Welcome to Freaktown

After having spent a very expensive week in New York City hotels, and another week of hotels in Providence, Rhode Island, my wallet was beginning to pinch a bit. Since I would be doing some research for a few weeks in Rhode Island, I thought I may be better served financially by finding a room for short-term rent somewhere in the area. While calling on various advertisements for rooms available in Providence listed at www.projo.com, I got a hold of one guy who made me permanently skeptical about renting a room from a stranger.

Calling the number listed in the ad, I could hear that the telephone had been answered but the party on the other end of the line remained silent.

"Hello?" said I.

"Hellllooooo," replied a freakish voice.

"I'm calling about the room for rent I saw advertised in the Providence Journal."

"Yaaays," comes the answer, but nothing more.

"Could you tell me a bit more about the place?"

"Well," said the voice, speaking very slowly, with a nasal quality, and creepy mouth-breather intonation, "we have a nice home right next to the cemetery, so the neighbors are very quiet. He, he, ha!"

"Oh," I replied a bit disconcerted, "I suppose dead people don't make much noise, do they?" said I, trying to play along.

"Oh, certainly not. And, we have fresh flowers on the table every morning too! Woo, hoo, ha!"

Startled, I considered my only response was to continue abetting this curious exchange "Well, I suppose you certainly could have fresh flowers every morning, living next to the graveyard and all."

“Oh, no. I am only joshing you. He, he.”

From this point on, this weirdo’s near soliloquy was a non-stop ramble of oddities. It went something like this:

“Welllll, I run a nice Christian home here, and all of the boys that live here are good boys. How old are you?”

“37.”

“Oh, welllll, you are a bit older than the age category of the boys I have living here. But, that’s OK. One of them is 29 and is getting married next month.

“We all get along very well here, but sometimes … I have to test the boys.”

Test the boys? What kind of weirdness would this entail I wondered?

“One time I put some money on the table and left it there for three days and nobody touched it and the same amount was on the table after the test.”

This guy’s a genius.

“We don’t like a lot of noise in the home. Everyone has his own room with cable television, but we expect that nothing will ever be louder than a normal conversation level. Sometimes, if there is something really special on the television, I allow the boys to all sit together in the living room and we can turn up the sound a bit. But, only if it doesn’t last longer than 30 minutes.

“We have two meals a day, included in the price of rent. In the morning, you could have a bagel and some juice, or some cornflakes, or some eggs or stuff like that. In the evening we have a nice meal – usually something I fix up, like casserole or spaghetti. Everybody loves my cooking. Oh, and if two meals a day aren’t enough for you, there is a soup kitchen across the street. We’re just down the road from the Christopher Columbus statue.”

What kind of wacky setup is this? Across the street from the local Soup Kitchen? I could just see myself standing in line at noon with my pewter cup awaiting my apportionment of gruel for the midday. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more peculiar, this nutcase topped it all.

“If you have a puppy, that would be nice, you could bring it here. However, I do not like cats and you can’t bring a cat, a fluffy puppy is fine. I want to be straight up about this - there are absolutely no bugs in this house – it is very clean! But, to be honest, I would rather have cockroaches in my house than a cat! Cockroaches are just under the refrigerator or in the sink, but a cat … a cat is everywhere! On the couch, on the table, in the hallway, on the television!”

“Yeah, a cat is like a great big cockroach, I suppose,” said I, completely flummoxed by the weirdness of this guy.

“Yes, I suppose they are. No cats! However, I do have a 50 gallon fishtank with tropical fish and if you have something you want to put in there, that would be nice.”

My first thought was that I would like to put piranhas in the tank, or possibly some cockroaches.

“How much do you charge for a room at your home?” I asked.

“It’s in the advertisement.”

“No, it just says ‘affordable’.”

“Well, I charge $15 a day and I expect to be paid up front for the week. That’s $105 dollars per week. And, I don’t put up with any funny business.

“Just come by and you can have a look and we can see if it will work out for you and for me and the boys.”

“OK. Thank you for your time.”

“My pleasure. See you soon.”

15 dollars a day for a room and two meals per day? Damn, I often spend more than 15 dollars on dinner alone! As tempting as was the price, the question marks floating all over this freaky situation were making my head hurt. Graveyards, tests for the boys, cockroach-cats and fluffy puppies, fresh flowers courtesy of departed loved-ones. This was all just too weird. Wallet forgive me, I think I’ll spend another night at the Motel6!