The landlord dude and the ladies

This story is one of many episodes about one of my many former landlords. He was a peculiar guy, to say the least. You can read my introduction of the landlord dude here.

Landlord dude was single. Or maybe he wasn’t. It wasn’t always clear. We always thought he was predominantly single. Yet, he somehow was a ladies man. There were always women around. Some of these women were very normal ladies, that came by regularly, and gave the impression of having a relationship with the landlord dude. With others, it was less clear what was going on, and their level of normalcy varied tremendously. What was very clear – to us – was that landlord dude likely had several ongoing relationships of different forms with different women at the same time, even though he was also somehow single. How the landlord dude managed this, or whether he really did manage, is not fully clear.

One day in the first months that we lived there, we saw a lady leave that we had never seen before. She had been there the entire week. We were surprised to see her, as in the months before that there had been another lady that was more regularly present. We actually thought for a moment that he actually had a girlfriend at that time. Was that over? On our driveway we saw the landlord dude say goodbye to the new woman as if they were very intimate. Apparently the old relationship was over, but a new one flourished. Good for them. The new lady dumped her suitcase in the trunk of her car, and drove off.

That same day, I think less than a few hours later, we heard another woman arrive. This lady has a familiar voice… The old ‘girlfriend’ lady had returned, while the perfume of the previous lady still filled the house. The girlfriend lady, too, brought a suitcase, and seemed to plan to stay for a bit.

We were very confused about what was going on.

Landlord dude was loud. It was impossible not to overhear conversations he had. On the phone. In the garden. In the living room. He owned the house after all, and he seriously didn’t give a fuck. About anything. I say this here, just to make it clear that we didn’t have our ears to the wall. We just lived out every day lives, often behind a closed door.

The particular conversation with the old girlfriend lady that had just arrived was interesting to hear, especially knowing what we knew about the days that had passed.

“I’m so glad to be here. I’ve missed you so much!” she said to landlord dude.

“I’ve missed you too. I’ve been so sick this week, I’ve been in bed the entire time,” landlord dude lied.

A silence followed. For the sake of story, let’s pretend that they kissed passionately on our driveway.

Me and my wife looked at each other in disbelief. What the fuck did he just say?Well he was probably right about the bed part, but dude… We just discovered that our weirdo landlord dude was an old lying and cheating bastard.

Of course, as you ought to do in such situations, we thought: live and let live. This shit was none of our business, after all. We were only here for the cheap rent and reasonable living conditions. We pretended nothing happened there. The doors may have been paper thin, but this soap opera was only for the housemates to enjoy.

The old girlfriend lady stayed the entire week. The new one I’m not sure we ever saw her again. But new faces came and went regularly, some of them once, some more often.

Some of these ladies left quite an impression on me, but I guess that’s a story for next Tuesday!