Freakshow: All Smoke & Madness.

I knew that after this summer, there would be a lot of momentous "firsts" for me this year. First job, first time not living in HP, first trip to Europe, etc. I also knew that there would be a lot of unanticipated firsts. Well, Monday night was one of the latter: my first condo association board meeting. Thank God, I didn't have to go alone.

Roomie and I had been requested by our landlord to attend the first meeting to introduce ourselves to the Board, both for our benefit and theirs. At that time, we surmised we would be regarded as freaks since we weren't married, weren't owners and weren't white. We would be the "Samanthas" in the nice Manhattan highrise. Nevertheless, being the friendly, sociable types that we are, we happily agreed to do so, especially since the sign in the elevator billed the meeting as a time to welcome new residents to the building.

As a preface, Roomie and I were so bored that we spent more than half the time trying to guess what these people did in real life, so you'll have to endure our surmises throughout this post. Especially for a small group, they were oddly unfriendly. Everyone in the room was clearly comfortable with each other whereas Roomie and I awkwardly stood in the apartment for at least 5 minutes before anyone even acknowledged our presence. Then, "Siddalee," a Sandra Bullock look-alike who behaved like a member of the Ya-Yas, stepped forward to introduce herself. She insisted that she'd met me before, even though I KNOW we have not. I've never seen the woman before in my life. A few others followed her example, and we were introduced to "Focker"(Roomie and I think that he's a male nurse; he had a pager and didn't seem very doctor-ish) and "Caucasian Red," who is the Leader of the Pack, the President of the Board Association. He turned bright, bright red from drinking wine; I think he's an accountant because he was obssessed with the spreadsheets, showed up with an expanding folder, and an expensive pen.

After everyone expressed their awe and amazement that we were renters who actually showed up for the meeting, we were then immediately shoved into second-citizen status as they all proceeded to pretend that we didn't exist. We probably should have gracefully exited at this point, but you know, it's like a car accident: when you see the freakiness, you kinda have to stick around and watch it in action. "Vizzini," the condo board's building manager, was the real-life equivalent of the Sicilian only with glasses. He started going down his list of things to discuss, but Siddalee was having none of it. She started in to complain on and on about her currently non-leaking roof. As this discussion began to the lose steam, "The Enforcer, " a scary overgrown frat guy, began to adamantly insist that whoever had left the motorbike in the middle of the garage should be expelled from the building. Turns out that Siddalee's fiance is the owner of the motorbike. Heh. Watching him try to back his way out of that one was pretty entertaining.

Once the motorbike incident was resolved, "Newsie" insisted that the Board spend $500 to hire a structural engineer to figure out how cigarette smoke was leaking into his apartment. Roomie thinks he's a consultant because he made it clear that he travels abroad a lot; he just got back from China. He gets dubbed "Newsie" because he looks like a blonde David Moscow, the guy who played David in Newsies (he was also the jerk director from Honey, yes David Moscow has had a fantastic career). Somehow or other "Hippieman," a smoker whose hair length is a good metaphor for how long it takes him to articulate one idea, decided to take up Newsie's cause. Upon his entry into the discussion, all degenerated into utter chaos. Roomie and I could do nothing but simultaneously restrain ourselves from laughing out loud and fight the urge scream at them to shut up.

The meeting climaxed when Newsie and his sidekick Hippieman began to butt heads with Caucasian Red. CR, whose face was orange red now, didn't want to give them $500 when he couldn't go into the apartment to smell the smoke himself. Newsie was pissed that CR thought he was lying. Hippieman offered to go stand in his apartment and smoke...even though it's probably not his apartment that's leaking the smoke into Newsie's. Thirty minutes later, they all finally arrived on the same page and realized that they needed to figure out who actually smokes near Newsie before it makes sense for a structural engineer should stand in the apartment and stare at the ceiling. Um yeah. Clearly, this was the point of departure. Roomie and I sidled out as the yelling continued in the background.

After that experience, I'm scared that I'm living with these people. I'm never going back. I mean I didn't even get to see the one freak I wanted to see: Bashful.