Passive Aggressive Host Lady

The Bloody End

The day before I began my homestay, I received a form issued by the study abroad program that was filled out by my soon-to-be lady with responses to various screening questions. Her responses were frustratingly short, but I’ll always remember one response in particular. I can’t recollect the exact question, yet what she wrote was, “I want an open and honest dialogue with my student.”

Looking back on my experience, there was no dialogue, just monologue. My lady would essentially reprimand me, and I would nod, promising not to commit such arbitrary offense ever again. Often she would passive-aggressively question my ability to recognize the obvious, such as the universally-accepted fact that in the drying rack, all forks and spoons dry facing up while knives dry facing down. I never talked back or defended myself for fear of the consequences.

As my war with her began with such a blatant contradiction of the “open and honest dialogue,” it was only fitting that it end that way too. During my final days in Brazil, she embarked on a campaign of aggressive cord coiling, snarky comments, and ridiculous requests. 

As I slid a chicken into the oven one day, she quipped, “Is that the only way you know how to cook?! Do you never fry anything?!” First of all, every day she saw me fry the refugee rations of meat she provided me during the semester when she was obligated to cook for me. (I had to fry my own meat since my schedule was “too erratic” for her to freshly prepare food for me.) Secondly, I choose not to fry everything I eat because I desire not to look like my lady. I also prefer not to eat the beans she prepares that are stewed with rolls of fatty pork skin that often still have the animal’s hair attached. I thought this was obvious by the fact that I would spit out and place the skin along the rim of the plate with every portion of beans she fed me.

At the very least, she never again remarked about the high quantity of chicken I consumed as she had a few months ago. I probably reached a low point when she limited me to about four ounces of meat a day. Taking into account the high rent I was paying her that also included two meals per day as well as laundry, this was ridiculous. In order to prevent from going hungry, I would wait until she went to the bathroom, and then I’d tiptoe to the fridge, remove some frozen meat, finally scurrying back to my bedroom to defrost the meat to be cooked after she went to sleep. Fearful that she’d barge into my room and find the smuggled meat (considering she’d often raid my room and rifle through my belongings), I’d hide it in the least likely of places: my Portuguese class folder. At the expense of my verb conjugation worksheets, I was the Robin Hood of frozen chicken cutlets.

Still, even in our last few minutes together, my lady couldn’t just hold her tongue and be civil. As I was planning to relax for my 16-hour flight and layover back from Brazil, I decided to wear loose-fitting clothes so I could sleep. I was specifically wearing a soccer jersey, basketball shorts, and flip flops. I was also entering a warm climate back in the Northern Hemisphere and didn’t want to sweat my way off the tarmac once I landed. Nonetheless, upon catching a glimpse of me, she shrieked in a drunken stupor, “You’re wearing that to the airport?!”

She then proceeded to summarize her true opinion of me in a concise, ten-minute lecture. By not wearing nice clothes for my brutal trip home, I was simultaneously disrespecting humanity and forfeiting potential business opportunities that might emerge at the airport or on the plane with better dressed travelers. I was also just plain unattractive. I offered to change clothes, but she scoffed that it was too late. She continued giving me “advice,” repeating over and over, “I’m just saying.” My lack of investment in my appearance was going to cause me professional and personal hardship. Fuck if I cared. I hope she felt victorious. I was going home, and that was all that mattered. I will never see her again. I was liberated from a tyrant. I am finally free.

Oh yeah, lady, by the way, if you ever find this blog, remember that rag you thought was my washcloth? That you touched and cleaned many times? Well, I never use a washcloth.

The Battle Rages on

A couple days ago my lady left me this beauty of a passive-aggressive note:

It translates to (preserving the formatting):

ELLYOT YOU CAN

EAT THE MANIOC

AND CAULIFLOWER THAT

IS IN THE OVEN.

IF YOU WANT - ?!

BUT NOT ALL OF IT -

HE HE HE.

Okay, let’s unpack this little doozy piece by piece. First of all, no one has ever misspelled my name like that. Not in any language. The letter “Y” doesn’t even exist in Portuguese. Second, the “IF YOU WANT” followed by a dash, question mark, then exclamation point reeks of alcohol more than the floor of a frat house on a Sunday morning. Finally, she goes full force with the last two lines. The “HE HE HE” is rubbing salt in my wounds. Yeah, I ate her manioc, and it sucked.

It’s ridiculous that she can’t just be civil in the last few days that I’m here. Instead, she’s been barraging me with petty remarks about my cooking ineptitude and how I unnecessarily forgo taste for healthiness. I deeply regret not frying or stewing in lard everything that I eat. On top of that, she claimed she was healthier than me. She smoked the majority of her life, drinks heavily, gained 40 pounds in a year, and walks a couple blocks to the market once a week. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the paragon of youth and vitality.

I think I might have developed a stress disorder from living with her. Every time she enters the apartment, my pulse jumps and my breathing quickens. My only respite from her wrath is the comfort I get from the fact that today my lady would have received her new exchange student. Yet, by the grace of God that will never happen. Not now. Not in the future. It feels good to know that I’m the first and last victim. The tyranny stops with me. Nonetheless, from what I can tell, my lady is unfazed, which is disappointing. Still, I’ve effectively bankrupted her of 900 dollars a month in income that she would’ve undoubtedly spent on beer. She’ll never know it was me.

Bathroom Fascism

Shampoo drips like blood onto the shower floor as toiletries invade precious counter space. A damp shower mat and water splatter from washed hands never dry. A charging electric toothbrush sucks a salary’s-worth of electricity from the wall. This is the horror movie that flashes across my lady’s eyes every time she enters the bathroom. She repeatedly lives the shower scene from “Psycho” where she herself is stabbed repeatedly. Who’s the monster? Why me, of course.

Just like the movie, my lady’s perception is pure, Hitchcockian fiction. The reality is that I’m persecuted in a totalitarian bathroom dictatorship controlled by none other than Benito Musso-lady, Slobodan Mi-lady-vic, Joseph Sta-lady. I can do no right within the tiled lavatory walls of Apartment #83.

Despite my above-equal rent payment, I am a second-class citizen, especially in the bathroom where my lady consolidates her authoritarian rule. After persistently breaking the unwritten, “common sense” laws of bathrooms that are universally adhered from Alaska to Australia and Zagreb to Zimbabwe, I can now reveal the Bathroom Ten Commandments (Moses must have accidentally dropped these on the way down from the mountain.) for anyone as stupid as I am:

1. There is no room for my towel in the bathroom. I must hang my wet towel on the chair I sit on in my bedroom. My lady and her boyfriend’s towels and clothing may occupy all hooks or bars for hanging. My lady’s towel must hang over the shower door (regardless of any other available places for hanging) so I can conveniently remove and replace it after every shower I take.

2. I must store all of my toiletries in a shoe box under the sink while most of the counter remains clear.

3. My lady will only change my towel after seven days of use. Note: Once my study abroad program ended, the towel-changing interval has been amended to never.

4. I may not step onto the runner in front of the shower after I bathe. Instead, I must take the rag resembling a washcloth off the hook that is inside the shower and use it as a shower mat.

5. I shall never charge my electric toothbrush since it consumes hundreds of dollars in power monthly. Note: My lady’s TV in her bedroom may be left on every night while she sleeps. TVs utilize a fraction of the electricity of toothbrushes and are thus to be ignored.

6. I may not allow water to drip from my hands to the counter between hand washing and hand drying. Air drying and blowing on my hands are acceptable options.

7. I must not turn the recycled, almost empty, shampoo bottle upside-down in order to facilitate the flow of shampoo. Doing so will lead to unacceptable, one milliliter drippings on the shower tiles, which are caused by the broken bottle into which my lady pours my shampoo rations.

8. My loufa sponge must hang on a hook which is to be covered by my host lady’s boyfriend’s hair dying cap even though I use my loufa sponge daily while he uses the hair dying cap monthly.

9. I must sit down on the permanently wet toilet seat which is likely moist from either my host lady’s boyfriend’s poor aim or his penchant for taking a shit immediately after a shower.

10. I shall tolerate the permanently open toilet paper trash can, which has a functioning lid. Note: my lady acknowledges that the toilet is able to flush toilet paper but insists on throwing out toilet paper in the trash can.

Any violation of these commandments is punishable by passive aggressive remarks included but not limited to: “How did you not know this?! Even my boyfriend knows this, and he’s an idiot!”

Victory?

I was hoping to spend my last few days of my study abroad program, well… counting down my last few days of my study abroad program. Knowing that I was planning to remain in Brazil for another six weeks through the middle of August, I would exuberantly move out and find my own tiny apartment for the rest of the time. I would never have to see my lady ever again!

In a city of 20 million, you’d think it’d be easy to rent a small apartment for myself. My only requirements were that it cost under $1,000 per month and have a modicum of included furniture. No. I scoured the internet and talked to people, but I couldn’t find a single furnished apartment at a reasonable price.

My only option, and the one my parents pushed for in the name of security, was to stay with my lady until August. There were two major problems with this.

First, she was already receiving a ridiculously high amount to house me, 1,400 reais (about $900) per month. That might not seem like a lot, but for the little she offers me and for being an apartment located where it is, it’s a rip-off. So, I was hoping to negotiate this down by forgoing the two “meals” she provided me per day. Working against this possibility was my lady’s negotiating ability, which she has honed as a self-described real estate agent, after having taken a couple classes at a local college. (In one of the hottest markets in the world, she hasn’t sold a single thing in the year since her certification.) She’s a fierce bargainer, given that I hear her yelling at people on the phone all day over her cut in various deals, which never seem to come to fruition. One day, she caught me off guard about my plans to stay with her, and imposed (not proposed) the monthly rate of 1,000 reais without food. I was just sort of shocked, and I neither accepted nor rejected her price, but hesitation was all she needed to declare it a binding contract. The difference between 1,400 reais with food and 1,000 reais without food implied that she spent 400 reais per month on the slop she fed me. (I always had to cook my own meat because my eating schedule was “unpredictable.”) That’s complete bullshit. Anyways, to demonstrate the fair market value of my rent, my other friend is staying with his lady for 900 reais per month in a nicer apartment in a nicer neighborhood, including food!

Second, she was expecting to host another student beginning at the end of July, which would force me to sleep on the couch for my remaining two weeks or move out. Both of these were inconveniences I was dreading even more than seeing her face every day. But, here’s the kicker: it was never definite that she’d be receiving another student. Last week I asked the program director about the probability of this. It turns out that my official evaluation of my lady scared the program director enough to not give my lady another student! Shhh…. don’t tell anyone. What’s so beautiful about this is that my lady has absolutely no clue.

What did I write on my evaluation that made this happen? Well, at the time that I was writing it, my plan was to give my lady a decent evaluation so that she would host another student. This would allow me an excuse to leave without any consequences. If she’d have another student occupying her other bedroom by late July, I planned to justify moving out with the fact that I’d have to leave eventually. Why not move immediately so I’d have adequate time to adjust to my new place instead of moving just before when the new student was to come.

Despite my complex plan, I still briefly mentioned her drinking habit in the evaluation. Once my plans ended up changing, it turned out those few words guaranteed me a spot in her apartment for as long as I needed. The program director was convinced that my lady was unfit to host another student.

Still, the best part is singing in my head, “I know something you don’t know…” whenever I see my lady. I’ve prevented her from receiving thousands of dollars in future income from torturing exchange students. She might even have to drink shittier beer now, or maybe just not drink so much. Oh, the pain! Have I won the war… or just the battle?

The Facebook Response

In the middle of June, I left Brazil for over a week to go to Peru. I thought I’d be leaving behind all my host-lady-related problems. However, shortly into my trip, I received the following Facebook message:

Olá, Elliot! 
Minha mãe me falou de você. Não sei por que, sua mensagem só entrou agora! Você ainda está no Brasil? Ela me disse que você já estava para voltar…
Beijos
Roberta

That roughly translates to:

Hey, Elliot!
My mom told me about you. I don’t know why I just got your message! Are you still in Brazil? She said you were about to leave…
Kisses
Roberta

I received this 11 days after I had sent mine to her, so I justifiably began to worry. I had previously thought I was in the clear, hoping that “Roberta” (Putting her name in quotes feels right for some reason and because it’s an ugly name. (Sorry, Roberta.)) was a sane enough person to realize the dim prospects of our forced intercourse. Which would of course lead to marriage, lots of babies, and even more dogs and cats. Barf. Of course, all of these things would occur at gunpoint, especially the dogs and cats part. Literally, my host lady would show up at the door of our white picket fence house, pointing an AK 47 at me while throwing kitten grenades.

I know that makes no sense to anyone except me, but seriously this “Roberta” character is obsessed with saving dying puppies and shit. She posts pictures of abused animals all the time on Facebook and tags every single one of her friends. Yes, she’s that girl, errr… woman. Okay, I realize I’m being hard on her because really this isn’t her fault, assuming she even exists. It all boils down to my host lady trying to control my life and ruin me. As long as I don’t know what her motive is, I’m clearly losing this war.

Luckily, in the three weeks since I saw that message, “Roberta” hasn’t sent anything else, and she hasn’t been mentioned. This is good, but also bad. I’m implementing my strategy of “do nothing and hope for the best,” which has so far worked. Although, there’s ample time until I leave for this situation to blow up. My nightmares are filled with disaster scenarios.

For example, what’s really weird is that recently my host lady has been asking me to use my Facebook account to “get in touch with a childhood friend.” First of all, what’s up with the use of other people’s online identities for personal business? Second, I saw her making a Facebook account a few months ago. Is this some kind of ploy to forge a message to “Roberta?” For the time being, I’m continuing my “do nothing and hope for the best” strategy on this front. This is too suspicious.

Finally, I put Robby girl on limited profile on Facebook. That way she can never see this blog. I hope those aren’t my famous last words.

The Sexy Present

My original plan for my host lady’s birthday was quite humanitarian. I was plotting to completely change tactics, switching to the “kill her with kindness” approach. I was going give her a framed picture of us, an artisan jewelry box, and a card. Over time, the amount I planned to spend on these gifts gradually decreased as I increasingly despised her. When her birthday arrived, I no longer planned to get her anything.

The day started splendidly for me. I left the apartment at 1 pm, and she still hadn’t woken up because she was sleeping off the previous night’s pre-birthday beer-fest. I began to imagine the possibility of a magical day in which I could completely avoid her and her scolding. Hours later, I texted her a happy birthday message, hoping that would be sufficient. Later on that night, some friends were messing with my phone and decided to sabotage my hopes by sending her a lewd, sexually suggestive text. I prayed my host lady would be too plastered to take note of the text, considering she never responds to my texts anyways.

By the time I came home, she wasn’t back yet. The possibility of the perfect day came close to being a near reality. However, right before the clock struck midnight, she, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s cousin/her friend busted through the door. From behind my bedroom door, I heard a mix of laughs, sobs, and yells. Given that she hadn’t responded to my “Happy birthday!” text, I knew I had to enter the living room to wish her a happy birthday in person. Otherwise, I risked invoking her rage for not acknowledging her 48th year on this planet.

“Onde está o meu presente gostoso?!” (“Where’s my sexy present?!”) she barked, drunker than I had ever seen her. Clearly she had seen the text sent from my phone. She kept pestering me, insisting she was owed a “sexy present.” With her boyfriend there, this was quite uncomfortable for me. I explained the situation, hung my head, and went back to my room.

On a side note, revealing her extreme inebriation, my host lady recounted how a few minutes earlier they all were riding the building elevator to get to the apartment. Suddenly, the elevator stopped, and she panicked. The elevator was below the floor by a bit, but she still opened the door to escape the clearly non-emergency situation. In her rush to free herself, she tripped, falling flat on her forehead. As she told this story, she intermittently drank from a glass of beer while nursing a quarter-inch-protruding bump on her forehead by holding the same glass of beer up to it.

The next time I walked out of my room to get some water, her boyfriend’s cousin caught me off-guard with the question, “What kind of women do you like?” I thought they had beaten the joke to death already, but she was actually referring to another subject. Trying to be impartial and not provoke an argument, I replied that I didn’t have a type. She then went on to tell me all about her daughter, “a gorgeous blond with a perfect smile.” I was doing my best to be polite, wishing to leave Brazil without an arranged marriage consummated at gunpoint.

This woman then proceeded to pull out old, wallet photos of her daughter to which I graciously repeated, “muito bonita.” When she deemed those weren’t sufficient, she made me get her my laptop, so she could enter her Facebook account to show me more pictures. We flipped through various pictures of her daughter as she explained how her daughter, 33 years old, got divorced from an abusive husband six months ago. Now the daughter is battling depression while enrolling in theater classes and taking care of three dogs and three cats. It’s okay though because she’s “a really great person.” How did this woman know the profile of my perfect mate?! Of course I was ecstatic to enter into a romantic relationship with her daughter! 

I thanked the woman and logged out of her Facebook account, managing to return to my room. I was hoping to sleep off this brewing catastrophe. Unfortunately, I needed to head to the bathroom to brush my teeth before bed, yet when I did so, I was ambushed by my livid host lady and my future mother-in-law. They chastised me for not getting the obvious hint that I was supposed to use that woman’s Facebook account to send a message to her daughter in order to arrange our first date. I thought it was a universal principle that you use your own internet profiles to act on your own behalf, but apparently not here. Without ever explicitly commanding, “Have sex with my daughter!” they both clearly meant that. I apologized for the misunderstanding and crafted the world’s most awkward Facebook message to this woman’s daughter:

Olá Roberta,

Tudo bem? Estou aqui em São Paulo com a tua mãe e ela fala que a gente tem vários interesses comuns. Ela sugeriu que eu te mandasse uma mensagem para entrar em contato com você. Sou um americano e alugo um quarto no apartamento duma amiga da tua mãe enquanto estou estudando Relações Internacionais na PUC. Espero falar com você logo.

Beijos,

Elliot

Here’s the translation:

Hi Roberta,

How’s it going? I’m here in Sao Paulo with your mom, and she says that we have many common interests. She suggested that I send you this message to get in contact with you. I’m an American, and I rent a room in the apartment of one of her friends while I’m studying International Relations at PUC. I hope to talk with you soon.

Kisses,

Elliot

Just as I was snoozing off to thoughts of forced sexual servitude, I was gracefully awoken by my host lady who thought it was important to ask me, “Did you eat my rice? Why did you eat my rice? That was my rice!” How sweet of her. Happy birthday, and good night.

Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance

My host lady is craftier than I had originally thought. Not only is she using blunt force tactics, but she’s stealthily gaining intel on me to stifle my passive-aggressive defense campaign.

Exhibit A: After I had photographed her original note that officially sparked this debacle, I folded it up and placed it out of sight underneath an electronic appliance in order to take better pictures of it later. The next afternoon, the hard evidence was gone. She had to have unfolded her note in order to distinguish it from the other folded pieces of paper on my desk and figure out which papers to throw out. As such, she must have wondered why I had folded it up and hid it to begin with. She has to know something strange is going on. As a nice “go fuck yourself,” she took the liberty of rearranging my desk and hiding away various important papers while she was at it, rubbing salt on my wounds.

Exhibit B: I spotted her fumbling her way through the Facebook sign-up page, pecking at the keyboard with her index fingers. She thinks she can spy on me on the internet, huh? Boom! Privacy settings changed.

Exhibit C: Numerous times she has busted into my room without knocking under the pretense of getting some clothes for her live-in boyfriend, which she stores in my closet. Often I’ve been writing on this very blog. She claims to only have rudimentary English skills, but what if she’s lying? Even so, she could’ve seen the pictures and become suspicious. I could delete the blog, but if I die I need proof of her atrocities to be made public.

As long as I know she knows, I can stay a step ahead of her. Yet the moment she can spy without me knowing, I’ve lost the war.

All Hell on the Western Front

I’m grateful to my host lady for providing me with nightly salads in such a vegetable-deprived country. However, her enterprising self has developed a time-saving, assembly line process for making my salad, which does take some of the love out of it. She has adopted the method of making in bulk a type of dressing out of tomatoes, onions, vinegar, and olive oil.

I’m supposed to use a portion of the dressing every time I eat a salad, but the correct volume of dressing is wildly variable. I have theories it is linked to the price of a volatile commodity, maybe crude oil, or pork bellies. I’m always scolded for my failure to guess the correct amount, especially now that she uses a long, flat container as opposed to the square one to store the dressing.

Today, I got home and she urged me to pour the remaining salad dressing on the salad, even though we were hours from normal salad-eating time. I figured this was a test of my messiness, so I carefully poured the contents of the container on the salad as she eagerly observed me. I spotted a flicker of sadistic pleasure in her eyes. No! It’s an ambush! All units retreat! Retreat!

She immediately chastised me for committing a grave offense. She quipped that if I weren’t so lazy, I would use a spoon in order to dispense equal parts solids (tomatoes and onions) and liquids (oil and vinegar). That way the first time I used the container I wouldn’t pour out all the liquid and leave just the dry solids for the next time. Of course! This was an amateur battle decision on my part. My enemy had opened fire on a new front: food. She took my ill-prepared troops by surprise.

I’m scrabbling for a battle plan. Do I rearrange her refrigerator by size of item? Do I wash her dishes before she can? No aspect of my life is off-limits. She’s fighting dirty. The Geneva Convention has become irrelevant like the Code of Hammurabi. Until my scientists can develop the Passive-Aggressive Atomic Bomb (PAAB), my men will drop like flies. I need a miracle.