Bad neighbors

Sorry for the lack of updates; the weekend was hectic. I ended up hanging out with my cousin, who I haven't had a chance to hang out with in ages, and I remembered why I like her; she's crazy awesome. It's been a while since I found myself hanging out until 5 in the morning, so kudos there. But I get back to work, everyone is sick, again, and our office manager has bronchitis; stay home! I don't need to stave off more infections! So the past few days have been brutal, and consequently, I've been too tired to write anything. I'm trying to avoid letting that happen too often. Here's something I tossed off over the last 20 minutes; it needs polishing, but I think it's a good start.

I’m looking into moving into a new apartment. It’s a pain in the ass just to find a place to live, but if you’re not sure what city you’re going to be living in two months down the road, it pretty much becomes an exercise in futility. I’m looking at places in three different states right now, so anything I find almost feels like a pipe dream to begin with (ooooh, here’s a great deal on an apartment in Ventura!... Where the hell is that anyway?). But after my last couple experiences with apartments, I believe it should be a law that after you are accepted, you have the right to interview your neighbors before you sign the contract. Here’s why:

I was dating this woman and she accepted a job in Massachusetts. I figured, hey, awesome, I want to leave Portland anyway, I’ll join you. I go out, she has picked out a great apartment (shitty town, but that couldn’t be helped). This apartment was amazing; it was large, old building, hardwood floors, fireplace, and it was on the top floor of the building, so all the heat from the lower apartments drifted up and kept it at a balmy 80 degrees at all times. The place was amazing; nicest apartment I’ve ever lived in by far.

The one key problem with the apartment was our downstairs neighbor. Put simply, he was crazy. But really, that’s not fair to crazy people. He was completely batshit insane. This guy made Charles Manson look like Mr. Rogers. He was literally certifiably insane; we found out later that he had been in a home, but had been relocated to a residential apartment because there was no money to keep him in the nuthouse. This is American healthcare in action; sure, he may be a dangerous lunatic, but he can’t stay here! Stick him in an apartment, I’m sure he’ll be fine.

One thing I’ll say about this guy was he had exceptional hearing. He always heard us above him. Even when we weren’t home. And he’d always respond in the way you’d expect a rational human being to respond; he’d grab a broom and start pounding on his ceiling (our floor). He did this constantly. He would do this at four in the morning while we were sleeping, and hard enough to move our bed across the floor. He even did it when we weren’t home; I recall returning home from a grocery run to be greeted by the familiar banging as I walked up the steps. This guy went beyond good hearing; he was in the future!

So one night, while we are blissfully slumbering in a bed designed for a small child, we hear a knock on the door. Well, it’s really more of a pound. I figure, shit, Chuckles has finally come to kill us in our sleep; how polite of him to knock first. I throw on sweats and an undershirt and go to the door. It’s four in the morning, and I’ve just been woken up; my hair is disheveled, I’m basically incoherent, and I’m trying to prepare myself for the possibility that I am about to be attacked in my home. Imagine my surprise when I open the door and see two policemen.

“Sir, we got a complaint from your neighbor. He says you’ve ripped up the floorboards in your apartment and you are dumping feces on him.”

It takes me a moment to grasp this sentence. So I’m standing there, mouth agape, probably looking like just the type of person who would rip up the floorboards in his apartment so that he could fling shit on his neighbor. I have to respond at some point, but I can’t even manage to get my head around what they have said. So I ask for clarification, in the most articulate way I can at 4 am: “... Wait, what?”

“Your neighbor called us to complain that you have ripped up the floorboards in your closet, and are throwing human feces into his apartment.”

At this point, I’m incredulous. I’m an educated man, with a degree from a reasonably challenging four year college, a decent upstanding middle class citizen who has never been in trouble with the law. Ever. Yet here I am with two policemen completely convinced that I am ripping up my own floor to throw shit on my neighbor. Quite frankly, I was shocked that they would believe that story at all. But for some reason the burden of proof is on me to prove that the most ridiculous accusation I hope they ever heard is false... I’m not saying this is the single fucking stupidest thing I’ve ever heard or anything, but maybe Justice should remove her blindfold (and that lovely curtain Ashcroft decorated her with).

The inquisition continues: “May we come in and look around?”

So I go tell my girlfriend to throw some clothes on because the cops need to verify that we are, in fact, not insane. Her incredulity surpassed my own; “You’re kidding, right?” The cops look around, they see that they’ve been taken in by an incredibly elaborate hoax, and they start to get mad at me. Hey, at least if I’d actually been doing this, they’d have a reason to be out here, you know...

Actually, they were fairly amicable after that. We politely explained that our neighbor was crazy, and inquired about the legality of killing him out of sheer rage. Cops aren’t a big fan of this type of humor apparently, though I will say that Springfield has a very comfortable jail.

My point in all this is that bad neighbors can make paradise seem like hell. I think you should have an opportunity to know who you’ll be living by before you agree to it, you know? That just seems like the decent thing to do... which is why you’ll never see this in your lifetime.