My across-the-hall neighbor posted this notice. He's around 6'4”, closing in on 50, and has ferocious mood swings due to alcoholism, drug abuse, and generally being a dick. I actually heard the crashing, but was too drunk to investigate. The next morning, he asked if I knew the guy who'd done it. The way he aggressively accuses people via asking them questions ought to have its own mark of punctuation, a ferociously annoying coitus between the question mark and the fuck-you sign.
We've had some special times together the past few years. Like when he attempted to forcibly enlist me into his crusade against the downstairs sake bar for their kitchen fan's allegedly corrosive exhalations onto the side of our building, and for their rat-seducing methods of waste disposal. He claims to have jacked one of the bar's “chink” employees against the wall for that offense, and left a dead mouse w/ note at their door, and often yells at the tenants above him, also “chinks”, for “dancing around in their goddamn high heels at four in the morning”. This from a guy who blares Bad Company out his open window louder than anyone has blared Bad Company since people realized Bad Company was kind of shitty, maybe even the shittiest, and yes I owned 10 from 6.
(as I'm writing this, a bald old man wearing suspenders just vomited across the street, then walked away. he did not appear drunk -- if others start doing this, I'll know I'm in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, or possibly a movie by that other guy who wrote about the same bad thing happening to lots of people)
Another time, he yelled at my roommate for avoiding his sexual advances, then muttered “I've got a key to your place” as he stalked off (we changed the locks the next day). Before I even moved into the apartment, he handed my former roommate a $100 bill off a stack of at least 20 -- then after that roommate moved out, came up to me and said, “do you remember that time I gave you $100?” One time I returned home to find a woman on her knees banging on his door, begging him to let her in and -- unless he's greatest cocksman since (insert legendary cocksman here) -- give her drugs. I let her crash for an hour on my couch. She looked like this 80s porn star whose name I can't remember but who definitely used to eat her own vagina. I very much wanted to take advantage of the situation, even though I'd be posting this entry sans penis if I had. Instead, I watched Major League: Back to the Minors, starring Scott Bakula, while she slept her way back to half-sanity. A few days later, my neighbor hit me with a friendly-threatening (freatening?) “Hey, I heard you met my ex-girlfriend”. I told him I didn't realize it was his ex-, and thought it was just some random woman howling at his door for twenty minutes, but in any event, yeah, I let her take a nap. Surprisingly, that ended that.
My favorite episode: I walk out of my apartment at noon. He's in the hallway. He steps up to me, already committing borderline assault.
“Did you call the fucking cops on me last night?”
“I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.”
“Well somebody fucking called the cops. I had two hookers in there. I thought it was the third hooker at the door, but it was the cops. Are you sure you didn't call them?”
“Why the fuck would I call the cops on you? Why do I give a shit?”
“Well if you didn't do it, somebody did.”
“Obviously. Next time you've got something to ask me, just ask me instead of getting in my face.”
“I didn't get in your face.”
“You're still in my face. I'm leaving.”
Later that afternoon, I was walking by the Astor Place news stand, which at the time was run by a 120-year-old Greek man who might be dead by now, and might actually have been dead then. My neighbor was sitting with the man chatting. “Hey, #4!” (he calls me #4, because I live in #4; I don't call him #3”). “This is Nikos”. I shook Nikos' hand. He looked back at me from another place -- if I was more in tune with the universe, I'd have some idea where, but it was definitely not Astor Place.
“Hey #4”, says my neighbor, as genuinely apologetic as you can get without admitting you're 87% pure jerk-off. “I'm really sorry about earlier. I was drunk. We're good friends -- remember that time I gave you that silver dollar?”
We're not good friends, but he actually did give me a silver dollar once. I think it was for Christmas. “Sure man. Look, it's no big deal. I really don't care about your sex life” (though I am curious how you managed to land that lady who looked like the porn star who used to eat her own vagina -- she's hooked on your drugs, not your dick, right?), “just talk to me before you start accusing me of crap.”
A few days later, it's Valentine's afternoon. I'm sitting in McSorley's drinking many tiny beers with six large guys. My neighbor walks in with his old black lab, sees me, walks up all friendly. “Hey man, sorry again about the other day. I think I'm getting some more hookers tonight. You want to go in on some hookers with me?” I told him I was all good, even though that particular Valentine's would have been greatly enhanced by a prostitute. “Maybe your friends want to get some hookers?” My bewildered friends were also all good. “All right then, well, any time you're up for it.”
Maybe my rejecting his offers to join him in group sex and vigilante justice is causing me to miss out on a deeper, richer emotional existence. One of the big complaints about adult life is that you just don't make friends like you used to. Probably because we look for people who are essentially like us, when in the past we looked for people who were radically different, because the less like us they were, the greater their power to turn us into something else. That many of our friends were bastards afforded us the opportunity to choose to not be bastards, or to be better bastards ourselves.
On the other hand, there's a part of me that just can't fucking listen to Bad Company anymore, except for maybe the soul-searching ballad “Seagull”, which I think my neighbor would call me a pussy for liking, causing the part of me that's still unformed and boyish enough to enter into chaotic, formative friendships to either go “yeah, you're right, it is kind of for pussies” or “screw you, this is a good song” and storm out of the room, then go listen to the thing alone for three straight hours.
My copy of that song is on a probably melted cassette tape in my parents' attic, so instead of knocking on my neighbor's door and seeing if he wants to party with some hookers, I'm going to grab drinks with two girls who probably won't sleep with me, especially not for money. Maybe I'll get so drunk I'll piss in the vestibule.
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