Our Landlady Hates Orgasms

Sex = shame = eviction.

Our landlady has been trying to throw us out. Mind in the gutter and nose in the garbage…hers, I mean, not ours.

First, she chucked out the people in the flat above so she could rent out each room separately to different girls, and make more money. She’s been trying to get rid of my roommate and I so she can do the same in our flat. So lately, she’s been inventing lots of reasons for why we aren’t suitable tenants.

What does that usually mean? Sex, of course, dummy. Or accusations of it, anyway.

Sex = shame = eviction, you see.

So one day, she told us that our neighbours had been finding condoms in our trash. It was totally false, but

a) Shouldn’t they be happy that we’re practicing safe sex?

b) Why the hell would she pretend that the neighbours were offended by this?

c) Why would the neighbours rummage through our trash in the first place anyway?

It got better. Another time, the landlady told my flatmate that the neighbours had complained that they’d been hearing “orgasmic sounds” from our house!

My flatmate was really flustered by this – her boyfriend comes over often. But they haven’t even had sex yet! She was quite worried, though, and she tried to come up with an explanation for the sounds to save her skin. My roommate’s strategy was to tell the landlady that it was because she might have been watching porn too loud…an unfortunate explanation, as it turned out.

I’m just so angry that the landlady should have brought up such a thing. And forget orgasmic sounds, I haven’t even dated anyone in sooo long!

Next, she increased our water bill substantially without telling us why. We refused to pay the extra amount because it made no sense at all. She told us, “In that case, you can leave.”

So we decided to move out – we’d had enough. We started looking for another place, and told her that we were leaving.

But then something unexpected happened. She melted.

She told us that the water bill had increased because the city’s Water Supply and Sewerage Board had raised rates. For the first time in a while, we had a civil conversation with her and told her that we wished she had just said so in the first place, instead of hiking our bill with no explanation.

But she never told us exactly why she’d made up those ridiculous sex accusations. We’re still baffled by it, but decided to drop it.

Things are better between us and her now, and she’s even told us we can stay on if we want. But we’re moving out just the same.

No one wants to be around suspicious neighbours or landlords, and considering the lengths this unscrupulous landlady seemed prepared to go to get rid of us, we’re happier living elsewhere.

Last time I checked, having sex is not a crime. Our being young and unmarried is not an excuse for someone in power to violate our privacy, or try to shame us like she tried to. We’d like to live in a place where people aren’t pretending to find condoms in our garbage, thank you very much!

By Meenakshi Iyer
Photo Credit: Adam Edmond