July 12th, 2018
I had started a blog about my new neighborhood, but first I gotta talk about the coach house two lots over. The ground floor of which is home to a white trash couple who scream at each other with a frequency that provides competition to the bell at the school across the street. More often than not this happens at about a quarter to eight in the morning. Some people have alarm clocks that play a jaunty tune. Some more advanced ones read the news and weather. The classic just beep or ring. My alarm clock shrieks “Get the fuck out of my fucking house!” in a voice that manages to be shrill yet scratchy from all of the tar and tobacco resin caked on the inside of her middle-aged throat. Sometimes it changes it up and shouts “Every day! Every fucking day! Every fucking day I swear to God!” from a beer-gutted diaphragm. Some days it doesn’t happen at all, but it’s always at a quarter-to-eight. Love is hard, I get that. Relationships are fragile. They require a great deal of care. Well, the good ones are fragile anyway. Shitty relationships are apparently quite robust. Because shitty relationships often involve two shitty people. People who are not right for each other because neither is right for anybody. So they’re stuck together because nobody else will have them. Which I guess is why the phrase “deserve each other” is never used in a positive context.
The temptation to open my window and shout at them while shaking a clammy fist in the early morning air. People such as this cannot be reasoned with face to face. Another man proved that this very morning. Finally, someone on the street worked up the courage to knock on their door. He pleaded for some kind of sanity. “You fight almost every morning he said. You shout so loud.” He got a door in the face for his troubles. Presumably after being told to “mind his own business” with the bare minimum of one “fucking” used.
“Goddamn,” he muttered as he walked away. I say “muttered” but it was loud enough for me to hear him across a narrow vacant lot two floors down through closed windows. He’s kind of my hero right now. For today at least.
But here’s the thing, when you fight that loudly and that frequently you make it other people’s business. I’m trying damn hard to mind my own business. But you (they) aren’t given me much of a choice. Of course their failure to recognize that their behavior is impacting others is evocative of the levels of childishness that arguments of this volume and frequency require. This keeps up, I may just shout. But I struggle to have the mental faculties for such things early in the morning. It’s difficult to scold adult-babies before coffee. Each time I plan what I’ll shout next time. And what I’ve got so far is this:
Shut the hell up. Go to fucking counseling or just split up. But deal with it like goddamn adults, for fuck’s sake! Failing that, get a house out in in the middle of fucking nowhere and scream at each other until you cough up bits of your own throat. Just stop making it everyone on the block’s problem.
It would only fall on deaf ears, anyway.
Update (7/13): I was about ready to call the police when I heard a scream and then saw one of the teenage girls who live there run out the door barefoot. The woman (mother) chased after her. I moved to the front window to see what was happening when I saw the other girl walking back with a small dog. The dog had run away. She was screaming the dog's name. So I am glad I didn't knee-jerk a domestic disturbance complaint when it wasn't needed.
The more important note here is even the dog knows that house is fucked. He wanted out but only made it to Morgan street.