affordable housing

It was 10 p.m. on Sunday night when I climbed into bed. Walking team practice starts at 5:50 a.m. If you are late, disciplinary action occurs in the form of fines and suspensions. I was well into the first stages of sleep when loud noises jolted me awake. The Herman Apartments are over 150 years old. They were built in a more genteel time; when I can only speculate public drunkeness was a shameful thing. I imagine that domestic abuse was regarded similiarly. I knew it was the strange couple from upstairs. He had moved in a couple of months ago, alone. He worked at a restaurant. A chef's jacket hung in the window of the back seat of his sad Corsica. The thing was battered and falling apart; wires hung from underneath and poked out of a hole for the side lights. The muffler must've hosted a hole the size of Rhode Island. It had one black door. A curious bumpersticker on the back windshield said, "3 nails plus 1 cross equals forgiven." For the first few weeks, I rarely heard him, except for at night. He would come home from the restaurant, I presume, very late. He turned the volume on his television up high. If I listened closely, I could follow conversations and listen to commercials.
One evening, I heard him arrive with a female companion. This ended days of speculation about his sexual preference. Thomas David Mark, my fabulous gay neighbor and dogfather of Henry, had asked him over for a drink and was rebuffed. Neighbor Dude said he was on a prescription medication which had a strong adverse reaction when combined with alcohol. Soon after, Thomas David Mark noticed Neighbor Dude was being visited by a thin meticulous man. He drove a taxi yellow Jeep Wrangler with a Florida license plate. His clothes were too stylish for Palookaville; suede jackets, layering for form not function, etc. The topper(no pun intended, S&M or millinery wise) was when he showed up in a cowboy hat. From that point on, he was known as "Brokeback." TDM and I delighted in telling each other the comings and goings of "Brokeback and Neighbor Dude."
"Do you ever hear anything?" TDM inhaled his cigarette with a devilish look on his face. TDM was getting bored with his young companion. Jim was a Palookaville native. TDM had lived in London, New York and Chicago. Jim thought Brokeback Mountain was about a couple'a closet cases who got it on for twenty years and one of 'em died. TDM and I teared up when discussing the beauty of young Jack and Ennis. We cursed young Ennis for his stubborness. We quoted the line, "We could have a little cow and calf operation. It could be a real sweet life." TDM showed me his ancient dog-eared copy of the New Yorker in which the short story the movie was based on was first published. Jim sat on the sofa laughing at Scooby-Doo.
"Like...?" and I lowered my chin, puckered my lips and raised one eyebrow.
"Well, ye-es, LIKE...Like hot man-on-man action, what else?" TDM threw his hands and head heavenward and laughed, "..and men don't make that face, sweetheart."
"No, I don't hear anything." I was sorry to disapoint. I would have loved nothing more than to imitate their nasty grunty boofoo-love noises for TDM and cracked up with him while Henry and Cooper wrestled at our feet. TDM had made this medical leave bearable for me. He was from Louisiana, had lived in Manhattan, worked in retail, and ended up at the Herman Apartments in Palookaville. We had the makings of a poor man's Will and Grace, with plenty of Jack and Karen thrown in.
The first weekend the female was upstairs, I was subjected to top forty hits of the 80's for an entire weekend. When not singing along with Madonna's Lucky Star, I got to listen to them fuck.
Wuffah, Wuffah, Wuffah, Wuffah, Wuffah went the bed or couch or futon they were on.
"Oooooohhhhhhhh!" cried the loud lady.

"He's not gay." I told TDM.
"Hmmm, maybe he's bi." offered TDM.
"Given the right circumstances, all men are bi." I wagered.
"True, but he ain't in prison and Brokeback seems awfully light in the loafers. We'll see." TDM wins. Don't argue the finer points of 'mo with The 'Mo Extraordinaire.
"Here's the thing, " I stopped and raised my index finger to show the seriousness of the point I was about to present. When TDM had also stopped, crushed out his cigarette with his sneaker, and gave me his full attention, I continued. "I've seen Neighbor Dude in a wife beater." Pause for effect.
"Ye-es..." TDM was smelling what I was cooking.
"Have you beheld him in all his wife-beater glory?" I asked. I already knew he had. TDM misses nothing. He knows everybody's business in the entire building. All 19 units.
"Oh, yes. I have had the distinct displeasure." TDM widened his eyes and made a shocked and dismayed face.
"He's flabby...He's pasty...He has that beer gut..." Oops, I forgot. TDM maintained ND didn't drink. That was the reason he refused TDM's invitation.
"He says he doesn't drink due to the Plavidillicillizone." TDM was serious.
"Well, it's some kind of gut, and he is missing teeth. My point is...You know he can't put the love down, so what is that woman screamin' about?" I made my most agonized confused face.
TDM cracked up. "Who knows? Have you seen her?"
"No, but I would like to just for the gross-out factor." I was imagining a typical Palookaville barfly 40 something chick.

I looked at the clock. 11:24. The crashing and banging and loud voices had been going on for half an hour. They were not slowing down. I got out of bed and went upstairs. I knocked. The door opened. Staring back at me was a man dressed as a woman. He had dust colored shoulder length man hair. Somebody had attempted to coif it into a 'do resembling a woman's. His face was long and all of his features were pointy. Pointy head, pointy nose, pointy chin. He was very skinny. He was wearing a short woman's coat. The sleeves were too short and one of his big man hands rested on the doorknob. He was wearing inexpensive junior girl's jeans. You know the kind that you see at Target or Wal-Mart in the "teen"area of the big carpeted section housing the clothing. He had no hips. His eyes were bloodshot and slightly buggy. The skin around them was creased and wrinkled in the manner of somebody who has existed on booze, cigarettes, coffee and cocaine. The skin around his mouth was lined and cracked up, his lipstick bleeding into the lines. "Yeah?" He/she croaked.
"Hello, I live downstairs." Pause. Most civilized people would take this social cue and say something like, "Oh, no. Can you hear us? We have been drinking. We are so sorry! Hi, I'm Jane and you are? So nice to meet you. I'm sorry about the circumstances. We will quiet down, I promise. You won't hear a peep!"
I had been living in Chicago for too long. I forgot that in Palookaville, apartments were the lowest rank on the housing chain.
Instead, it said, "Yeah, and?" really nasty-like.
It just so happens that I have a personal policy to give as good as I get. I know responding to the asshole makes you the asshole and all of that, but I was pissed. And immature. And a product of Palookaville.
"Yeah, and you're very loud. I am trying to sleep. You live in a building with o-ther pe-ople. I would appreciate it if you would lower the noise level."
Now what, Julie Newmar? What? What?
It turned it's face away and said into the apartment, "Dwayne, You bettah come handle dis, before I kick somebody's ass!" The crypt keeper voice had a Jersey City accent.
Neighbor Dude had a name. Dwayne. Dwayne is a more redneck version of Wayne. I've heard Wayne is the most common name for serial killers. I tried to verify this via a Google Search, but only came up with John Wayne Gacy and Wayne Williams. Perhaps the other serial killers have Wayne as a middle name.
I used to work with a very elegant man who is credited with helping to bring high end fashion to Chicago, thus creating what we know today as the shopping mecca of Oak Street. He once asked me, "Katherine, is it Katherine with an 'i' or 'y'?"
"It's actually just Kathy. My parents thought it was cool in the seventies to name me an informal nick name. Clever, weren't they?" I lied. My parents were hillbillies. None of that ever occurred to them. I was named after the little girl on "Father Knows Best."
"Actually, I'm just John," he replied. "Are you from a Midwestern 'I' state?"
I nodded, lest anybody was eavesdropping.
"So am I! You can tell so much about parents from the names they give their children." he paused to check a price on a Prada travel bag. "It's Kathy with a 'y', right?"
Nod.
"Oh, it could have been so much worse, it could have been an 'i' with a big round dot!"
So true. Thanks to Ma and Pa Kettle for that much. I could have been D'Kathi.

Dwayne stumbled to the door. "I am sorry," he slurred, " I fell out of my chair."
"Look, I am not trying to be difficult. You are very loud. I am just asking you to keep it down."
From behind the door, the thing said, "Jeez, dese people ah as boring as dah ones in New York!"
I looked at Dwayne and said, "Lovely companion you have there."
Dwayne looked at me in a way that suggested solidarity or embarassment. "Uh, yeah...I know."
From behind the door, "Dwayne, you bettah tell huh ta mind huh own business or I sweah ta God...!"
"When I am being kept awake by your noise, it's my business. You can tell your 'lady'? friend that if she's from New York, she should be accustomed to living among people and having some respect for her neighbors." As I said this, I walked down the stairs.
For the next half hour the tranny-thing stomped on the ceiling, yelled obscenities and insults through the floor, threatened my life and yelled at ND, ""You don't know me, Dwayne...I will fuck huh up!"
I dialed the Palookaville Police Department. One of the older guys came out. Feathered thinning hair, porn 'stache, tinted glasses, the works..."So, uh...tell me what ya got goin' on here."
I explained and he went up the stairs. He knocked four times before Dwayne came to the door. He opened it and announced, "Uh, sorry I couldn't get to the door, I was in the bathroom on the can."
Noteable silence from the officer.
"We got a call about a noise problem and some threats by your guest...?" The officer stopped to let Dwayne speak.
"Uh, I don't know nothin' about that..." Dwayne started.
"You don't know nothin' about that, huh? Well, let me tell you what I know. I know you're so drunk you can barely stand and I can smell you out here. The lady downstairs knows that you have a guest, a female claims to be from New York. Izzat right? Yeah, well, she wouldn't know that unless she heard it from somewhere, right? Riiigghht. Your television set is so loud I could hear it from the first floor. I can issue a ticket to you right now for violating the Palookaville noise ordinance-a hundred and fifty dollars. So, listen up. If you can't get along with your neighbors and like to have loud mouthed guests who threaten people, move. If I come back here tonight, you're gettin' a hundred and fifty dollar ticket. I have better things to do than intervene in a situation that could have been settled between you and your neighbor. Got that?"

This should be the end of that nonsense, don't you think?