Next-Door Whore

Whore next door. Dr. Seuss, you old has-been. Two can play that game.

My neighbor is a hooker. A street ho. A strumpet, harlot, trollop. A tart. I finally figured it out after I saw her in black bra and tiny shorts draped around a lamppost in the Mission, an area which has not yet been gentrified. I doubt she was in the neighborhood for the discount fabric store, as I was.

But I don't hate her because of her morals. I hate her because she's a vile neighbor.

She must have been overly influenced by Barbie because in two years, I have never seen her without stiletto heels on. She even wears them at home; I know this because our apartments have hardwood floors and she constantly scampers around like a crazed flea in those things. A crazed flea who sounds like a two-legged racehorse.

Every day, she breaks the sound barrier blasting music of indeterminate genre that makes our artwork fall off walls. The bass line permeates our apartment, driving my cat to bury herself in a thick afghan and my plants to drop their leaves in distress.

It drives me to hit the wall with hard objects. Like a wife-beater who does his damage where it won't show, I do mine in closets. The walls of our large, walk-in closet resemble the craters on the moon. I've been at it a long time.

She lines up empty wine bottles by her door rather than use the garbage chute on the back stairwell. The hallway smells like a bar now.

One of her regular guests plays handball against the wall for hours. I hope she isn't doing children.

She's had three new cars in two years, and manages to hit the garage door jamb with every one of them. A few weeks ago, she used her clicker to open the garage as she exited the front door, failing to notice it was already open because another tenant was backing out. The door slammed on the other tenant's Land Rover, causing two thousand dollars in damages. The building owner had to replace the garage door, which was new.

The other tenant rented a car for two weeks while the Land Rover was in repair and her insurance premiums went up. Sleazoid Neighbor refused to reimburse her for any of it, stating that she had just purchased several properties in Arizona and didn't want to spend money on something with no return.

"Nobody got hurt," she sneered. "So what's your problem?"

This morning at 4:20, she turned on her music, loud. It blasted us from a deep sleep. We banged on the wall, but she couldn't hear us. I slipped out my door, buck-naked, and rang her bell, then dashed back to my own apartment before she could come to her door.

She didn't. The music was too loud.

I donned a long shirt and leaned on her bell. I heard her talking to a man, but she didn't answer the door. She turned the music down slightly, which was beyond insulting. A contemptuous gesture, a mere crumb dropped to lowly plebeians. Such things incense me. I banged hell out of the closet wall between our apartments. More chipped paint and lunar craters.

I fantasize about spraying the connecting wall with semi-automatic fire when I know she's home. Or distributing curare-dipped thumbtacks in front of her door. Poisonous snakes. Or maybe a black widow spider in her bed, like a low-budget Godfather without horse heads.

Most troubling of all is that I know if it came down to it, I'd probably drive her to the hospital.

What's wrong with me?