I’m here to tell you that the Gestapo is alive and well and currently active in my apartment building! Of course not the original ones from Hitler’s Germany but newly manifested blitzkriegers in the form of little adolescent cop wanna-bes with sullen attitudes dressed in storm trooper uniforms and shiny black combat boots. And now every night I come home to find them either flanking the front door at attention or patrolling the lobby with a somewhat earnest attempt at fascist military precision. In response I can only conclude that apparently the management’s grand experiment of shutting down the front desk and replacing the inept security personnel with close circuit video cameras in all the hallways didn’t work out after all and now it seems that once again my apartment building is under siege!
Only this time it isn’t from the usual suspects like the crackheads and dope-fiends that linger destitute outdoors – its from within. And unbeknownst to the munchkin militia keeping things out isn’t the problem that they should be concerning themselves with. Instead its the building’s tenants that were once thought to be so much better than the riff raff in the streets as they have evidently metamorphosed into the drug dealers and addicts that the buildings owners had vowed to keep out and the current atmosphere that prevails is, well, I not really sure what but its getting harder to distinguish what goes on in front of the building from what goes on inside.
Late last night the woman a few doors down, the one with all the piercings in her face, was out in the hall screaming at the top of her lungs that someone, whom I do believe she was throwing out of her apartment, didn’t love her! Though how anyone is supposed to even attempt to love her with four sharp silver spikes jutting out haphazardly from both of her lips is beyond me. Her whole projected image is that of don’t come near me and if you do I’ll poke you – literally! But what may have been just a lover’s quarrel was undoubtedly fueled by consumption of obviously large quantities of narcotics until whatever went awry escalated into a very volatile situation.
Yet you would think that this type of virulent tribulation is just the kind of situation that would bring the building’s entire platoon of black clad rent a cops running all gung ho to show their peace keeping skills, only it didn’t. I guess the remote possibility that pokey-girl was armed and dangerous would have been reason enough that the Gestapo stayed downstairs sitting at the table that they’ve erected in the lobby, or maybe it was the chance that they’d get stuck wrestling her down to the ground. Who knows? Yet its pretty obvious that they’re a little more comfortable with just intimidating people coming and going from the building, not engaging the tenants that are killing one another a few floors above them. And yeah, sure I wanna smack them upside their heads when they ask me for the fifth time what floor I live on and do I have any business being in the building when I’ve passed by their checkpoint for the last week and a half at least once a night, but what do I know about this security business anyway?
However if these insipid goings on were my only gripes than I could just shut up and go away leaving you all shaking your heads in relief and mumbling “that Fromage!” thus allowing you to gracefully move on to a less whiny post on someone else’s site. But unfortunately they’re not because as an added bonus to living here the construction on a new nightclub right around the corner from where I live is almost complete leaving me contemplating the inescapable question: Is this what this neighborhood really needs? Yet another after-hours dance club for inebriated out-of-towner-idiots located just down the street from another club that’s indistinguishable from the first which is a half a block away from another one that’s regrettably located directly below my apartment’s window. Which right now out of necessity is thankfully closed, yet the panes are vibrating in a spastic rhythm with a mind dulling syncopated bass that’s been incessantly blasting away all night long from somewhere deep in the bowels of the adjacent club.
Nevertheless it isn’t just the music that’s annoying its also the atmospheric residue that the club exudes into the street in front of it with an almost nonstop accompaniment of unpleasant drunks shouting at the top of their lungs, girls screeching, tires squealing and the wailing of police sirens. Without even looking outside I can tell you that seeing as its 2am the streets are now filled with intoxicated fools trying to impress each other in the desperate hope that someone will take them home or at least offer them a ride to the next party. Since from what I’ve witnessed first hand while daring to venture outside on nights like this: the mating dance ritual of the local club goer tends to consist of the guys driving around and around the block in their cars while revving their engines and screaming obscenities and the women giggling hysterically as they run back and forth in packs.
Just how anybody gets to have any sex with cultural dynamics like that I have no idea and maybe its just me but I can’t seem to remember the last time that I got laid because I shouted out my car’s window about what a nice ass a girl had while driving by at 60 miles an hour with my tires smoking! Come to think of it I can’t remember the last time I shouted out my car window at anybody other than to tell some fool that they drove like shit, which didn’t get me laid either!
Although in reality who cares what these assholes do in terms of what passes as courtship these days because what’s really killing me is that with all these morons coming to my neighborhood to spend their quality “fun” time in an alcohol fueled stupor there’s no god damn place for me to park! Ok, so I’ve said it! Yes that’s what’s really bothering me, my god damn parking! And yeah, obviously I’m that shallow and my priorities are all skewed, but so what! There’s just no reason that I can think of for me to have to deal with a ridiculous dilemma like this! There just isn’t! And just last night I got two tickets for parking in a no stopping zone that was supposedly getting street cleaned at the same time – 90 dollars worth of tickets mind you!
You know just talking about it is making me feel better, because as you may or may not remember I had said that I was depressed last week. So now instead of holding things in I’m letting them go and not dwelling on them like I used to, that and I’ve begun to exercise again and my diet, like I’m watching what I eat and all and don’t let me forget to mention my weekly meditation group. So I’m certainly not as depressed as I was last week, however I still can’t park my car anywhere and I’m out a few bucks, but I’m not depressed and sometimes it just comes down to getting it all out of your system.
Kind of like those disgruntle guys you read about in the newspapers that show up at work with a couple of assault rifles and let the boss know how they’re feeling by expressing it with the business end of an AK47! Not that I’m gonna do that or that it even crossed my mind, and besides in California anyway a convicted felon such as myself can’t legally buy an assault rifle – did I mention my meditation group? But anyway where was I? Oh yeah, Gestapo in my building right? And the no parking thing! But hey at least I’m not depressed anymore…