History Headscratchers / Rent

*** I don't know the background of you guys, but I'll give you mine before I add to this. My mother was a bartender in strip clubs in her youth, I have roomed with, lived with, and partied with dancers in the last 3 years. I have dated dancers, bouncers, and DJs... Now as per my addition to this.. My best friend is a dancer and as well as her, most of the girls/men I have met through my social network do go by their stage name within their group of friends. Its funner, easier, and more well known for the people they are around. I cannot say this is true for all dancers but for the most I've met it has been. Also, a lot of the girls I know have been known to occasionally wear their work clothes home and even out to the bar or to parties depending on their plans for the night and the time they have.

*** He's also basically setting up the situation for his own manipulation. He suddenly demands a massive amount of back rent he ''knows'' they never expected to pay and won't have on hand, and not because he actually needs the money but because he can use the demand as leverage to get them to try and talk Maureen out of the protest. He does go back on the eviction eventually, but in the moment they don't ''know'' he's not going to follow through. And of course it all hurts that much more ''because'' he's not just some faceless entity; this is their ''friend'' stabbing them in the back. He does get more sympathetic later on but his actions through most of Act 1 are pretty conniving and entirely self-serving at the expense of his friends, so it's not surprising they'd resent him. (As for not paying rent going forward, this comes off as less of a rail against paying rent in the abstract and more like a "well, screw you too!" -- Benny screwed them over, so the last thing they want to do is start giving him money. If he'd merely asked, in a forthright way and without the backdating aspect, that they start paying rent, the response might have been different.)

*** He's also basically setting up the situation for his own manipulation. He suddenly demands a massive amount of back rent he ''knows'' they never expected to pay and won't have on hand, and not because he actually needs the money but because he can use the demand as leverage to get them to try and talk Maureen out of the protest. He does go back on the eviction eventually, but in the moment they don't ''know'' he's not going to follow through. And of course it all hurts that much more ''because'' he's not just some faceless entity; this is their ''friend'' stabbing them in the back. He does get more sympathetic later on but his actions through most of Act 1 are pretty conniving and entirely self-serving at the expense of his friends, so it's not surprising they'd resent him.

** Remember, Benny didn't start paying for Mimi's rehab until ''after'' Angel died. At the time Angel was still alive, the relationship mostly consisted of Benny stringing Mimi along and ruining her chances to have a real relationship in the process, and he never really showed any signs that he was actually willing to spend his money to help Mimi. Angel probably wanted Mimi to have better than being someone's side piece.

** It's also possible that Collins is calling the coat vendor a thief because she's (knowingly or unknowingly) trading in stolen goods; she's also "stealing" his money by making him pay for something that he once owned. The proepr term would probably be "fence," but Collins isn't going to be pedantic.

*** Collins saying Roger hasn't left the apartment in seven months is the key. Act one takes place in December. Going back seven months, and accounting for the fact that in the immediate aftermath Roger would have been out (at least for her funeral and other associated aspects of that, such as seeing a doctor to confirm his own diagnosis and get medication) makes the timeframe of her death pretty obvious. April died in... April. A bit on the nose, but also poetic.

*** Collins saying River hasn't left the apartment in seven months is the key. Act one takes place in December. Going back seven months, and accounting for the fact that in the immediate aftermath Roger would have been out (at least for her funeral and other associated aspects of that, such as seeing a doctor to confirm his own diagnosis and get medication) makes the timeframe of her death pretty obvious. April died in... April. A bit on the nose, but also poetic.