In the last week, Trash has e-mailed and called our friend repeatedly. He asked me on Friday, "Should I take her call?" I said no. I think what he should do is write a letter and let me show you how it should go in my column.
Dear Trash,
I'm not sure why you're calling and e-mailing.
Did you get kicked out already? Probably shouldn't change the locks on a rental. Landlords hate not having keys to get in. Or maybe it was all those cats you forgot to tell the landlord you had? Or maybe he found out that your 'little dog' wasn't 20 pounds but a 100 pound Rhodesian Ridgeback? Maybe the neighbors living below you got tired of all the cats landing on the ground or of your dog running through the apartment or barking all the time? Or maybe, having signed a non-smoking lease, your decision to smoke your pack of cigars each day in your apartment -- despite complaints from the neighbors -- got you evicted?
If you got kicked out, I'm not surprised. I feel sorry for your pets but not for you.
I can't imagine, though, why you'd call me.
You need a place to go? You need money?
If we accurately add everything up, you owe me $5,000. Those were loans that began in July. You swore it was a loan and that you'd pay me back when you got the money for selling your dead sister's condo.
Now if I'd known then that you weren't planning on giving any of the money from the sale to your niece -- the only child of your dead sister -- I would have realized you were a thief then.
Instead, I stupidly thought I could trust you.
Remember Labor Day weekend? When you threw your little stunt. You didn't know it (because, as usual, you were fall down drunk) but I was on the phone when you pulled that stunt. I was on the phone with my friends Dona and Jim who were telling me, "Pack everything up. You can stay with us. Get the hell out of there."
And that was right before you staggered in and started screaming at me.
I'm not sure how much your drunken ass remembers.
But for the record, you screamed at me for not helping your 'friend' Reuben unpack and move your stuff. First off, I had unpacked and moved a great deal of your stuff. Second off, because of you I had a broken finger. Third, you were paying your 'friend' Reuben a thousand dollars each day he came over to help you. You owed me $5,000 that I never saw. And I will never see again. So excuse me if I walked out of that hell hole anytime there was someone to leave your drunken ass with.
You then screamed that I had used and manipulated you.
When I asked you to please stop screaming, you only got louder.
I hadn't seen you in years. Prior to moving in with you at the end of July, all I had 'done' to you was loan you $890. The week I moved in, you explained you needed $400 for a deposit on our new place. I didn't say, "I gave you $890 and you were supposed to take 400 out of that for the deposit."
No, I went and got more money. Which I did over and over through August.
Not a problem, you were going to pay me back. You said you were keeping track. Turns out the job you said you had? You didn't. You hadn't had a job in years. You'd sponged off your sister and, I feared, you might be sponging off me.
But you'd pay me back -- you said so. You made a big deal of saying so.
You even used my credit card, remember, when you were lying to the IRS?
You needed some sort of a tax i.d. I didn't get it at the time, why the bank wouldn't let you open an account (in your sister's name). How they said you needed that tax i.d.
And you had to have it right away.
I was an idiot.
I bought your lie that the IRS only issues one tax i.d. number each day -- around the entire world, they'll only issue one. I caught on that you were lying when you told the bank the same thing and the banker shot me a "look at her lie" look.
At any rate, you opened that account, deposited the check that the company had made out to your sister and you began to spend like crazy . . . on yourself.
It was around this time that you gave me a gaudy watch to 'thank' me. You explained it was expensive and special. Dona took one look at it and told me you got it at The Dollar Store. When I said no, she walked with me to the nearest dollar store. Guess what we found? That 'expensive' watch. It cost less than 20 bucks. It's in your closet. I didn't want and didn't take it when I moved.
Somewhere in the above, I used you?
Was it when you cried like a baby after the move to 'our' apartment? The morning when you had to have coffee? And your coffee makers weren't working? Was it that morning when, to stop the drama, I went out and bought you a fifty dollar Mr. Coffee?
Or maybe it was the night we moved in to 'our' apartment?
Remember that?
Your lazy ass couldn't pack your own crap up. So the movers had to. And it took forever.
And I got there at eight p.m. and was immediately informed that the $400 an hour movers were taking longer than you'd planned. So I needed to pay for three hours because you didn't have the money but, not to worry, you'd pay me back?
Of course, it was five hours and not three but you always lied, didn't you?
Yet there you were screaming at me like a crazy person.
And as bad as I found it, Dona and Jim found it worse. Dona told me later she was going to call 911 on you until you started talking about how, at 'our' place, my name wasn't on the lease.
Yeah, 'to save money,' you'd decided to do that. Save money? I paid the deposit, I paid the rent, what did your fat ass pay for?
At any rate we all -- Dona, Jim and I -- had the same thought.
"This bitch wants me to get into a yelling match with her so she can call the cops and get me kicked out since I'm not on the lease. At which point, she's got my keyboard, my DVDs and music, my tablet and clothes and I'm on the street with nothing."
That's why I humored your drunken ass. Dona would tell me later that's why she didn't call 911 to report you.
You really were something to watch stagger around screaming.
What do you weigh now? 320 pounds?
When Dona saw you, she couldn't believe how much weight you'd put on.
"The only thing that shocked me more was that she was wearing tank tops," Dona told me. "I just couldn't believe tanks tops with all that pit hair. She was so disgusting. And when did she lose her front teeth?"
Dona saw you one day while she was waiting for me. You walked up to a woman with a dog. The woman with a dog was smiling at you until you smiled back and she saw your missing teeth. And then you were close enough that she got a whiff of you.
You never bathed.
What was that? Two baths in August?
And you would wear the same ratty black dress, whose skirt you'd cut, day after day unless you were going out (booze run) and then you'd put on those shorts and one of those awful tank tops.
Your 'friend' Reuben.
He hates you. Your first clue should have been he only came over when you paid him.
Your 'friend' Ken?
He's the cab driver you call and treat like dirt. But think it's okay because you tip him.
He's not your friend. In fact, he told Jim and Dona a great deal about you. Including that he sends out thank you cards to regular customers but doesn't to you because he really wishes you'd stop calling him.
Not only is he not your friend, he doesn't want to be your cab driver. It's because any time there's a 'conversation,' it has to be you, you, you. Ken doesn't like you. You're rude and you cut him off repeatedly.
What about your 'good' 'friend' Bobby?
When you were occupying your dead sister's condo, he came around. To smoke your pot mainly.
But then you moved. In over a month's time, he never came by. He never called.
Maybe being drunk all day and sitting in bed -- well laying -- in your own filth while you watched really crappy TV confused you?
You have no friends.
I was still believing we were friends until your Labor Day weekend drunken rage. That's when the warning everyone had given became clear.
The next day, I was gone before your drunken ass woke up and I didn't come back until after ten thirty that night. I wasn't looking for apartments in your city. I was meeting Dona, Jim and Ty at the airport.
And planning my escape.
We didn't know what your crazy ass might do.
That Saturday when I got the phone call about the apartment?
There was no phone call about the apartment.
That was a lie. I left to get a U-Haul that I'd already booked days before.
Why the lie?
You're a f**king drunk. And you were threatening me.
Until my stuff was out of the apartment, my name not being on the lease meant I could be locked out by you at any minute.
I lied to ensure I got out with my stuff and I got out safely.
I hated you at that point.
As much as I hate you now.
You are a thief who stole thousands from me.
How do you justify that in your sick, f**king brain. Oh, wait, you saw ET in England, I forgot! When you were four! And before ET was filmed! You're special and the birds followed you to communicate with you!
You're nuts and you're a drunk.
Most of all, you are a thief.
And watching you try to pretend you had class and intelligence?
You're a f**king moron.
You barely got out of high school. You know nothing about the world. You're an illiterate hick.
My favorite moment of you with your friend Reuben was when you were getting rid of 'your' books (after the move) that were really your sister's (you don't read). You handed him one book, a tiny thing, and told him (from the title) that he'd enjoy it. He flipped through it and was excited. And you were happy -- or what passes for your happy. Then he said, "Oh, look this book was published in 1907."
At which point, you demanded the book back.
You thought it might be worth something so you stabbed your 'friend' in the back.
On the Saturday I began the escape? Dona and Jim were over. They drove me to the U-Haul. They couldn't believe you'd paid anyone thousands to help you 'decorate' the house.
"Are there walls here?" Dona asked noting that you had put one picture after another up in every room to the point that there was no space left. It didn't matter that they all clashed, not to you.
"Is that a night stand on the bathroom wall over the toilet?" Jim asked.
Yes, that was another 'brilliant' design you and your 'friend' had.
Everything looked trashy.
"It looks," Dona observed, "like Goodwill threw up in here."
And then they stumbled upon your adult diapers.
I hadn't realized this was an issue for you.
You'd mentioned, once, an 'accident.'
Dona explained it, "She drinks two bottles of wine a day and that other booze and then she's too drunk to make it to the bathroom so she just s**ts herself. Hence the diapers."
And the smell.
Jim was hungry and nosing around the fridge.
He told me I shouldn't cook. He told me that after he sampled a chicken dish and a beef dish.
I told him I didn't cook that crap.
You did.
And you weren't happy unless the meat was burned to a crisp.
At which point, Dona said, "Jim, just eat some vegetables. Even fatty couldn't screw those up."
But there were none. 'Fatty' cooked 'dinner.' 'Dinner' was a piece of chicken or a piece of beef.
That was it.
"Why," I asked them, "do you think I eat out all the time? Before the move to 'our' apartment, at the condo, I used to go to this sushi place every day I could think of an excuse to leave. She'd get so paranoid if I was going outside. And that stupid dog can't stop barking when I try to leave."
You were an awful cook. And six weeks of 'lodging' for $5,000 should have included some good meals.
There was the night we had Chinese. You knew the perfect Chinese place, you insisted. We had dinner for two. It cost over $40 -- which I, of course, paid. The food was awful. You would later admit that you'd never ordered there before. Overpriced and awful.
This is part of the reason that you're trash by the way. Chinese food? Hey, who doesn't love Chinese?
Oops, you!
You ordered enough fried rice to feed an army. But you didn't order anything else and you hate egg rolls. Chinese food, for you, is fried rice.
You're like the trash that goes to a deli and orders something on white bread.
You had no taste, you had no skill for decoration, you had no education, and you had no front teeth (upper or lower). So it was hilarious whenever you attempted to put on airs.
What I'm trying to say is that unless you're trying to pay me back all the money you owe me, stop calling?
Hope you get all that you deserve,
Not Your Friend