"My landlady Farrukh Teymourzadeh is kind of creepy," Benjamin Charles said to his buddy Toussaint Pierre, as the two young men walked through the Atrium at Carleton University. As usual, the atrium was crowded. A lot of students were coming to and fro, and getting to the campus library was not remotely easy. Still, Benjamin looked a bit too concerned about what was bothering him, and as his best pal, Toussaint tried to help out.
The two young men were as dissimilar as can be, but they'd been best friends for years. Benjamin stood six-foot-one, lean and athletic, with dark brown skin and hair cut short. He wore a long-sleeved, neon-green and loose fitting T-shirt, baggy black pants and black sneakers. In spite of the fact that it was a frosty day in March, the young man refused to wear a jacket. According to Benjamin, spring was too close for that shit...
Toussaint Pierre stood a couple of inches taller than his good friend Benjamin, and was beefy, with darker brown skin, and a thick, stylized Afro. With his round, handsome face, golden brown eyes and dopey-sweet demeanor, Toussaint was often told how much he resembled the rapper Sean Kingston, which bothered the hell out of him. Smart, thoughtful and far less benign than his appearance and behavior would suggest, Toussaint was often the person that Benjamin turned to in his time of need.
"Come on, dude, what does she do that's creepy?" Toussaint asked, and Benjamin shrugged, then gave his buddy the blow-by-blow explanation of what he'd been going through since moving into the room at Birdsong Lane near the Minto Center in the town of Barrhaven, Ontario. It turned out to be a lot more than Toussaint initially expected, to be sure...
"Bro, my landlady is bossy as hell, and she only lets me do laundry once a week, and only in the mornings, I'm not allowed to bring friends over, there's no alcohol allowed in the house, and she gives me that weird stare sometimes," Benjamin said, exasperated. Toussaint nodded understandingly, even though, since he still lived with his parents in Orleans, Ontario, like a proper collegiate Haitian, he couldn't truly relate to Benjamin's predicament.
"Hmm, that does sound extreme, what does she look like?" Toussaint asked, and Benjamin pulled up his iPhone, and typed something on Google. A bunch of names and images came up, and he clicked on one in particular, then held up the phone to his buddy's face. Toussaint looked at the picture, and nodded. The landlady in question, Farrukh, was a smiling, bronze-skinned woman with lively brown eyes and long, curly dark hair.
"Don't let her looks fool you, Farrukh can be a real witch," Benjamin said, and Toussaint nodded thoughtfully. The two young men finally reached the campus library, and headed to the elevators. There were several white girls waiting for the elevator, and upon seeing two young black men coming by, most of them started looking left and right and acting weird, in the manner of passive-aggressive Canadians who wanted to let the brothers know they didn't want them to come too close...
"Benjamin, my friend, this society of ours is full of snakes who think they're slick, leave them to me," Toussaint said with a sly smile, and he looked at the uncomfortable-looking white girls and shrugged. The elevator door opened, and everyone went in. Toussaint and Benjamin went to the fifth floor, to study for their upcoming ( and extremely important ) civil engineering exam.
"Man, I wish I could take things in stride like you," Benjamin said, smiling at Toussaint as they reached their destination. The young men exchanged dap, found their reserved study room and got to work. Their school is a very dramatic place, where there's always something going on, from strikes to passive-aggressive administrators, casual racists, and annoying bozos. Toussaint certainly looked forward to graduating and getting the hell out of Carleton U.
After spending an hour working on engineering stuff, Benjamin went to the washroom, and while he was away, Toussaint used his computer to look up Farrukh Teymourzadeh, the supposed landlady from hell. He checked out her Facebook page, and quickly discovered that she worked for the City of Ottawa as some kind of financial administrator. Oh, and the lady was fifty seven, and had two adult sons, Saad and Ismail. According to her Facebook profile, Farrukh was originally from the City of Kerman, southeastern Iran.
"Hmm, I know what your landlady Farrukh needs, Benji, this woman's profile screams that she needs the D," Toussaint said, laughing, as Benjamin returned from the washroom. Benjamin shook his head, and smiled. Leave it to Toussaint to always be concerned with sex and women. Benjamin was too busy trying to graduate from Carleton University's hard-as-hell civil engineering programme to focus on women. In fact, ever since he split from his ex-girlfriend Chandra six months ago, Benjamin had been flying completely solo...
"Whatever, bro, let's focus on studying," Benjamin replied, and Toussaint grinned, shaking his head. Benjamin was smart and handsome, but understood very little about women. Toussaint decided to do his buddy a favor and help take care of his landlady problem. From Farrukh's profile, Toussaint gleaned that the sexy Persian MILF liked to work out at Movati's gym, and that worked out perfectly since Toussaint had a membership that he seldom used...
A couple of days later, Toussaint went to Movati's gym, and checked out the local ladies. After a while, he spotted Farrukh, who looked good in a red tank top and black Yoga pants. Conventional wisdom told Toussaint to approach her with caution. Women at the gym were weary of horny guys who wanted to check them out, holler at them and maybe hook up with them. The only men the ladies didn't watch out for were the gay guys, who were too busy ogling the very straight men who were ogling the ladies. Nice circle, really.
Toussaint checked out Farrukh, and she shot him a look when she caught him. The situation looked bad, until Toussaint ran into someone he knew, a flamboyant gay Latino guy named Ernesto. Toussaint, who is very comfortable with his masculinity, didn't feel threatened by Ernesto, and greeted the dude by giving him a lengthy hug and shoulder squeeze while a stunned Farrukh looked on.
"Ernesto, mi amigo, looking good, I've missed you," Toussaint said as he pulled Ernesto into a bear hug, and the surprised Ernesto smiled and blushed. The two of them bantered for a bit while Farrukh looked on. Toussaint smiled at Ernesto and pretended not to notice the sexy older Persian lady staring at him. The brother knew exactly what she was thinking. Women were easier to understand than most males realized, that's for damn sure.
