Warning: Do Not Read This Story While Eating
Flashback #2: It was 25 years ago, when Maine rock legend (and now PhD) Darien Brahms and I cleaned Portland's nastiest apartments.
[[Author’s note: Busy producing the forthcoming true crime pod Fake Shaman, I’m re-publishing some of my pre-Internet journalism archive. This 2001 piece is very sad, mostly, and features the remarkable and iconic Maine musician I call Brahmsie. This piece for the now-defunct Casco Bay Weekly was illustrated by the gifted artist, musician and impressario Patrick Corrigan.]]
Content warning: DO NOT CONSUME FOOD WHILE READING.
A firsthand look at the disgusting life of a professional cleaner
Originally published in Casco Bay Weekly on May 17, 2001.
Human feces was smeared on the walls of the bathroom in Apartment 666. Cat shit was piled high under the claw-foot tub. Mold had invaded every crevice and gasket of the unplugged refrigerator, and small, black bugs with wings had taken over the open icebox. Grease covered the kitchenette. The ceiling tiles were stained yellow from years of nicotine. The windows hadn’t been opened in weeks or washed in decades. And you don’t want to know about the floors.
We had eight hours to get this pigsty clean. The boss man was selling the building, and Apartment 666 needed to be sanitized before he could close the deal. The office warned us the studio in downtown Portland was in tough shape. Apparently the tenant — a middle-aged man — was ill. He had been moved out via ambulance, we were told, and taken somewhere else, probably to die. The office usually doesn’t know all the details.
Daunting as the filth was, we had a strategy. First, we pre-cleaned the apartment; that is, we got the fridge, tub, toilet, sinks and countertops clean enough so we could institute the second part of our plan: a heavy-duty, detailed cleansing to finish the job. It’s a simple methodology, and it works. Trust me. My work partner, Darien, and I are professional apartment cleaners. We know what we’re doing.
Darien decided to clean the bathroom. That surprised me. The general rule was she tackled the kitchen and I sterilized the bathrooms. It’s fairer that way, because sometimes the bathroom is nastier, sometimes the kitchen. It all comes out in the wash, though. Even now, I don’t understand why she chose to challenge the filthiest toilet I have ever seen.
The job took the entire day. We wore respirators and rubber gloves and used gallons of bleach. After hours of gagging and scrubbing, 666 became habitable. The boss still says he owes us beers for accomplishing that monumental task.
Darien and I clean up after people’s lives. I’m not being dramatic. As cleaners, our role is to purify and disinfect, to ensure new tenants don’t find so much as a hair left by previous occupants. The toughest apartments are the ones where the former renter leaves all his or her possessions behind. That usually means something bad has happened: death, drugs, arrest, or worse. We can only guess.
We work for a growing Portland property management company owned by someone I’ll call Mr. Boss. He believes in renting clean, safe and comfortable apartments to nice people. Mr. Boss and his investors buy beautiful old buildings on the peninsula. When the current tenants vacate, his employees do everything necessary to make the apartment attractive and rentable. That could mean a complete overhaul or just painting and minor repairs. But every apartment needs cleaning.
Countless times, we’ve emptied refrigerators of rotting food and removed dirty dishes and pans from the kitchen sink. We wander these apartments with large trash bags, picking up debris. We fill the bags with underwear, clothes, letters, pills, bills, pay stubs, journals, photographs, books, music, diplomas, stuffed animals, sex toys, family Bibles and other remnants of life. We throw away lumpy pillows and mattresses wrapped with stained sheets. And then we start to clean.
Maybe we should donate some of this loot to charity. We’ve thought about it. But the personal belongings of such tragic figures might be contaminated.
Besides, it’s easier for us not to have to decide whether it’s garbage or Goodwill.
Sometimes, when the job gets really bad, I remind myself it could be worse. I don’t have to clean up after bloody corpses.
Investigative cleaners
You may know Darien Brahms from her career as a local rock star or from her work as the guitar-playing chanteuse of the popular Latin lounge quartet, the Munjoy Hill Society. But to me, she’s Brahmsie, my cleaning partner.
We’ve been friends for years. Twelve months ago, in the midst of a severe financial crisis brought on by my inability to land a professional position in the dot-com, media, advertising or any other world, she hooked me up with a long-term, freelance cleaning job with her employer. And in the interest of full journalistic disclosure, I’ve earned a little over $9,000 (after taxes) for approximately 1,000 hours of labor.
The job has several positive features. I don’t have to wear a tie. The hours are flexible. There is little heavy lifting. I get to work with Brahmsie. Other than that, cleaning sucks.
This is hard-core cleaning. Sure, sometimes all we have to do is vacuum and mop, wipe down the appliances and wash a couple of windows. But more frequently, we’re faced with toilets that require hourlong scrubbings and bathtubs so defiled I could spend half a day and use a full can of Comet and still not make a dent in the scum.
We’ve encountered ovens that have taken over eight hours of labor - and several applications of strong cleaning chemicals, plus an inordinate amount of scraping and elbow grease — just so we could feel comfortable with the idea of the new tenants baking themselves a chicken dinner.
Sometimes humor is the only way to make it through the revolting messes we find ourselves in. For example, Brahmsie once discovered a swatch of what looked to be human hair inside an oven.
“Why?” she asked.
“Perhaps he was cooking ahead,” I quipped.
But often the findings are so intense and sad, no joking is allowed.
Consider, for instance, our recent work on a spacious two-bedroom. All we knew was the tenants broke their lease and moved out unexpectedly. It was a nice pad: hardwood floors and high ceilings, close to a beautiful park. The place wasn’t trashed, and other than a dirty cat litter box, they didn’t leave much behind. Or so we thought.
I started in the bathroom. I’m a Coast Guard-trained toilet scrubber and it’s a rare person who can clean a bowl to my professional specifications. The majority don’t even try. This fixture was dirtier than most. The film on the front of the bowl was thick and nasty. The sides — where the toilet bolts to the floor - were covered in hair and other substances.
I was spraying the mildewed tub with bleach when Brahmsie called me into the kitchen.
“I found these in a drawer,” she said. She was leafing through a stack of papers. This was a common routine for us. We always want to know who these people were. The job went by faster if you learned their stories.
We read the papers.
Apparently, the woman miscarried. The first clue was a sympathy card. Then there were insurance forms and doctors receipts. There was a holiday card from her lover and a snapshot of them standing with a friend. It was understandable why the toilet and tub were a mess. Who can clean during times of utter grief?
No Corpses Please
We never handle dead bodies.
But we’re still surrounded by death and dying, exposed to the grief of strangers, grief that would otherwise remain unknown and unimportant to us.
Like undertakers, we dispose of strangers’ remains.
There was the girl who overdosed on a party drug and died in a nice one-bedroom with views of oak trees. The boyfriend allegedly was the dealer and he got locked up. Two weeks later, we were sent to clean the apartment. Apparently, someone had come by and taken some of her personal effects. But no one opened any windows or took care of the detritus left behind by the tragedy.
The place smelled musty, but not like death.
Imagine the condition of your kitchen after two weeks if you had suddenly disappeared while partying at home on a Friday night.
There were two previously frozen pizzas in the oven. Moldy dishes were stacked in the sink. Half-empty beers lined the countertops. The ashtrays were full of old cigarette butts. We cleaned and cleaned and listened to the radio, trying not to concentrate on the sadness of the scene.
Together, we removed the deathbed. We dragged it to the Dumpster and unceremoniously heaved it onto a pile of anonymous garbage.
While sweeping the bedroom floor, I found over a dollar in change. I also found and took a metal ashtray that looked like it was made in a prison shop class.
It’s solid steel, about 3 ½ inches in diameter and personalized.
“Kingpin” is stamped on the front side. “THC & TLC” is stamped on the back. The slots for the smokes are cut in three different sizes: blunt, cigarette and joint. I imagine this belonged to the man in jail, the boyfriend of the dead woman.
Call me a grave robber, but now I will never forget her.
Angelica’s Ashes
Some places are full of stuff, but nothing of value. Some apartments are so disgusting, you wonder how anyone could call them home. And some scenarios are so disturbing, you obsess about people you will never know.
Word from the office was that the lady living in the small two-bedroom above the pizza shop had left town. Apparently, she abandoned her two children. The state got involved, and the kids ended up with relatives in Portland. The mother, if you can call her that, now lives down south.
The apartment was paid for by a government program. The rules said the rental was for the woman and her two kids only.
But we found evidence of another adult living there. And we found countless signs of unhappiness. The woman had been a tenant for just a couple of months. In fact, we had cleaned the pad before she moved in. But she’d trashed the joint and then left everything behind.
We filled over 20 industrial-size trash bags with the remains of this family. Pots and pans, foodstuffs of all sorts, toiletries, toys, baseball cards, coloring books, video tapes, clothes and unopened registered letters from the Department of Human Services went right into the trash. No one was coming back.
Of course, we examined every item, searching for answers as to how or why this had happened. The son — probably an early teen — filled pages of notebooks with doodles and graffiti tags. He’d scrawled the name of a certain girl countless times.
On the wall of his little sister’s room hung a combination backpack and doll. It was the character Angelica from “Rug Rats.” The doll’s arms acted as straps, and it had a zippered pouch on the back. I heard the jangle of coins. I opened the pouch and found a couple of dollars in dimes, nickels and pennies.
Then I flipped the doll over.
The right eyeball was a piece of burned and melted plastic, as if someone had used a cigarette on Angelica’s eye to prove a point.
I called for Brahmsie.
We still had hours of cleaning before the apartment was empty of catastrophe and trauma. We cried. We went outside to have a smoke. Then we started again, filling trash bags with the relics of a family. Initially, I’d thought it was disgraceful the way the mom left. Now, I’m not sure of anything.
Welcome to the Cosmopolitan
The Cosmo is Mr. Boss’ largest real estate endeavor. It’s a downtown apartment building with about 75 units. Solid and brick and built about a century ago, the Cosmo has the feel of an old-time, big-city building. The spacious front lobby, tiled and with a huge glass doorway, would be considered wasteful in more modern construction.
Before Mr. B bought it, the Cosmo was a mess.
The previous owners let the place go to seed. Twenty apartments on the fourth floor were decaying and vacant. The former maintenance staff was either lazy or ill-equipped to deal with such a massive structure.
Several units had issues with what we call “tiny tenants,” a euphemism for cockroaches.
Then Mr. B’s renovation posse went to work. The transformation was amazing. The apartments, both studios and one-bedrooms, are now cool and retro, with high ceilings and glossy hardwood floors. Some have great views of the cityscape, while others have glimpses of the harbor. The fourth floor is completely rented.
The rest of the building, however, is still in transition. I should point out that Mr. Boss is not a heartless landlord. He didn’t raise the rents to force the Cosmo’s old tenants out. But as the residents leave on their own, Mr. B’s gang renovates so a hipster can move in.
Most times the apartments needed serious rehab. The plumbing was always a mess, and all the tubs needed showers installed. In several units, we scrubbed what appeared to be yellow walls until the nicotine disappeared and they turned white. Then the walls were repainted. We cleaned up porn, colostomy bags, old pies, dead roaches, diarrhea-splattered bathrooms and other horrors too terrible to mention.
Perhaps the saddest job was cleaning out the small studio of a sweet old lady. Brahmsie had talked to the woman several times in the past and liked her. But now the lady, who was probably in her late 80s, was gone, shipped off to a nursing home.
We weren’t really cleaning. Our instructions were to empty the apartment so the renovators could do their work. Someone said the old lady had lived in the Cosmo for over 30 years. It took less than 30 minutes to remove her leftover belongings.
We lugged her box spring and mattress, covered in a rubber sheet, to the attic. We did the same with her easy chair, a small bureau, a lamp and a night-stand. We threw out an ancient clock radio.
The apartment, a small studio, was spotless. This lady wasn’t a pig. She was just old and alone. Maybe she really needed to be in a nursing home.
On our way out, we noticed the wallpaper high in the corner of the room had peeled back a couple of feet. You could tell it had been that way for years. The dangling, yellowed wallpaper made the room seem more rundown than it actually was.
I can’t remember which one of us started crying first.
Then there was the Cosmo apartment formerly inhabited by a young woman — probably in her early 20s. We never met her, but she left everything behind. And I mean everything. So we got to know her pretty well.
I remember sitting on the floor in the corner of her room, reading her mail. Actually, I was reading letters - from her to a boy. - that had been returned by the post office. She wanted to know why the phone numbers he had given her didn’t work.
She wanted to know where he was and what he was doing.
Then she shared the news of her life. She had a job at a Portland restaurant. It was summer and the weather had been spectacular. She was really hoping that someday she would become a professional tennis player. She talked about her birth dad dying, how she didn’t feel much because she thought of her adoptive dad as her real father.
She didn’t mention the empty prescription bottles of OxyContin we found scattered around the apartment. I guess when you’re using the powerful painkiller, you don’t write about it in letters to boys who’ve slept with you and never called back.
We threw out a tired mattress and sheets. We disposed of dishes, shampoo, underwear, shirts, shorts, skirts and a dried bouquet of flowers that reminded me of a high school prom. Brahmsie took home a pair of jeans.
I think about this girl often. Why did she leave in such a hurry? Where did she go? Is she OK?
I’ll never know.
Cleanliness is next to…
Please don’t think Brahmsie and I spend all our days tearfully mourning the lives of the people we clean up after. Only the most distressing apartments make us cry. The rest of the time, we laugh in order to distract each other from the disgusting.
Our favorite joke is a long-running routine called “Christian Cleaners.” It’s a religious radio talk show starring Brother Crash and Sister Darien. We discuss the dirty devil and how his evil minions have taken over certain apartments in Portland.
We say things like, “Clean unto others as you would want them to clean unto you,” and make points about cleaning techniques by quoting Scripture. We ask listeners to send money so we can buy bleach, scrub brushes, sponges and “sanitized for your protection” toilet-bowl bands for unfortunate, poor and grubby children across America.
We have to crack jokes.
Otherwise, we’d both go nuts.
Our problems, though, are more than psychological. There are health risks associated with the job. I cough a lot more these days. I’m a smoker, but I’m sure the heavy amounts of bleach I use in confined spaces have affected my lungs.
Brahmsie has suffered more.
It happened in the cat lady’s apartment, a small studio in a struggling neighborhood.
We knew she was mentally ill and had a case-worker. She also had over 20 cats, and the place reeked of urine and shit. When she finally moved out, the cats were taken away from her. Too late, however, to make a difference in the condition of her apartment. The appliances, cupboards and floor all stunk of piss.
Our job was to try and remove the stench. I started by emptying the bathtub of cat feces. The company was hoping the kitchen could be saved by a heavy-duty scrubbing of the linoleum floors. Brahmsie did her best, but the foul smell had permeated every-thing. We told the office it was hopeless.
We went back a couple of days later. The place smelled even worse. The scrubbing had released more stench. I peeked into the bathroom and was shocked to discover more piles of cat shit in the tub.
A cat was still living in the apartment.
We searched and searched, but couldn’t find the animal. Then we started to demolish the place. We tore out cabinets. We pulled up countertops. And we found the little, emaciated, black cat hiding on top of the dishwasher, beneath the counter. An hour later, after the frightened feline attempted countless escapes, we captured the kitty in a cardboard box and brought it to the Animal Refuge League.
A few days later, a red splotch broke out on Brahmsie’s chin. It got bigger and bigger and raw and crusty. It began oozing yellow pus. Finally she went to the doctor.
The diagnosis: impetigo. A possible cause?
Exposure to cat urine.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Brahmsie had a big rock show the following week.
And a TV news crew was going to be there to shoot footage for a future story on her.
Let me say this: She is a beautiful woman and I love her. But that oozing sore was absolutely disgusting.
There are many more sad and strange stories, including the one about the poisoned cockroaches that took a week to die. Or the man who would get drunk on bottles of pre-mixed Manhattans and beat his wife. Or the annoying old tenant who always bothers me while I’m working and once asked me to check out a boil on his neck.
Why do we clean?
It’s simple. We need the cash. We’re starving artists. And Mr. Boss is flexible with our schedules, which allows us the time to pursue our creative projects.
Sometimes, we even admit to preferring this sub-blue-collar work. While the job is often unbelievably disgusting, the voyeur in us have the opportunity to examine the lives of people we otherwise would never meet. Plus, after transforming a hovel into a clean home, we enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.
But mostly, this past year has been tough. The trials and tribulations of the job, coupled with personal struggles, have often been exhausting. When it gets to be too much, we remind ourselves that I might get a book deal, or Brahmsie a recording contract.
When that day comes, we tell each other, everything will be OK.
Epilogue: Soon after this piece ran in the now-defunct Casco Bay Weekly on May 17, 2001, I was fired from my freelance cleaning gig. Apparently, Mr. Boss was not happy with the amount of billable hours Brahmsie and I spent examining the detritus that ne’er do wells left behind in his apartment buildings.
Upon re-reading this story before re-publishing this week, I remembered how lousy that job was… but at least I got to spend a ton of time with an amazing human, artist and chanteuse.
Also, I checked in with Brahmsie to get an update on her current hooliganism. Despite not having seen her in literal ages, I knew she was now Dr. Darien Brahms, thanks to her earning a PhD in U.S. History from University of Maryland.
Also, I knew she was still rocking and playing gigs, despite her day job as a friggin’ HISTORIAN!!! Because she’s da bomb.
This is how she replied to my DM asking for an update. “I’m living in western Massachusetts, using my PhD to work on a book about Puerto Rico during the Depression and I am writing grants for food pantries and other nonprofits as well as making music. I’m about to finish up my tenth record which is that synth-inspired album I’ve always wanted to make.”
I highly encourage YOU to visit her website to listen to her latest single “Another Revolution” and purchase her latest album LOVE BOMB and for links to all her rebellious goings-on.
For seven dollars a month, (or $75 annually) you can support independent journalism that goes places other media won’t AND get early and ad-free access to episodes of Fake Shaman.
