note: some day I will write about Empty Ellie more. Currently, I'm just not mentally in a place to do so

So this happened years ago, but I recently remembered it when some friends and I were talking about crazy AirBnB experiences we had.

To start, I've done AirBnB for years. Both as a host and a guest, but mainly as a host. Even before AirBnB, I used places like Craigslist to short-to-medium-term rent out a bedroom (or two or three) in my various apartments. I like having a guest room (or more than one), and I love meeting new people (but I hate going out to meet new people), so renting rooms out sporadically (enough to more than cover rent, but still with enough open time to have friends visit) is the perfect way to meet people in the comfort of my own home.

I would guess that somewhere between 95-98% of these guests have been awesome, including the ones off of Craigslist. If I get a bad feeling about someone while talking to them, then I decline them. I've also made some rules along the way that seem to help ensure I always have good renters. One of those rules is that I always, always, ALWAYS MUST meet or speak to/face time the actual person(s) who are staying with me. Generally, the worst experiences I've had are when someone else was arranging the room for someone in their life. Interestingly, every single time I've had someone contact me, wanting to reserve a room on behalf of someone else, it is ALWAYS a woman. Which is just interesting, on a larger "women doing more emotional family labor than men" front. In my experience, if someone needs a room who can't (or won't) book one for themself, a woman ends up doing it for them. A woman reserving a room for her elderly parents, who hail from a different state/country. A woman reserving a room for her boyfriend/brother/uncle/father from a different state/country. And plenty of women reserving a room for their sons.

To touch on that for a moment, the only people who are regularly utterly obnoxious are the women renting a room for a son (versus a woman looking for a room for her boyfriend or sister or whoever). To the point where now, I just decline. I don't give a shit if your pwecious just won a scholarship/internship/college entry/exotic study/got a new job and is just sooooooooo busy that he simply cannot be arsed to line up his own housing. If he's not capable of getting his shit together to plan his own trip, then I probably don't want him in my house.

And I especially no longer want to deal with rude cunts who - when I tell them of my "must speak to/Skype with/email with the person actually staying with me" rule - treat me like I'm crazy or some kind of creepy whore. There would be two main responses I'd get from these bitches 1) "My son is so amazing, and you can trust me on that, woman-to-woman. So you don't need to talk to him." or 2) "Why do you want to talk to my son? Do you prey on the single men who stay with you? Do you want to know if he's attractive?".

I am not kidding. Response #1 is an eye-roller, but at least makes a kind of logical sense. The first time I got response #2, I assumed it was a fluke by an especially crazy bitch.

It was not a fluke.

Anyways, all that said, this is JNMIL, so I'll get to the MIL story I have. This is only one. Thank fucking god.

I get a request one day for a particular room of mine - it's small (one person only). The bed is like an extra-sized twin bed; very comfy size for a single person. Definitely not a good fit for more than 1. It's a nice room, but absolutely a "1 person only" room. That's one of the rules of that room. I do also have a 2 person room open, FTR.

The request for this 1-person room is from a woman, telling me she's setting up housing for her poor, abused, in-the-middle-of-divorcing son. She takes a lot of time to tell me that his STB Ex Wife is this crazy, horrible, abusive, insane bitch and how she (the guy's mom) helped him apply for jobs across the country so that he could escape his controlling wife and land in a safe place. She tells me about all the threats this woman has sent her son, since he left her. She tells me all the shitty, crazy things his STB Ex Wife has done to him. It's seriously nuts for an intro AirBnB post, and I'm already more than half-tempted to decline because this shit just sounds a little too cray for me to want to get involved in any way, shape, or form. But at the same time, I feel bad, because if this dude really is going through all this shit, giving him a safe, chill place to land, while he looks for full-time housing would be a really good idea. I tell this woman that I need to double-check non-AirBnB reservations and make sure that I have enough time open for this guy, and I'll get back to her in a day. This is just to buy some time to think.

While I'm mulling it over, I get another message, a tense one, from a woman asking if I had been contacted by, let's say, a woman on behalf of Steve J. She said that she's desperate, her MIL is crazy, and she's trying to prove to her husband that his mom is crazy, but her husband won't believe her. What the fresh hell is this, I wonder?

She also sends me a long message, telling me all the awful things her MIL has done to try to get her husband and her broken up. The most recent one being that mom helped her son get a job across the country, knowing full well that the DIL had a contract job that wasn't up for another two years. She wanted to get the two separated, and then working on getting her son to divorce his wife. But the son thought that mom just thoughtfully found out about a perfect fit for him, job-wise, and wanted him to go succeed at that, and then have his wife join him when her contract job was up.

So she's basically asking if I have any proof that MIL is trying to break them up. She will gladly book my room for a night, so that we can then have each other's contact info and contact each other outside of AirBnB.

At this point, I think this is insane, and I also want to know how she found me. That turned out to be simple (but fucked up). She'd used her husband's key to his mom and dad's place to sneak in when they were out, and looked through MILs emails. She found my listing, jotted some notes on it, and went home to message me.

That is pretty insane. But OTOH, if this DIL is telling the truth, then what her MIL is doing is pretty fucking insane.

I debate mentally more, and I gotta say...I feel bad for this woman. Really bad. So I agree to help her.

She books my room for the night (I refunded her all the money minus the fees that went to AirBnB), and then I email her screen shots of what mom has sent me. I also go fishing, ask mom for more info, get more damning information so that it's really clear that mom is doing this. I send all that to DIL.

She thanks me (we actually have a phone conversation), and she's crying, telling me that this is the first time that she's gotten real proof that MIL hates her and is lying about her. She tells me the shit that MIL has been doing for YEARS - ruining her stuff "by accident", being absolutely vile to her when they're in private, but being sweet as can be around anybody else, constantly undermining her in little ways, eroding her self-esteem, encouraging her husband to think of her as a little dumb, or forgetful or a liar (giving DIL one time that they'd all meet for dinner or something, but then telling son that she told DIL another time, stuff like that). If it's all true, it's totally fucked up.

If it's not true, and MIL was telling the truth, I figure I haven't done anything that badly hurt anybody, because there are a million other AirBnBs in NYC that the son can stay in (since DIL now has my address), and if DIL really did all these things, then all she has is proof that her MIL told the truth about her behavior. Which I assume is something that the son isn't going to care about either way? At any rate, between the two of them, the DIL just sounds more believable. And I reason that if she is the bad party, I haven't given her anything that she doesn't already know about, if that makes sense. But I really don't think she's the bad party.

Anyways, I get message a few days later from MIL, and it's vile. Cursing me out, saying some really amazingly, filthy shit to me. Like, threatening to kill me for what I've done and just...really fucked up shit.

I took photos, sent them to DIL, said something like "I'm guessing you had your talk with your husband and it went well. If you want more proof to show your husband how vile his mom is, you should show him these too. Also, he really needs to change his AirBnB profile so his mom can't access it". She thanks me and tells me that it isn't his profile AT ALL. It just has his name and photo, but he didn't make it, so he can't get rid of it. So I contact AirBnB about the situation, for them to take care of it.

DIL also tells me that mom flipped her lid because when she showed her husband the messages, he believed her for the first time. And he was stunned. And confronted his mom. Who first tried to lie her way out of it, but then he showed her the messages, and then she kind of...totally fucking lost it on him and finally showed her true colors, and started trash-talking his wife to him, telling him that he had to leave her. Son told her that she was dead to him, and he never wanted to speak to her again. Told her she'd never meet her grandchildren. Told her that he hopes that his dad has the sense to leave her, so that she dies alone.

DIL was super happy. Like, giddy with happiness. I felt really happy for her. But also like I'd accidentally walked into some episode of the Twilight Zone. For years I figured that this was one random, total, insane blip, and that things like this almost never happen.

And then I found this sub. Oy.

I wonder if DIL ever found it or will ever find it. I hope that her husband did everything he said, cut mom out of his life, and that they moved away to some place far, far, far from her, and are happy together.