I Am Your Parking Lot Landlord
I am your parking lot landlord. My voice is an unfiltered cigarette. I only yell.
I lord over an asphalt patch covered in sad stains and weeds. It’s disgusting. I love it. I hate you.
My favorite experiences are ones that make you feel angry-sad. Family therapy, getting cheated on, delayed flights — so angry, so sad, so good. Nothing can make you more angry-sad than my parking lot, where you pay criminally inflated prices to leave your car in the same shit hole of a place for a few hours. If you don’t feel angry that you paid so much for so little and sad because of how physically ugly the parking lot is, then I don’t sleep at night — and I always sleep like a fat, disgusting baby.
I’ve designed every part of your parking lot experience to make you feel angry and sad. My pricing practices are heinous. I raise prices randomly, egregiously, and only once you’ve already parked for the day. I look sticky.
The days that I raise prices are called Taco Tuesdays. Not because they happen on Tuesdays — they never do — but because I can buy all of the tacos after charging you more money to park on my sweet, sweet patch of soiled urban blight. When I see you, I yell, “It’s Taco Tuesday,” and I experience sexual pleasure at how deeply frustrated this makes you. I sweat constantly, especially when I’m not moving.
When it’s not Taco Tuesday, I empty your car’s windshield wiper fluid. It tastes sweet.
Once I have a belly full of windshield wiper fluid, I like nothing more than using a jackhammer to create enormous potholes in my own parking lot because fuck your tires. I also sell tires and they’re absolute trash. You will buy tires from me only once and it will be the saddest point in your life. My face is a greasy paper bag.
I love putting flyers on your windshield. The flyers are all as wet as possible, and they will never come off of your windshield. The flyers are what I call ‘anti-coupons.’ They look like parking tickets but are just reminders that, “I never discount parking,” and they always include phrases like, “Have a shitty day.” This makes you so angry, so sad. I smell like a hot, ripe banana.
Thanks to my parking lot’s shitty equipment, a line of cars forms behind you every time you enter and leave my lot. When this happens, everyone hates you — and themselves. I double-charge your credit card as you leave, and you get piss-fuck angry when you find out. It makes your spouse cry like that one time you tried separating for a month. This makes me believe in an omnipotent god. I am that god.
One time, I hired an out-of-work bridge troll named Vinny Pigeons to loiter in my parking lot. He exposed himself to customers so frequently that I had to promote him, and he now oversees parking lot operations. He excels in this position by moving your car so that you can’t find it at the end of a repulsively long day. This makes you so irate and so depressed that you contemplate your life decisions, like having fallen in love and having started a family. You misdirect your explosive rage at the ticket machine on the way out and I sue you for damages and my emotional pain and suffering. You will never love anything again.
When I die, I will have my ashes spread across my parking lot and I will charge you for the privilege of parking on my remains.
I am your parking lot landlord. Have a shitty day.
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