Eric Dinnocenzo - The Tenant Lawyer Read Free Page A

phantoms who flashed in and out of their lives. One day I was doing an intake of a girl of about twenty who was being evicted from public housing because her boyfriend allegedly lived with her as an unauthorized occupant. She denied the allegation, but when I asked her where he lived, she responded that she didn’t know.
    “How do you get in touch with him when you want to see him or talk to him?” I asked.
    “He calls me when he wants to see me.”
    “But how do you get in touch with him? Does he have a phone?”
    “He uses people’s phones.”
    “So you can’t really get in touch with him?”
    “No.”
    This state of affairs amazed me. In contrast, Sara generally always knew where I was and what I was doing. Some guys I knew were resistant to being in that type of relationship, believing that it infringed on their freedom. But I figured that if two people were in a relationship, they should each know what the other person was up to. Anyway, I had no distractions or social activities that made me yearn for freedom away from Sara. I really liked being with her and never tired of it. However, truth be told, sometimes she could be too possessive and too fervent in keeping tabs on me, which I didn’t care for at all, and on occasion we got into arguments about it. “Where were you?” “What were you doing there?” “Why didn’t you let me know?” These were questions that I sometimes got from her that I didn’t think were justified or deserved.
    The previous summer I suggested that we attend couples’ therapy to try to mend our relationship. Our therapist, Eileen, a thin, elegant woman in her late fifties, told us after our second session that we had communication problems. We talked right past one another, not listening to what the other person was saying. We were also quick to interpret each other’s words in more negative terms than they were intended, a major reason why our fights often escalated. About me, she said that I was a “fixer” rather than a “listener,” meaning that when Sara came to me with problems, I didn’t provide her with compassion and understanding but instead would focus on how to fix the situation. That was something that came as a revelation to me. At the same time, I thought that Eileen had a more negative view of our relationship than was warranted. Despite our problems, there was a tangible energy between us that a lot of other couples didn’t have. I could see it in Sara’s eyes sometimes when we engaged in a little back-and-forth teasing; they’d open wide as if a current of electricity were running through her. We had lively conversations and joked around and laughed a lot. We were never bored with one another.
    Eileen tried to help us. She gave us communication exercises to perform at home that required us to sit across from one another holding hands while we each took turns talking about our feelings for five uninterrupted minutes. Admittedly, I ruined the exercises. It simply ate at me to have to sit there quietly and listen to Sara say things about our relationship that I felt were inaccurate or blown out of proportion, and so at times I would interrupt her in order to set the record straight. Afterwards I felt bad for doing that, but then the next time we did the exercises I’d do it again. It really upset Sara.
    The rest of the therapy wasn’t very successful. Eileen kept trying to open us up to each other’s perspective, but after years of arguments and grudges, we were too entrenched in our own separate camps to reach a middle ground. After six months we gave up on therapy altogether.
     
     
    2
    Ov er my two years at legal services I had grown so accustomed to handling eviction cases that they had become routine. The landlord would file a non-payment of rent action, and I would assert sanitary code or security deposit violations, or both, as defenses. At court, the parties would usually reach a settlement requiring the tenant to move out within a few