I was sat on my sofa, watching my wife do things that I never thought I'd see and whilst I was definitely conflicted about what I saw, I needed to write everything down to try and process where we had gone wrong and how I could change things. It's truly hard to believe I'm writing this and that my real life experiences have become such a cliché I can submit them to a site like this for people to read and enjoy. Anyway, I think I'm supposed to start at the beginning, so let's get started.
I'm Jake. I'm 28 years old, average build, average height, average life. I work in IT and while I'd love to say I'm some highly paid tech guru, I'm not. I love technology but I've never been able to get past the first rungs of the ladder, and it so I work a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday doing first line tech support. Yes, before you ask. Turn it off and on again. Look, it works.
My wife Hannah is 25, brunette, slim with curves in the right places. Her breasts are perky handfuls and her butt is just right. I know this is important to you all. We met at university, she was a friend of a friend and had dropped out to try the path of work. We saw each other infrequently and didn't hook up until after I had graduated. Like to lust to love to life played out across a few short months. For her sins, she now works in a local florist, also never having managed to turn her amazing person skills into bankable qualifications.
In short, we make do. Well, we did. Turns out telling people how to reset their computers isn't the most secure of jobs. So our household income halved. We did all we could, cutting the luxuries, selling what was sat in cupboards gathering dust and for two months we were ok. We told ourselves it would get better, and despite the odd argument born of frustration, we stayed strong and
Except that apparently, the longer you're out of work the worse it looks. Hannah's income was all we had and soon enough it wasn't enough. We had no family to turn to: my parents lived abroad and would never agree to bailing me out; Hannah's father was never on the scene and her mum had even less than us. Our bills to utility companies went out automatically, so the only place left to cut a corner was our rent. And now you know the porn cliché Hannah and I became. We paid our rent weekly and given the protection tenants have we figured that a couple of late weeks would be fine. We hadn't ever met our landlord as all the initial arrangements had been handled by an agent. The first week went to plan, as did the second and third. We prayed no-one would question us until we could pay everything off when (yes, we were that positive) I found work again.
It wasn't until Friday of the fourth missed week of rent that we had a knock on our door at 6pm as we were sitting down for tea. I went to answer and found a man I didn't know stood at our door.
"Hi I'm Tom your landlord," he said, "you must be Jake..." and pushing his way past me inside, "and this must be Hannah. Sorry we've not met until now. No rest for the wicked, eh?"
Shocked at the intrusion but not feeling like we could really object given our standing we both just looked at him dumbly. He was in his fifties I guessed, not handsome but not hideous (so Hannah would inform me much later), he was heavily built but not fat, and definitely exuded an air of confidence. Much as one would expect for a landlord in his own property with two rent dodgers.
"Good," he said, addressing our silence, "I do hate all the 'I'm sorry', 'I'll pay you next week' bullshit that usually accompanies this."
"You owe me four weeks rent at this point, I'm presuming you can't pay or you already would have. So we either need to work out an arrangement or you can be packed and ready to move out by Sunday. Before you object, it's in the contract you both signed, and I'd please ask you not to challenge me or board yourself in here as I wouldn't want this to get unpleasant."
Hannah snorted unable to stop herself, "You're kicking us out, it's already fairly unpleasant I'd say."
"Or, we can work out an arrangement," Tom repeated.
"Oh yeah, what sort?" asked Hannah in a sarcastic tone. How little did she guess how right her implication would be.
"Just the sort you don't want. The sort where a lovely young girl like you provides the kind of payment an old man like me enjoys. Then you and your husband here can stay in your home until things pick up and everything goes back to how it was. Mostly." As he said all this his eyes had travelled up her body and finished staring directly into hers.
"You are fucking kidding me, " I shouted, "get out now." I was overcome with anger and couldn't believe he had propositioned my wife. This was real life for fuck sake.
"Time to leave anyway," he said, ignoring my outburst. "I'll be back tomorrow at the same time to give you time to discuss things. Keep in mind if we can't come to an arrangement then you and all your stuff will be out on the street the next day."
We sat and talked long into Friday night, food and everything else forgotten. We slept fitfully, curled up in each other's arms. The warmth of her body reassured me and I hoped mine did the same for her. More talking on Saturday: what could we do, where could we get money from, what could we do if we were kicked out. I could write a chapter on the options, the ludicrous to the impossible, the back and forth and the inevitable realisation. We worked through the stages and ended up at acceptance just as I'm sure Tom had hoped.
We couldn't pay, there was simply no way. If we were made homeless there would be no way back, we didn't have the money to start up again. We were fucked. Well one of us was, and that made my heart hurt. I loved Hannah, her optimism, her charming nature, she was simply a joy to be around. So we accepted that some compromise would need to be made but we hoped we could negotiate terms at least.
