his excitement to hear the filthy details of my “so much better than his” sex life.

Lacking anything heavier, I threw my pillow at him. “You @#!$%! Idiot!” I yelled. “Absolutely NOTHING happened! And you know why?” I could see his wide eyes, even in the dark. “Because you are an idiot!”

I then proceeded to pummel him with pillows for the next 15 minutes, stopping occasionally to explain that his voyeuristic haunting of our s'posed-to-be-private moments had vacuumed any potential romance from the situation, and that he was an idiot, his relatives were all idiots, and that his children would be idiots, except that he’ll never have any children because no girl would ever even go out with such an idiot!

Geez.

Anyway, I was supposed to be talking about the dim-witted apartment manager. I’m certainly not done with that story. I guess the saga will have to continue later.

To be continued…