Bullet: DODGED!

I showed my apartment to several more people on Tuesday evening.

The first guy showed up and had kind of a "I'm young and slight but I'm going to show you how important I am by using my authoritative voice when talking to you" demeanor about him that I found kind of annoying, but whatever -- I don't have to live with him or anything.

He had his positive attributes:

* Tidy-looking

He had his interesting attributes:

* He is a funeral director and has his degree in mortuary science or something.

He had his middle-of-the-road attributes:

* Mediocre credit

He had his hmmmm attributes:

* Fake blue contacts (WHO DOES THAT ANYMORE?)
* Appeared to be wearing makeup, which, given his profession, made me wonder if it was dead person makeup!

But all in all, he was fine, his credit wasn't horrible, he filled out the rental application right then and there and left me with copies of all his financial stuff.

PLUS he said that given his kinda blah credit, he'd be willing to pay up to a year of rent in advance.

Whoa, interesting.

Then the rest of the prospective tenants came through and I liked them all and started to wonder if I should go with the ones I personally liked or the one who was willing to put his money where his mouth was and in the end, I decided that it was fair to go with this guy because I didn't dislike him and he was the first to give me his application and I do not discriminate against men who choose to wear makeup. I mean, who knows? Maybe he has Alyssa Milano skin under there or something, poor guy.

So I called him up to say hey, we're gonna check your references tomorrow, I'd like to take you up on your pre-payment offer if you're still interested in the apartment. He says yes, great, except really, I'm only comfortable paying for six months in advance. I say okay, that's fine, I'll talk to you tomorrow. He calls back a few minutes later and leaves me a message saying hey, you know what, you could totally foreclose and then I'd be left up a creek, so I think I'd rather just give you three months in advance and I'd need it all stipulated in the lease because also what if I decide to break the lease and blah blah blah.

I happened to run into my old friend Bree just as I was listening to the VM and told her about about the 12-no-6-no-3 month thing and she told me about how comfortable she and her husband are with THEIR renters. And then I talked to my brother (who is also happy with HIS renter) and was like dude, I think I want to tell him to go pound salt, he's backtracking, it's fishy, and I think he might wear dead person makeup.

So this morning I called left him a VERY FRIENDLY message saying hey, I've been thinking about it and I think I'm going to pass. I TOTALLY get where you're coming from and that the pre-payment is a risk to you, but I think there's a lack of trust between us and I don't want to get started off on the wrong foot so I'll go ahead and shred your documents as soon as I get home unless I hear otherwise, but hey, good luck to you.

He calls me back and wants to know what made me change my mind and I tell him that you know, I would have rented to you even without your pre-payment offer but I have to tell you, the backtracking kinda spooked me.

AND THEN (because there's always an "and then"):

He cockily tells me that "Yeah, well, you leaving your apartment to move back in with your parents spooked ME."

And I was surprised because I know FOR A FACT I did not tell him that specifically. I do recall him catching me off guard by asking small-talky questions about where I was going but I know I said FAMILY and not PARENTS.

Semantics and all though, right?

It's not UNTRUE, but I'm annoyed that he thinks I'm living with my parents because I'm at risk for losing my apartment and that, Mr. Makeup, is not the case AT ALL.

But I'm not going to argue with a guy who thinks his recent inheritance makes him a high roller so I said "Okay. Good luck. Goodbye."