The Great Housing Saga of 2006 continues.

Yesterday, after my frantic post where I breathlessly talked myself out of and then back into loving the apartment we’re hunting down, I got a call from Katsumi. He’d just ended his fifth conversation with our realtor and had some news that stopped me in my tracks.

The landlord wanted a cosigner.

A COSIGNER!!

CO
SIGN
ER.

You know what, that apartment can go stand on its head and get fucked. My credit report is nearly spotless, I’ve worked every day of my life since I was fourteen years old (unless you count the first semester of college, where all I did was hemhorrage money like so much cheap beer), and there is no concievable reason that at this point in my life that I would need a cosigner just to rent an apartment.

When I’m upset, I like to make lists.

– When I was nineteen years old, I worked as a waitress. I had one credit card, a MBNA student Visa which would have been put over its limit if I even so much as THOUGHT about charging a pack of cigarettes. Being a student, moving from school to home and back again, I never kept a job for more than a few months at a stretch, and whatever pittance of money I made I spent on coffee, beer, and shoes. In the summer of 1999, I bought my first car. For five thousand dollars. Did I need a cosigner? no.

– When I was twenty one years old, I still worked as a waitress. I had just graduated college with a film degree, and as such, my prospects for gainful, non-service-oriented employment were dubious. I’d been with the same restaurant for a year or so and was making decent money in tips, but on paper I practically qualified for food stamps. Then my Hyundai got totaled. By way of replacement, I leased a brand-new car. Cosigner? No.

– When I was twenty three years old, I was no longer waitressing. I had a real job and a real apartment and a real big pile of credit card debt and no savings whatsoever. Suddenly, whoopsie daisy, my lease was up and I had about three days to get a new car. The details of this ill-fated transaction are a story for another day, but suffice it to say that I wound up putting down a whole lot of money for yet ANOTHER brand-new car, the same piece of shit I’m driving around today, and even though I had to put $1,000 of my down payment on my credit card and even though I’m probably still paying that off and even though I wasn’t really making that much money anyway, DID I NEED A COSIGNER?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

no.

So what has changed in my life that now, at 26 years old, I need a note from my parents saying that they’ll catch the shit if it hits the fan? What a load of bull.