It is so beautiful outside. I am glad that spring has finally arrived and gone are the days of five degree weather and relentless snowfall.
I took a walk to the Starbucks up the block. It's so warm and happy there on the streets and everyone is out getting their fill. When I came back to the house I perched myself on the stoop with my coffee and a magazine. My crazy Greek neighbor, Constantine, was walking up and down the block shouting into a cordless telephone. There were some oafish carpet layers coming in and out of his house. When Constantine hung up, his mother started shouting in Greek. Constantine screamed that he's just going to fucking go and commit suicide and stomped off towards the Avenue. His tiny high pitched mother stood there shouting in her language until he was long out of sight.
One of the carpet layers looked at me and said "he's a little scary. Aren't you afraid he's going to come out with a shotgun?" I said "no, not really. He's always like that." He said (now obviously just looking for a reason to talk to me) "I don't know, I'd be a little scared. He's pretty angry." I said "Yeah, he's like that every day. I used to have a roommate who was scared, but I'm really not. I'm so used to it. He's a nice guy. Just a little....over the top."
As he was leaving he said "Is this what all pretty girls do, sit outside on the stoop drinking coffee and reading?" (LAME-O comeon.) I just smiled and said "on a day like this, I would think so." He got into his van and said "alright well I'll see you later. Try to stay out of the papers." (Implying that Constantine may lose it and kill us all.)
I still have not figured out definitively what Constantine's problem is. I highly suspect autism or maybe even Tourettes. But all in all I don't believe he's dangerous. He's just a drama queen (times ten) who doesn't at all know how to deal with his anger or frustration. He's definitely very hostile sometimes to his family. Always angry and shouting obscenities, racial epithets and telling his mother to fuck off. But he could be doing that and I'll walk by and he always greets me as if all is normal. And I do the same. Because I know that he's not just a perfectly sane person who is acting out this way. To a certain degree I believe he really can't help it.
Posted by Maria at May 1, 2004 02:33 PM | TrackBackHey girl. We had a boy in our neighborhood that was "nuts". His name was Mike and he would sit on his front porch and sing into a garden hose. Anyway, he was in his early 30's, lived w/his mom and he never seemed violent but angry you know. He set fire to their house in '84. It was horrible...but I do remember him walking around the neighborhood talkin' to himself...my mom said he was "slightly retarded"...he's in a home now, his mother passed away..it was sad.
Posted by: sandy at May 2, 2004 03:10 PM~I swear I removed ice off my windshield for four months straight, I welcome 100 degree heat~
Posted by: btezra at May 3, 2004 03:09 PMMy crazy neighbor story starts with a bag of heroin which was myteriously secreted into a black patent leather purse which Marta, my wife, had left in a storage box on the back porch of our second story apartment, and, when we called the police to report it (why, you ask, did we report, not sell, it?), drew the attention of our neighbor who had never spoken to us before but suddenly became very interested in being our friends, but that's a different story. Like the little three inch doll we found behind the apartment, naked and dirty, that Marta dubbed the "crack baby." I think the owner of the same apartments, a wiry Egyptian man with a long nose and a habit of rocking back and forth when he talked, and who lived in the building on the first floor, had something to do with the secret stash of heroin, since he seemed not only nonplussed by our discovery, but actually asked for the gooey substance to "check it out".
But the real crazy neighbor story involves not the Egyptian man with a long nose who had a habit of rocking back and forth when he talked and who may well have been involved in the heroin trade, but his girlfriend who suffered from a rare disease that made you die before you reached thirty and also, apparently, made you very sexually provocative. She sat on the rather dirty porch in the doorway of her first floor apartment wearing the most next to nothing outfit one could wear and not be the emperor, chain smoked some mysterious looking dark colored cigarette that emitted smoke that looked and smelled like burning plastic and chain drank Miller Lite beer while listening to the most raucous heavy metal tunes invented by humankind (if, indeed humankind invented heavy metal--not that I'm against any genre, but let's get real).
But that wasn't the problem. The problem started after she got pregnant and the Egyptian owner with the long nose and the habit of rocking back and forth when he spoke to you tried to run her over or maybe he was just trying to give her a cheap abortion, I was never really sure, and then our beautiful daughter Violet came to live with us for a few weeks, and sent the crazy girlfriend through the roof with jealousy. Indeed, I think she suspected me of trying to pick up on her boyfriend--part of the disease that was slowly killing her I suspect. But the real trouble started when they moved to the second floor and she picked up a nasty habit of throwing things that make loud noises into the roadway below. This lasted a number of weeks until they took her away. It was sad really.
But then, maybe if you have a disease that you know will kill you in a few years, you live life with a bit more gusto. Indeed, when life spans were generally shorter in the 19th century perhaps folk had a way of living life more fully not knowing how many more times the old lungs would fill and deflate...
Posted by: Thomas at May 3, 2004 08:35 PMThomas!!! Wow. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? My dad I suppose.
It's been a long time since we spoke. Thanks for posting one of your trademark hilarious bizzarro tales. Love that story.
Posted by: Maria at May 4, 2004 01:47 PMIn a sense you could give your dad the credit, but you owe the pleasure to the strength of your own personality. Hang in there and try not to get too frazzled in the fray. There will always be ignorance, there will always be stupidity, there will always be hate, there will always be racism. Look for the day when you can one day reach deep down inside yourself and come out again clean and beautiful and filled with love. Forget the hate mongers. They're not even worth a visit.
Posted by: Thomas at May 5, 2004 07:39 PM