Slam!

Ah, sweetness is in the air. Another Valentine's Day come and gone. I hope you spent yesterday evening receiving and enjoying the chocolate, flowers, fancy dinners, candlelight, diamonds, and shhmoooopy love cards that the holiday entails.

In contrast, my feelings about Valentine's Day are probably adequately summed up by the Zombie Pet Shoppe Playset. So I spent yesterday in Philadelphia with my friend Alyssa, attending a Story Slam.

Philly has a very cool organization called First Person Arts that sponsors a story-telling competition each month. They give the audience a theme then let people come up with whatever true life experience they can think of that relates to the theme. Audience members' names get drawn randomly from a bucket, and whoever's name is drawn goes up on the stage to tell their story in 5 minutes or less. It all gets scored by judges from the audience who rate the stories on content and delivery. The winner of the night gets invited back to be part of a summer Grand Slam, which is a massive crazy championship round for all the year's winners.

Last night's extremely Valentine-appropriate theme: The Ex-Files. There were some amazing stories. Terribly odd and awkward tales of high school romances, painful breakups, first kisses, life-changing heartbreaks. Some funny, some sad, most a bittersweet mix of both. One girl talked about the unrequited junior high crush she had on a guy with a rat tail haircut. She's probably still in therapy to this day, if only because feeling attracted to someone with that haircut must undoubtedly scar a person for life.

And then my name got drawn from the bucket.

The rest is a blur.

Here's the story I told:

When a relationship ends, you have an Ex. You also have an Ex-House, which means you need a new place to live. That is how I found myself searching the classifieds for an apartment in Minnesota. After reading plenty of disconcerting listings for overpriced mildewed windowless basements shared with creepy roommates who were probably registered sex-offenders, I found a listing for a "Clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's Hospital. $400/month, all-inclusive."

This was clearly the holy grail of apartment offerings, so I called immediately. A polite, intelligent man answered the phone and explained that he and his wife lived in a very large house on the hillside. It was too much space for the two of them, so they had subdivided it to make the lower level into a separate apartment. They offered it at a low rent rate so that they could catch more interest and thus be more selective of quality tenants, who they welcomed into their home like family. He told me the other current tenant (my prospective roommate) was a very responsible nurse employed by Mayo Clinic. I excitedly asked when I could come take a look at this wonderful place. He said, "How about tonight?"

After work, I rode my bicycle to the "clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's," which turned out to be 3 miles away from St Mary's, all uphill. I was nervous that I would be so sweaty and haggard from the bike ride that they would deem me unfit to rent to. I knew they were highly selective, and I silently pleaded that I'd be found worthy.

I finally arrived to the address (gasping for breath) and feasted my eyes on my prospective future home: a decrepit funky place that looked like a single-wide trailer rendered in brick, thoughtfully landscaped with lots of dead stuff and broken things. The door was gaping open and creaked inward away from me as I tried to knock, revealing a split-level staircase with steps headed up and steps headed down. The landlord came bounding down the stairs, beer-belly flailing side to side, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and a black silk dressing gown with a giant red dragon emblazoned across the back. I wanted to run away. Instead I said, "I called about the apartment." He said, "Come on upstairs and meet the family!"

Upstairs, the living room walls were encrusted with those frightening porcelaine things you buy from the Sunday glossy ads -- the plates with the embossed wolf howling at the moon, and the indian praying to the sky, and dream catchers, and lifelike dolls with beady little eyes watching your every move. I was greeted by a girl who was about 15, dressed in a ratty sportsbra and sweatpants, watching a Blue Man Group concert on TV and maniacally dancing along. I said, "This must be your daughter." She said, "I'm his wife." I said, "Great! Ummmmm...so...uhhhh...awkward...can I see the apartment?"

Dragon Man led me down the stairs, which dead-ended at a piece of plywood. By opening a closet door, shimmying sideways through the closet mess, then passing through a gaping hole they had busted through the back wall of the closet, we arrived in the garage. Taking a 180 turn to circumnavigate the water heater, we came to a door. The door to the "clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's." At last.

Dragon Man turned the key in the lock and swung the door open. The air inside was thick with a haze of 40 years of marijuana and hard living. I found myself standing in a kitchen comprised of a laminate countertop propped up on 2x4's, a sink that drained into a bucket instead of pipes (because plumbing is irrelevant), and a stack of dishes full of stagnant water full of organisms that had probably been there long enough evolve into intelligent life.

The bathroom was off the kitchen through a set of flap-hinged saloon doors. It contained a sink and a toilet. When I asked about the shower, Dragon Man pointed to a drain in the floor. You showered by wrapping the curtain around you and hoping for the best as water rained down from a bare pipe in the ceiling.

From the kitchen, gazing ahead through the smoke, I could see the living room. There was a leathery 40-something man with long stringy hair sitting on the couch watching TV and emanating child molester vibes. As a wave of revulsed horror washed over me I asked, "Are you the nurse?"

To my relief, he said, "No."

To my non-relief, he followed that up by saying, "She's my girlfriend. I just come over to sleep with her." And then, setting a new standard for classiness, he finished by saying, "But don't worry. We close the door."

Meanwhile, Dragon Man started listing all the perks of living there. Of note, I would get my entire security deposit back when I moved out as long as I "don't punch any fist holes through the wall, or patch them up yourself if you do." Then he showed me to "my" room. The door only opened about 1/3 of the way because it ran into the bed. The twin bed filled the room. The room had no windows. It also had no closet. Because it was a closet.

At that point, completely overwhelmed, I hastily shook the Dragon's hand (vowing to thoroughly sanitize my entire limb later), and told him what a GREAT place the apartment was but that I had a few more possibilities to check out before I made up my mind. Then I fled from the clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment, riding my bicycle into the night and honestly contemplating the relative appeal of homelessness.

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In related news: Guess who won Philadelphia's Valentine's Day Story Slam...

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