Chris christie is eating right now, he can't be bothered
Greetings from the trenches. Your old pal is at war.
What started off as a small, trivial, footnote of time in my thoughts and spent time has now metastasized into a great and epic battle. One that not all belligerents will return home from.
I have resigned myself to one simple notion in life: my downstairs neighbors can no longer be allowed to continue with their wicked, vile, spiteful, grotesque, fat and simply inane ways. I have but one path to walk now: their unyielding and absolute defeat.
To not achieve this necessary goal is not an option. It is my purpose. In many ways, I feel as though my whole life, or at least every conflict I’ve been through, has built me up and prepared me for this moment. The knives are very much out now, perhaps never to find their sheaths again.
I take a momentary pause in my unflinching warpath to write this letter to you. So that perhaps when the dust settles and the smoke clears and some confuse victor from victim, you will know why I did what I did and why it had to be this way.
I’m not asking you to confirm my actions, nor to commiserate with me. I’m not even asking you to understand, but just to try. Think of a moment where you were pushed past some brink, where you took stock and realized there was no going back. Think about the state of mind you were in and know that is where I am now.
As you may already be able to tell: I am careening down the ledge, plummeting face first into insanity. It’s OK. It is but a worthy cause and a necessary sacrifice to complete the mission of my life.
To give you full context into this terrible and treacherous place I find myself in, I should start at the beginning. The day we moved in.
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The first time I saw Jonny, he was sprinting 100 miles a second in my direction. I thought he might burst into flames he was running at such a velocity. We were outside of our apartment complex, in the parking section. The wind seemed as if it was required to propel him towards me at maximum velocity, as if it had no choice but to put us together as immediately as possible.
He got right in front of me and bowled over, sucking for air like some wild gorilla that had just been shot with a tranquilizer dart and was slowly succumbing to the night night juice. I was hunched over the trunk of my car, yanking at a YETI cooler full to the brim with cans of beer, minding my own fucking business. I wanted to get drunk.
Jonny looked up at me and I knew from the moment I saw his beady little eyes and bat-shaped head that I didn’t like him or his smug little pug face with rivers of sweat dripping profusely from it.
I grinned some sort of feral grin at him, just kind of like exposing my teeth in a vague way, the type of social cue you use when you are trying to be nice to someone pointing a gun at you or when you come upon a feral beast in the woods and back away slowly.
I nodded ever so slightly and said: “Hello.”
He stared at me for what felt like five minutes. Then he turned abruptly and sprinted towards his apartment, kicking dust up into my face.
I coughed and spit and watched him as he trotted into the apartment right below mine. That’s how I found out he was my downstairs neighbor. I hated him already.
My girl and I were about 90% moved in at that point. That night would be our first official night in our new apartment and we had been excited. The community had seemed quiet and pleasant when we signed our lease. This was the first foreboding sign I had received. Sometimes you can have the most beautiful place in the world, and it can be filled with assholes.
That night, my girl and I got loaded on beer. We drank gallons of it. I cooked dinner and we started watching the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. What a picture. About halfway through the movie, this pulsating beat starts emanating from below us. It sounded like a DTLA nightclub, the type where you don’t just hear the music but you feel it. The type of beat you hear even outside while you’re waiting in line to get in like a scrub.
I look at my girl and she looked back at me. We both had the same expression. PTSD kicked in. We had lived with an aspiring “music producer” neighbor at our last apartment, and he liked to start his work around 2am blaring his latest “masterpiece.” He’d replay the same section of the song over and over again, trying to perfect it. He sounded like Tiësto and Skrillex played at the same time and if they sucked massively. I went up to his apartment a couple of times. He lived three stories above us. As I rode the elevator up, I would clench my fist and dream about the different ways of killing him. Maybe wrap a headphone cord around his neck and squeeze. Some real Joe Pesci shit. I’d get up there, pound on his front door, my heart racing to the beat. He’d always open the door wearing nothing but his underwear. He was covered in tattoos, absolutely jacked and had one of those emo, swooping hair cuts. He kinda looked like a demented, exaggerated caricature drawing of Pete Wentz. I’d ask him nicely to turn it down and he would apologize and comply and was always very nice about it. Then the next night, it would start all over again. So my girl and I, we thought maybe it was happening all over again.
I shrugged and turned the movie up. The volume was blasting, but not egregious.
The music from downstairs got even louder.
I turned up the volume on the TV. Now it was blasting, loud as fuck.
They turned their shit up downstairs.
This game of volume cat and mouse continued for all two hours and forty-one minutes of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s runtime. I started to get into the game. It unlocked something malicious inside of me, something that reveals itself regretfully less infrequently the older I get. I particularly had fun with the volume during the film’s bloody finale. I rode that button full tilt boogie. I let that puppy scream.
Then it was time for bed. My girl and I ambled liked zombies into bed, at that point drugged from all the beer and ready to go right to sleep. Let’s just say, neither of us were going to be doing any “performing” that night. So we both climb into bed and our new mattress is hitting just right. I can still hear some weird combination of explosions and club music coming from downstairs. I’m pretty sure they had both their TV and music speakers blasting at that point to compete with my setup.
After a while, I was able to tune out their nonsense and fall asleep until about 2am, I woke up in a cold sweat when I heard a bear roaring in the near distance. I thought I was back in Boy Scouts in some tent at a shitty summer camp that my mom used to push me off to every June.
After a moment or two, I caught my bearings. I was still in my bedroom on my amazingly comfortable new mattress. I see my girl is still completely zonked out. I’m laying there as it slowly starts to dawn on me: the roaring is actually snoring, and it’s coming from downstairs.
“That little mother fucker,” I thought. “I bet that’s not even him snoring. He looks way too healthy physiologically to be snoring like that. The only logical explanation is that this fucker bought some kind of snoring machine and uses it as white noise so he can sleep and disturb others when he needs to psychologically terrorize someone like an upstairs neighbor.”
It was a good move, I had to hand it to him. I may have won the first battle of the evening, but he handed me my ass in round two.
I didn’t need to sleep. I was giddy. A wave of pettiness washed over me; adrenaline coursed through my veins. I spent all night plotting how I would strike back in the morning.
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My girl and I had splurged for a two-bedroom floor plan. We wanted some extra space and could financially afford it. We had turned our second bedroom into a multifunctional room, but it mainly served as an exercise space. We even built a mini boxing gym, complete with a heavy bag that I was dying to take for a test run. It was just missing one feature.
I went over to my desk area and grabbed a blank piece of paper. I procured a marker and drew a crude drawing of my downstairs neighbor. I did the best I could at drawing his ugly mug from memory after only one sighting. I had hardly done his hideousness justice, but it would have to do. I took a piece of tape and taped it to my heavy bag in the area where my fists would be pounding.
I start wailing on this thing. All-out effort. The whole floor beneath me starts shaking, the heavy bag leaning back and then POUNDING back down onto the floor after every strike. Downstairs, he must have thought it was an earthquake or that the world was ending.
It was a great workout. Then, it was time to take my dog for a walk.
It was one of those Saturday mornings where you look around and realize the beauty of your surroundings and life seems great. Maybe it’s just that you have two days off from hell. My dog and I walked around, and as he squirted in a few different areas. I could tell even he was feeling the spirit. Living in this new community was going to be good for us.
Then we spin a corner and run smack dab into Jonny. His eyes were like two ripe blood oranges with black bags caked underneath. He had a wild crop of hair sticking out on his head like stock of corn that someone had neglected to pick or groom. He had this small, mangy wiener dog on a leash with him that had massive hard nipples. The whole thing was covered in nipples. It started gnashing its teeth and my dog went into scrap mode. He took a stance like Saiyan ready for battle in Dragon Ball Z.
“That’s my boy,” I thought to myself.
Jonny yanked his nipple dog and slid by us. The dog was yapping the whole time.
“C’mon, Julius,” he said to his dog, who didn’t listen at all and yap yap yapped.
He had the nerdiest voice I had ever heard. I was almost embarrassed for him.
I kept a watchful eye on them, ready for an attack. But they didn’t want the smoke. They just ambled away, the dog yapping all the way down the block.
My dog and I continued our walk. I held my head higher and puffed my chest out. We were unstoppable.
“Clip, my boy. Life is good,” I said to my dog. Even he had a little pep in his step.
This pride continued up until we got back to our front door and I saw the pile of shit too late and planted my left foot right in it.
Fucking Julius.
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I started to wonder: does this guy live alone? Who could love such a criminal?
Days passed and after soaking my ruined shoes in all kinds of brines and solutions, I could not get Julius’ fecal matter completely removed from my favorite shoes. After a quick funeral full of tears, I retired my shoes to the trash.
I started to notice the noise coming from downstairs had to be coming from more than one person. This man was highly successful at being as annoying as a human being could be, but no one is that good, I thought. He has to have an accomplice.
I finally caught a glimpse of her a few days later. She looked like Brendan Frasier in The Whale. Just a massive, behemoth body created by a lifetime of bad habits and worse genetics. I feel bad writing this to you now. I myself am no masterpiece. Yet it is imperative I describe these people and this situation to you as accurately as possible, no matter how harsh, to render the truth without obfuscation.
I went to run an errand one morning and she waddled by grunting and I knew immediately it was the sister of my nemesis. They had the same general features, which for all our sake I won’t list again.
I forced myself to stare at her long and good. I wanted to turn away in horror, but I had to learn the enemy as best I could. I felt I had done a good job at concealing my presence when all of a sudden, she snapped her head at me like Medusa. Her face was vile and swollen, filled with some kind of venom or puss. She looked like she was on her way to receive an exorcism.
I watched her roll into her car in the parking lot and speed off going about 60 mph in a 10 mph zone where kids usually play. She hit the speed bumps like they weren’t even there. I think I saw something fall from her undercarriage. I don’t know how her car is still functional.
That was when I knew I needed help. These menaces could not be defeated alone. It was time to consult the guru.
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A consultation with Pam always comes at a slight cost, that of a small slice of your sanity. But in my case, this was an easy price to pay.
Pam was a good ol’ Texas gal now living in California to be closer to her son. Her heart was in Florida though, where she desperately aspired to live. California traffic and politics had weighed heavily on Pam, and she took on more of a “Florida persona” as a way of vicariously escaping.
Her clothing was always bright and neon pastiched and cut as skimpy as possible despite being in her sixties. That’s not to say she didn’t look good. I would have, if I could have.
She had one of those Karen-style haircuts that used to be called The Rachel back in the day as a reference to Jennifer Aniston in Friends but now is The Karen as the term “Karen” has blossomed into pop culture.
Pam was a celebrity within our little community. She was known for putting these patio chairs out in this little grassy patch in front of her apartment where she would hold court. All types of people from the community and elsewhere would stop by and Pam would serve chardonnay and finger foods, usually on Thursday evenings for a “here comes the weekend” type of vibe, and on Sundays all day during football season. I started to frequent these kickbacks as soon we had moved in. Pam had the best potstickers I’ve ever had, and her charcuterie game was always on point.
She had this massive clay armadillo out front of her apartment, a remnant from her El Paso days. She called him Tank. Tank had this little chalkboard propped up against him, and every day he had a ‘message of the day.’ The contents of these messages used to range widely: local news announcements, music lyrics, random questions and musings, riddles, poems. One time I even got Pam to do a birthday message from Tank for my girl. But lately, Pam has hit the political beat. Tank’s messages are somewhere between Fox News evening segment and QAnon message board, which didn’t bother me much. I think both sides of the political aisle are nuts. But it definitely ruffled some feathers in our relatively liberal little community, and her kickbacks had noticeably been “less populated” as Pam leaned further into Tucker Carlson territory with her Tank message board.
Pam had been dreaming for a long time of throwing it all away and moving to Florida. She had fallen madly in love with Governor Ron De Santis, and I highly suspect she was angling to become the first lady of Florida by any means necessary. During election season, she had “re-elect Ron De Santis” lawn signs posted outside of her apartment. I wonder if she knew neither she nor anyone in our community had any say at all in the gubernatorial results of the state of Florida.
I went on the first post-Super Bowl Sunday to consult with Pam, knowing attendance at the kickback would be lower and thus perfect time to pull her aside for an intimate chat.
We sat down in two lawn chairs and she poured me a glass of sparkling white wine and popped in a mini umbrella to go with it. I finished gnawing on a prosciutto bake (prosciutto baked inside of filo dough, absolutely divine) and went in:
“Pam, I need to consult with you on a very important and urgent matter.”
I proceeded to tell her about rat-faced Jonny and his whopper of a sister and their shitting dog who shits everywhere.
“I don’t think you have a case, baby.” She told me. I could tell it pained her to tell me what I didn’t want to hear.
“I think you’re being a bit sensitive and need to just let it go. Stay out of their way, hopefully they’ll stay out of yours. Things will cool down.”
“They won’t stay out of my way, Pam. You don’t know these people. You live all the way over here in the northern apartments. Things are different in the eastern block.”
“You gotta let it go, baby. Let it go, like Elsa.”
With that, Pam kicked up her feet onto a vacant chair near her and tilted her head back towards the sun. She had spoken.
I poured my wine out into the grass dramatically and marched away. The guru had spoken. Perhaps all gurus lose their touch, eventually.
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I still needed allies if I was going to have a chance in this war.
I knew of one other place I could campaign for support, but it would be tricky: my neighbors across the way in Unit 155.
They’re the biggest bastards on the block by far. As I crossed over into their territory, just a short walk from my apartment, I wondered if they would set aside any potential aggression felt towards me in a concerted effort to come together and bear arms against the true community menace.
Two people, if they could be categorized as such, lived inside of Unit 155. First, there was Marcus. She, yes, had the loudest voice I’d ever heard. It would come out of nowhere at high, piercing decibels. Frequently, she would screech positive aphorisms in very rapid succession, things like “very good VERY GOOD VERY GOOD VERY GOOD VERY GOOdverygoodverygoodVERYGOOD VERY GOOD.” Then the barrage would cease, and just when you thought she was done or had finally passed out or something, she would start up again: “VERY GOOD VERY GOOD VERY GOOD VERYGOODVERYGOODverygoodverygood very good…”
At night, Marcus’ son The Giggling Gamer came out. This little mother fucker played video games from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep, which was very early in the morning. Like right around when I would be waking up, around 6am, this little mother fucker was calling it a night.
I knew he was playing video games without having ever laid eyes on him. He would scream and yell very loud curse words, or sometimes just make very loud “UGGHHHHH!!!” and “AHHHHHHHH” noises. At first I thought this little mother fucker might have Tourette’s, but then as a reformed gamer myself I realized: he must have gaming headphones on and is talking to other little mother fuckers and has no idea how loud he’s being. He was so loud, it was impossible to keep our windows open at night. Even with the windows closed, you’d hear late into the night muffled versions of “FUCK YOU! BITCH! FUCK! AHHHHHHHHHH!”
I thought about yelling out the window to him to shut the fuck up, but it would be a futile gesture, being that the little mother fucker had headphones on. A few times I marched over and knocked on the door to politely ask this little mother fucker to shut the fuck up or close his window at least, but no one ever answered the door. I thought about throwing a rock through the window but came to my senses. That little mother fucker was clearly so invested in the games, he probably wouldn’t even notice a rock flying through his window and smashing his head open. Plus, my aim is shit.
That wasn’t even the worst of it. In all honesty, I’m a man who appreciates some good roasting, and I could appreciate some of the cleverness of the way he was stringing together some of his disses. The worst of all was his laugh. He had this BIG, booming, obnoxious laugh that was always the same and came in threes. Three big “HEAH-HEAH-HEAH’s.” So late at night, in between the cursing, you’d hear “HEAH-HEAH-HEAH. FUCK YOU BITCH COCK HEAH-HEAH-HEAH! HEAH-HEAH-HEAH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HEAH-HEAH-HEAH! FUUUCK. BITCH! I’m gonna but your HEAD OFF, CLIMB INSIDE YOUR BODY AND EAT MY WAY THROUGH IT!”
These were the perfect people to partner with.
I sought a parlay with them one evening, armed with gifts to woo. For The Giggling Gamer, I brought sour candy. You know the type of nasty shit that wrecks your teeth that little gaming mother fuckers like that like to eat. For Marcus, I brought her a shirt that said “I’m Not Yelling, This is Just How I Talk” because I saw it as a search result when I Googled “what to buy someone who talks too loud.”
Marcus asked smart questions. First, she wanted to know: if she were to help me, what would help look like?
“All out noise barrage. We will build a funnel system so all noise made by your apartment will travel directly into their apartment. My carpenters estimate that installation can be done in just a few days. I bet the fuckers will be on their heels and moved out by the end of the month.”
Marcus liked this proposal but had her own set of demands if she were to join the cause.
“You gotta help me with The Pee-Yew Two.”
The Pee-You Two were a notorious couple in the community. They smelt so bad, there had been petitions to get them to move. They lived below Marcus and The Giggling Gamer, so their proximity to the stench was extremely unfortunate. The smell vacillated between two scents: Extreme B.O., and baby powder covering up Extreme B.O.
I caught a whiff right then and there, talking to Marcus. It was a baby powder covering up Extreme B.O. kind of evening.
“Marcus, that’s a tall order,” I proffered.
“That’s my price. Very good.”
“OK. And what, may I ask, does help look like in this very malodorous matter?”
“Very GOOD. I propose that once we deal with Jonny and The Whale, we reconfigure that funnel in a very good way to be scent-oriented: we build it to catch the stank from The Pee-Yew Two and channel it away from my mutha’ fuckin’ very good nostrils. VERY GOOD VERY GOOD VERYGOOD.”
I stood up slowly and spit in my right hand. She stood and spit in hers. I looked her dead in the eye.
“Very good.” I said. “Very good.”
We shook our spit right hands. We had a lot of work to do.
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Years later, looking back on how it all began.
This reminiscing hasn’t done much good and brings only a low level of understanding to the whole matter. I thought this letter would be a method of clarifying myself, but really became a way to scratch deep into my soul and discover the root of my unseemliness: my pettiness, my myopia, my selfishness, my atavism. It’s 2023, and I’m still just a caveman dragging my knuckles across the dirt, wondering why they’re scrapped and bleeding.
I have fought long and hard, and the only lesson I have learned is that hate is easy. It brings you nothing but ugly, harsh feelings. Hate feels good in the moment because it gives the brain and the heart a quick-draw reaction to justify some ulterior or repressed feeling that is unable to articulate itself at that time. But it’s just a band aid, an excuse for not doing the hard emotional work. Down the road, hate always winds up making things worse. Hate is a cancer, slowly feeding off your emotions and then even your physical body. It transforms you into a grotesque version of yourself, one hardly recognizable when you finally have the balls to look in the mirror. Still the same ugly basterd, but geeked out on hate and growing Cronenbergian humps on your back with gills and bat wings.
The only victor when you hate someone is hate itself.
Nowadays, hate is abundant and seemingly dripping from the pores and foaming at the mouths of each and every one of us. I’m done with it. It’s brought me bouts of comfort, but ultimately has left me for dead laying naked in the street.
I think back on the first time I met my downstairs neighbor. My first reaction was to criticize his unsightly appearance, take offense at his actions, and declare war before sundown.
What if I had given him the benefit of the doubt? Tried to like him? Find him… not handsome, but not so harsh on the eyes? It’s not lying, it’s just a shift in mentality. What if I said something nice?
Even if he turned out to be the prick that he is, I could just shrug it off. Is it really that big of a deal? Certainly not. There are larger fish to fry and cold beers to drink. All taste better when you’re not putting hate out into the world. Things are better when you try to be nice, even if it’s not how you generally feel. It may eventually become the truth, or the pave the way to it.