ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
After his own landlord decided to take part in this nation orgy of greed, a local man is on the hunt for another place to live.
Where David Flower used to live wasn’t all that bad. A one-bedroom apartment on a street in the French Quarter where there was only a small chance of a drunk booting the side mirrors off your car after being ejected from a pub. For all it’s faults, it was safe and affordable.
Those days are over now because David’s landlord is one of those landlords.
David has taken this opportunity to move in with his girlfriend of two years, Maggie, to make it easier to afford something less shit.
Maggie and David have spent the last month looking at new apartments and they all sucked. David explained to The Advocate that he doesn’t have very high standards, he just expects a potential home to be free of black mould, clean and in an apartment complex where the police don’t kick the neighbours doors in a 5am.
Looking at a one-bedroom apartment with Maggie on the weekend, the white noise of the leasing agent’s lisping voice explaining the many features of the Meriton shitbox they were standing in couldn’t drown out David’s internal monologue.
“What is the point of all this?” he wondered.
“I’ll never be able to afford a place like this and this place is a shithole.”
A plane flew over and David read the tail number as it went past. VH-OQD. An A380 that recently returned to service.
He looked over to see the agent’s over-sized tongue resting between his pursed lips, as if to invite a response to some bullshit question he just asked.
“Yeah sure, I’ll see the external shared laundry,” said David.
So the left the shitbox and headed down to hall, up some stairs and down another hall. Greeting them in the laundry was a large shirtless man in tracksuit pants taking someone else’s laundry out of the machine, pausing to look at the underpants, before dumping it on another machine.
“Great,” thought David.
The agent looked at Maggie and David, smiled warmly and asked if they’d be submitting an application.
Maggie lied and said they would.
More to come.
