I’d Write More But My ‘Thritis Is Actin’ Up
Posted on | April 18, 2010
I could start this with, “Oh my back. My aching back!”
Or how about, “That damned sciatica is throbbing. Must be rain on the way.”
No matter what it is, it’s not descriptive enough of those moments when you feel, “I’ve hit an oil patch and I’m just skidding towards the grave.” (Edwina Monsoon - Absolutely Fabulous). You know the second when your feet hit the floor in the morning and you realize gravity has not become a friend.
Not that it’s not counter-balanced for those days when you feel like your legs are wings and you’re floating around in a great mood and you feel ever so young.
The sun does that too me.
“Sun is shining, the weather is sweet
Make you want to move your dancing feet
To the rescue, here i am
Want you to know, y’all, where i stand”(Bob Marley - The Sun is Shining”)
But as all good things, the sun must go to bed like the rest of us and it’s in those moments when I feel slightly lower than before.
Well, not JUST because of the sun but also because of my neighbours who live one floor below me. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that it’s hard to live below someone. I’ve done it many times. Once I had a great little apartment with these fabulous hard wooden floors. Now they were wonderful until the woman who lived above me and might have had a crystal meth problem loved to wear her high heels from 1:00 am to 7:00 am.
It would drive me crazy. She never stopped! She’d walk from one room to the next, back and forth like an expectant father. Only this father presumably wore stiletto’s.
So I’m not at all without sympathy.
BUT (you knew it was coming didn’t you?) I get home late from work. I walk in my door, usually, at 11:15 pm and I’m not one to go to bed right away. I crank up the ol’ computer and talk to my man who lives in Spokane, WA. We web cam it.
Not that kind of web cam discussion mind you. I’m hesitant to show my dang’ly bits across the internet stratosphere because I’m convinced there’s some Asian whiz kid who’s managed to hack into my system and refuse to give them a show.
So we talk. Conversationally and not loud but they can hear the muffled conversations. Maybe I’ll turn on the television (at a very low level) and that, apparently bugs them too. It doesn’t matter that I’m in another room altogether. They can still hear it.
You’d think that the floor of my place was just floor beams and carpet!
Now I can hear them, they’re music, they’re conversation but because it’s before 11 it’s not an issue. Like I said, I’m not unsympathetic.
Then the pounding on their ceiling (which equates to my floor) began. Loud voices of, “Would you just shut up!” were seeping up from their apartment.
So I got quieter. And then quieter to the point of the inability to hear anything.
That’s when the “goop” as I like to call it started to appear on my door handle.
At first I thought it was just cooking oil. My first thought was that my first thought about them was right. Immature assholes. I’ve got to start listening to my “first impression” voice.
Then it became something that I’m convinced was flammable. So I called the land lord and now there’s a file on the situation but because there’s no proof that it was him, his name is but an addendum to the case. A possible perpetrator to the vandalism.
It’s been brutal but I think what bugs me the most is now I have to completely alter MY behaviour because of their intimidation.
Weeks and weeks ago I had bronchitis. Lots of coughing. Was nothing but fun and thrilling being woken up. Recognizing that it might disturb them I’d grab pillows and hack my way into oblivion. Then I’d move into the living room, sleeping on the couch.
But that wasn’t enough. They could still hear me. Not that it was concern out of my well being mind you but more about that they couldn’t sleep.
When they moved in it was out in the open that the walls and floors were thin. That sound traveled easier than a flight to Europe. And they accepted this.
I can hear them, they can hear me. But they seem to think that their rights superseded my own.
Oh and let’s not forget that they complain that I drop things. Like I somehow can control gravity.
It’s all a matter of perspective, of course. My friends think they’re psychotic and I’m sure what they’ve told their friends I’m just the drunken, old, pathetic fag who bugs them in the wee hours of the morning.
They’ve even talked about “retaliation” of the physical kind but that’s not me. So I write. THAT’S my retaliation. To purge the anger, to release the frustration.
The one saving grace is that they’re gone at the end of April.
My nervousness, though, comes from what happens when they move out all their stuff and have no concerns over this place. A simple match tossed over the shoulder when they leave is all it would take.
So, I’m counting down the days like a kid at Christmas time. To be able to have my alarm go off in the morning without pounding and screaming from beneath me. To be able to talk to my man without whispering. To being able to sleep in my own bed and get off the couch.
Ahhh, that’s just as good as the sun.
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