Neighbors
Previously, I described the virtues of my SBP.
Now let’s explore the downsides.
Directly across from me, there is a family – mother and father I presume, plus a tweenerish boy and a baby which I have never actually seen – and some sketchy hangers-on or possibly roommates? All I know, as the resident neighborhood cat lady/nosy old lady, is that there’s some seriously non-kosher shit going on over there. Most days they can be heard screaming at each other, with the sound of the baby wailing as a pitiful counterbeat. The only thing that disturbs me more than this is the fact that I’ve heard it so often that I don’t even hear it anymore.
Directly behind them is an apartment complex that is now boarded up and slowly disintegrating into the earth. Not two weeks ago, it was a perfectly normal building, full of college kids and parties and whooping and hollering and all the normal things that go along with this town. And then there was the fire. And then there was the incinerated body found in the bottom floor apartment after the fire was put out. And then there was the revelation that the body (a woman about my age, and – just for that extra dig – heavily pregnant) was dead before the fire. And then there was the investigation that revealed a husband with a history of domestic violence, and the ensuing arrest and drama and scandal. Totally fucked up. I look at this place every day, and as morbid and macabre and just plain disturbed as my thoughts tend to be, I find myself deeply emotionally depressed on a daily basis by the sight of this twisted and burnt building, and the knowledge of what must have occurred inside.
Directly to my right is another duplex containing functional families on both halves. On Saturday, good old Independance Blow Some Shit Up! Day, one of these families celebrated with what must have been several hundred dollars worth of explosives. They were firing them off from the end of their driveway, and the positioning just so happened to be that these high-grade fireworks were exploding directly above my house.
Now don’t get me wrong, I loves me some bright and shiny combustive things. It was awesome having to crane my neck to see these things bursting right over my head. And also novel having to immediately step back under the eaves to avoid the rain of debris that ensued. Sure, sure, they could have set off a firestorm in the tinder-dry ridge out back. My cats and the Bed Warmer and I could have been cooked like turkeys in a silly little counterpoint to what had happened across the street the week before. But it was awesome. Refreshing. Joyful and reckless and a big celebratory FUCK YOU! to the gods of stupid and senseless acts of violence.
Having nothing more to say on the matter, I will close with a sample of what I found on my front step the next morning:
That scorched piece of cardboard reads, in part:
WARNING
SHOOTS FLAMING BALLS
Eeehheeehheeehheee!
Drunk: Not quite.
Hearing: Kashmir.
Drinking: PBR. Because I love it. I recently learned that it is a choice drink of those christing hipsters, but rest assured, the only relationship I have with them is superficially pointing and laughing at their ridiculous fashion choices. Aaah, we were all young and stupid once….
Smoking: The lovely glass pipe on the table upon which my feet are propped is singing my name. “Eeeedwiiiinnnaaaa. Suck me! Taaaaste meeeee!”
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