I Like to Judge Without Knowing Anything

This week, with the weather being so delightfully cooperative, I’ve been able to use the outside time I’d normally be setting aside for urban Yeti stakeouts and running screaming from large aggresive bees to watch several interesting hipster couples that help populate my neighborhood.
If you know me – and by now I’ll assume you do- you understand my long standing fascination with the cast of characters that surround my house. Garage Roof Grill Guy, Naked Shower Man, Early Morning Asthetic Bin Arranger: they all make my life a rich a colorful tapestry. Lately though, I’ve noticed an influx of rather trendy looking young couples that defy description. Well, at least they defied description until I had a particularly eventful thinking session during the hair conditioning and leg shaving portion of my last long steaming shower. Now they  have been reduced to simple and insulting  stereotypes. Welcome to the neighborhood guys!

The first couple on my list flew across my radar late last summer. This happened for two reasons.  One was the gutwrenching overwrought display the young hipster girl across the street put on when her live in boyfriend went up the street to get groceries and buy her flowers. I know this because I was sitting on my porch eavesdropping while he calmly explained he’d only be gone for 45 minutes or so and that she should probably find something productive to do. As soon as he’d managed to trot out of her line of vision the panic set in. At the ten minute mark she was darting in and out of her house like a deranged hummingbird, peering up the street . Twenty minutes passed and she was pacing up and down the sidewalk sighing loudly and checking her watch with such exaggerated animation that I thought she was being filmed for some sort of A & E special on anxious maniacs. Forty minutes down and she was losing her shit in the worst kind of way. Having gone to that special place where people become completely impervious to what others are thinking about them, she ran wildly from the house to the corner with her cell phone leaving message after frantic message for this guy, who incidentally STILL was not late. Normally, I’d have packed it in at that point and lost interest in this little domestic drama but then she did the second and most spectacular thing that put her in my sites for good.  She spotted her returning love as he turned the corner and then clearly taking a page from the obsession and dependency handbook  and unable to prevent herself from having a spectacular reaction,she launched into a full on Fatal Attraction screamfest. Berating her stunned flower baring boyfriend for “scaring her to death” claiming that he could have been “dead or missing” and then alternating in a bizarre cycle between hitting him with the bouquet of daisies  and hugging him in exhausted relief.

Now he goes NOWHERE without her. If he’s skipping up the street, she’s right on his arm. At first I dubbed her “the barnacle” for the stubborn way she hung on the hull of his sinking ship but upon further examination of his pained and drawn face I have renamed her “the noose”.

Lucky couple number two, while far less explosive, has a sad, mean component to their relationship that’s sure to end in bloodshed. They use thinly veiled passive aggressive barbs that seem harmless on the surface but once delivered you can see the bubbling undercurrent of seething hate magma that threatens to crack the upper crust and spew all over the place. It’s usually something mundane and everyday about the division of labor while caring for the kids and a little remark will slip out about how the other one has “no idea” or remains clueless about some aspect of rearing this not yet speaking child who isn’t even mobile. I had a moment of brilliance where I contemplated letting the front door to my house swing open so they could see what actually awaited them no matter how many child rearing books they followed to the letter but then clarity returned and I let them go back to their eye rolling and snarfing at each other in abject irony. I have dubbed them “the wretched twosome”.

Here’s to another year of using my Nancy Drew skills to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong and solving numerous local mysteries!

Neighbors

I was carrying out my two bags of rancid garbage this afternoon when I noticed my peculiar neighbor, who arranges my supercans in size order, sitting dejectedly underneath his little porch.

Normally I like to hiss quietly at him from behind my clenched teeth but his demeanor was enough to stop me in my tracks and start me wondering what was amiss.

I looked at my bins and noticed they were crooked and falling over at odd angles, not at all like I had come to expect them to be after he made a point to sneak out every morning and obsessively roll them around until they were aligned and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

He must be dying, I thought to myself.

After waving and depositing my bags I ran off worried that something was really wrong.

While I sat around for long periods of time that would have been better spent cleaning or doing productive things for society, I noticed a wave of change happening across the alley that was like a sad tsunami. With all the destruction and death they leave in their wake I suppose there really isn’t any other kind of emotion you can attribute to a killer wall of water that annihilates everything in its path but I felt the need to qualify.

Two houses down from bin arranger we had a new neighbor.

And in the few short days he’d been there he had made a monstrous impact.

I now call him garage roof guy.

He has all but set up shop on the roof of his ramshackle backyard parking area making it a veritable Shangri-la of alfresco dining and all night wine sipping.

He begins grilling early in the evening, grumbling at anyone who dares to show up near his imaginary barrier whether it be the smoke from your steak on the barbecue flying into his sensitive eyes or your music that’s too loud for him to properly carry on his asshole conversation with his wispy wife, he’s going to give you the stink eye and make you wish you’d never stepped over the threshold dividing his world and yours.

Your world, in case you were unaware, is the we just got into this neighborhood by the skin of our teeth before the prices shot to the moon one. His world is the I didn’t pay a million fucking dollars to watch these Deliverance people gnaw on chicken bones and speak in a way that offends my sensitive ears one.

It struck me as the perfect foil. The two oddest people on the face of the earth coming together in a warm neighborly union that could straighten the riff raff right out of the lesser inhabitants waddling around here, but it had the opposite effect.

Bin man was sad, drooping, feeling he’d lost his place.

He was alone while garage top dweller hung over the rickety metal side of his world and glared down at the window where my husband sat working in his office apparently making too much racket for the rooftop meal to go off as planned.

Later on I intend to go out and arrange my garbage cans in an effort to lure bin man out of his funk.

Naked Shower Man Vs. Me

This morning I had to arise before dawn to await the arrival of the beloved grocery delivery man who brings me so much joy I don’t think I can even express it properly in words.

So there I was, minding my own business, skulking around my back sun room in total inky blackness when I happened to look up from my piping hot coffee and into another dimension.

Directly across my alley, right next to the house that fell right the fuck off of itself, was a person showering minus protective window coverings.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have a shred of fabric covering ANY of the five back room windows or double sliding doors in my house .

 This is because the rest of the house is like a dark cavernous mine shaft, minus trapped workers and bad lungs. I have earned the right NOT to cover my windows, not to mention I don’t wash my naked body in the kitchen.

What the hell do you do? Look away? Stay hidden in the total absence of light and hope they realize that more than one person with a clear view of all the homes that back up to the alley is awake at the not altogether forbidden hour of 6 am?

I finally went the full disclosure route and fired up every blinding light in the back of the house so the leisurely bather could better see that all I was doing was getting my coffee and bagel and walking around in a profoundly disturbing outfit that consisted of one pair of duckie flannel pajama bottoms, the dreaded red tee-shirt, big fluffy slippers, a massive wool snowflake patterned sweater and a Star Wars hat.

Still, not an ounce of concern across the way as I shuffled back and forth from my computer to the windows. Clearly we are having some sort of standoff that will determine WHO will blink first.

Will super clean full window shower neighbor give in and spend the $1.50 for a decorative window cover?

Will I bring in Next Day Blinds to measure for those wooden shutters I’ve talked about for ten years?

Or, like always, will I forget about this by tomorrow and sleep late enough for the rest of my life never to have to confront this atrocity again?

And in the spirit of nakedness and a rocking good time go to Culture Brats and look what 80′s band is releasing a new single today.