2.10. The Rent Strike.

Heroes never get the credit they deserve. It's part of what makes them heroes. In my 24 years of life I've learned a sad and universal truth; the guy who does all the hard and thoughtful work behind the scenes gets the pleasure of knowing he did the right thing, and the guy who waits until the 11th hour then makes a bunch of noise and screams and shouts the loudest gets laid. I saved everyone in our apartment building from freezing to death this week, and Balki scooped up all the credit once it became advantageous for him to do so. 

Rewind a few days. I started the morning on the wrong side of the bed. 

I had cut myself shaving a dangerous number of times; Our slumlord, Mr. Twinkacetti, has been ignoring my pleas to repair the hot water heater. As a result, I lost all control of my razor and buried it into my skin more than a dozen times. For you young readers and womenfolk out there, it's IMPOSSIBLE to shave without constantly cutting yourself open if the water isn't scalding hot. It's science. I went off to Balki about how Twinkacetti has been ignoring problems with the building, even ones that I put in writing.

That's when he decided to tell me the sink doesn't work. I have no idea how long this has been the case. It wasn't draining, so I told him to flick on the garbage disposal. Balki launched into a series of hems and haws and buts, until I just demanded he turn it on; my reward for taking charge of the situation was dirty sink water shooting up into my face and seeping into my lacerations. Hey Balki, how about next time instead of the sound effects you just say "It doesn't work?" We all loved Police Academy but a guy who speaks in beeps and boops in Larry Appleton's Chicago gets his head caved in. 

So our apartment is falling all to shit, and it's Twinkacetti's fault. Balki got out a toolkit and set about to fix the sink, and that's when I found out he's been quietly fixing things around the apartment for weeks because Twinkie won't bother. Balki is of the opinion that he pays rent for the privilege of sleeping inside and without livestock, and if there's something broken in the apartment that he knows how to fix he might as well just fix it instead of dragging Twinkie up here every time.

What an asshole.

The doorbell rings, and Jennifer enters in nothing but a towel. Balki gets all creepy and horny, like enough where I think Jennifer would feel a responsibility to report it back to Mary Anne if she and Balki are still a thing. It appears Jennifer's shower is broken again so WAIT A MINUTE JENNIFER LIVES IN THIS BUILDING? SINCE WHEN? We first met her a few months ago when she tricked Balki into joining the gym she worked for; did she move in the building after that? Has she been here all along? How big is this building? Is there a world outside of it? Is this purgatory? 

So I point Jennifer toward the bathroom but I tell her we only have cold water, and she gets all pissed off and worked up, which gets me all pissed off and worked up. I launch into another classic Larry For President motivational speech: "we can ban together! If enough people want to change something, they can! We stopped the war! We got women the vote! We came that close to getting daylight savings time all year round!" I have to say that life with Balki has dramatically improved my oratory and plan making skills. I need to come into every situation life throws at me these days prepared to bargain for my life. Keeps me fresh.

Balki, who has clearly lived under some oppressive circumstances in his third world upbringing, warns me that Twinkacetti is a landowner and as lowly peasants, we have no power. I tell him we live in a Democracy, and make a plan to get the tenants together to compile a list of complaints. I can feel the heat coming off Jennifer; women can't resist medium sized, curly-haired men of power when they're on a mission. If Balki wasn't here I guarantee that towel would have dropped right on the living room floor and Cousin Larry would've gone jackrabbit wild on a whole mess of blonde until the building caught on fire.

Later that day I'd collected the tenants in a creepy basement room of the building where Twinkacetti wouldn't find us. We're in a large, four story apartment building with at least thirty apartments by the look of it, but only a dozen people showed up to my organizing party. Two of them were Balki and me, two were Jennifer and Mary Anne, and one was Susan, who even I had forgotten about. This wasn't a good start. We plowed through a list of complaints - holes in ceilings, tilted floors, and so on - all of which have been completely ignored by Mr. Twinkacetti. Within seconds, the group had unanimously elected me their leader, and I was a little reluctant (I'm already basically getting away with murder as Twinkacetti's employee, maybe not a good idea to rock the boat here) until Susan and Jennifer started eye-screwing me and telling me what a natural leader I am. 

I stood - and was it just me, or was I four inches taller, all of a sudden? - and declared that I would be the leader. I would type a letter to Twinkie and send it to him. And as I described the contents of the letter I discovered that Twinkacetti had sniffed out our little Union rally and came down to break it up. So I had no choice but to sack up and tell him we had grievances. After a brief, failed attempt to lie his way out of the jam he's in, Twinkacetti lost his shit and called us ingrates. He tore up our list of grievances, laughing like some kind of cartoon villain. 

Things escalated rapidly. The tenants charged to kill him, with hate and malice in their eyes. I chilled everyone out while Twinkie hid behind me. No one murders anyone in this building, unless that victim is Balki Bartokomous and that murderer is Larry Appleton - and Larry Appleton alone. 

Here's how Balki "helped" - he gave the crowd a history lesson on the Boston Tea Party and asked what it would mean if we decided to stop paying rent until our demands are met. I answered his question, telling him it's called a "rent strike" and Balki declared that COUSIN LARRY is calling a rent strike. See that move? He put it entirely on me. Our mobbed up landlord and employer threatened me personally while everyone else started partying.

Balki is such an evil, manipulative little shit I can't even stand it. He tricked me into taking ownership over all of this, made me Twinkie's sole target, and went on to dance around like the emptyheaded idiot he is with the other tenants, while I was left to wonder which one of Twinkie's nephews would come looking for me with a tire iron later that night. Screw you, Balki.

Needless to say, Twinkacetti cut off the heat, water and electricity seconds later. Considering the rent strike was only a few hours old and no one had missed any payments yet, this seems a little premature; but what do you expect, based on everything he knows about us he has no reason to believe we'll just come to our senses on our own. The next morning Balki and I sat shivering (I couldn't help but appreciate how impressively well lit the living room was in the predawn hours, without any electricity), while Balki cooked an egg over a candle. I hope he gets salmonella. I complained about how dirty Twinkacetti was playing this. Balki, meanwhile, didn't really give a shit about the conditions because his life in Mypos was apparently a series of one miserable poverty stricken hardship after another. So great, he caused all of this, and he is the only one not suffering. 

That is actually the perfect inscription for Balki's headstone someday. 

Balki and I stormed into the Ritz - where I honestly don't know if we work anymore or not - to confront Twinkacetti. There was a fresh pot of coffee on, and Twinkie charged me ten dollars for a cup; which I gladly paid. Then I told him off pretty hard and said we weren't giving in until he fixed the whole list. Needless to say this is a complicated and dangerous field to play on: Twinkie and I are both saying things to each other that we can't ever take back, and somehow "you're fired" never becomes one of them. Did we check in for work after? I honestly don't know anymore.  What I did though - gangster move - is I used my keys to the Ritz to let all of the tenants in and sleep on the floor that night so they wouldn't freeze to death. 

---

The next morning I was busily plowing through Twinkie's coffee when he showed up early and caught us all hiding in a tent in the store. This is trespassing, which he was impressively cool about. He was probably breaking the law too, freezing us out like that in the dead of winter, so we're all sort of in this soupy melange of criminal behavior together, I guess. He surprised us all by apologizing, which I was hella suspicious about. Twinkie said he'd make a few repairs if we paid the rent today, just as his bookie called and told Balki that if Twinkie didn't pay up he would literally take him out on a boat and murder him.

Gotcha.

So it comes as no surprise that Twinkie has overextended himself gambling with the mob, and  he needed money within hours or his kids would grow up without a father. We finally had some leverage on him to get our shit fixed, so we told him our most pressing demands and he agreed to them. This was enough for most of us, but now that Balki had the old man by his short hairs he immediately became drunk with power and decided to bleed him out for everything he has. 

We've seen this behavior out of Balki before. He plays all sweet and innocent until he has a chance to put the screws to Twinkacetti, and then he burrows into the little porker like a groundhog on methamphetamines. He plowed through the whole list, making Twinkie agree to each demand one at a time. He actually threatened to call the bookie back and tell him to kill him. Is that conspiracy to commit murder, or just criminal threatening? Has anyone even been keeping track of the number of felonies stacking up this week?

Literally everyone in the building was happy, but not Balki. He started making exorbitant demands as the rest of our neighbors just kind of wandered away.

Now Balki was despondent. When we returned to our apartment he sat inside the fireplace and moped and whined that he had made a fool of himself, just begging for me to validate him and shower him with positive attention, and I actually don't even know why this time. He said we'd lost because we didn't get everything on the list. Remember, two days ago Balki was happy to fix little things around the apartment himself. Now he's all butthurt because he couldn't coerce Twinkie into remodeling the rec room. So was he manipulating me to do his dirty work all along, or is he just this susceptible to mob fever? Either way, I told him this is how negotiating works and he did a good job, and then since he doesn't view me as a person with feelings he rubbed in how he got more out of Twinkie than I did. Just then Mary Anne showed up and backed up Balki's assertion that this was all his doing and I had nothing to do with it, and said "you've got guts. I like that in a refugee."

WHAT THE HOLY HELL DOES THAT MEAN?

She invited him up to her place for "breakfast," and they took off without saying goodbye. 

I wonder what work is going to be like today.