The Saga of my Evil Stepneighbor

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T MOVE INTO A WHITE TRASH NEIGHBORHOOD
Or
Another Reason for Me to Sell My Possessions and Live in a Cave

10/9/2005

When I first moved to Topeka, I made a conscious decision that I did not want to make enemies of any of my neighbors. I decided that even though I’m living in enemy territory, I would try to be as diplomatic as possible without pretending to be outgoing with neighbors and without pretending to be a penis-worshipping republican. In other words, I had much the same policy with neighbors as I had with local relatives. I would be myself inside the house but lie low while outside the house.
About a year or so ago, the Stupid White Male next door asked me to rent my garage to him, and I sort of laughed and told him that it was very cluttered and there was absolutely no room for a car. Instead of accepting that as a No, he seemed to think that meant I should clean out the garage. Now, it’s true that the garage needed cleaning out, but my highest priority since moving here has been to declutter and clean and make livable the interior of the house, not the garage, since I live inside the house, not inside the garage. After relatives took a lot of junk out of the garage, at about the time that I moved here, I started filling the garage with clutter out of the house. Also, after I organized boxes of magazines and books and labeled them to sell on E-bay, I went ahead and took them out to the garage, so that the house wouldn’t be cluttered with them also. After I did all this, the neighbor asked me to rent the garage.
After that first time he mentioned it, he accosted me with, “Have you cleaned out the garage yet?” I just laughed at him. The very idea, I thought. When I told him that the garage was full of stuff, I did not mean that I had any intention of cleaning it out so that he could use it. My point was that it was full of stuff and would continue to be full of stuff and I had much more important things to do. Besides, if I cleaned it out, that would be a big motivation for me to put down a gravel path and park my car in the garage. And yet several times he nagged about cleaning my garage, and he said he’d be willing to rent only part of it, so eventually I half-heartedly went into the garage and did some cleaning up, due to my “don’t make enemies of my neighbors” policy, even though I didn’t like the idea of letting this creep park in my garage. Actually, I think the first time I tried cleaning the garage was in preparation for the Oakland Community garage sale, which apparently has become an annual thing.
On one occasion, the jerk pulled over when I was getting ready to go to work, and instead of asking, he said, “Rent me your garage.” Like, in what ultimate reality is bossing me around appropriate behavior?! That’s the point at which I started to, like, acknowledge at least to myself the fact that I’m hostile toward this neighbor, that I’ve never been comfortable around him. Probably before that incident even, I had a tendency to wait to take my trash out or otherwise go outside, because I spotted him outside (through a window), and I really didn’t want to talk to him. I knew that if I were in my yard and he saw me, he’d accost me.
Finally, he asked me about cleaning out the garage and I said something to the effect that it will take ten years, and he offered to help clean it out. Well, that sounded much better, I thought, so I agreed to meet him at the garage that Saturday at nine in the morning. For some odd reason, the creep right after that agreement parked a car on my back lot, a car that was partially taken apart and lacking a license plate, and he was obviously tinkering with it. I found this extremely rude and inconsiderate, and I was fully aware that the vehicle in question was not only parked on my property but also parked on my grass, not on gravel or pavement. I decided that I still did not want to make an enemy of my neighbor, as I had been saying ever since I moved to Topeka. Sure, repeat it like a mantra, even when it’s futile. (In retrospect, it seems very foolish on my part to take crap from a creep just because he lives next door, but that’s in retrospect. There’s always that awareness that the prick isn’t going to move anytime soon.) I even half-thought that perhaps he was being really optimistic that the garage would be totally cleaned out that very day and that this car would be parked inside the garage, and that if that were not the case he would promptly remove it from my property. It’s funny how I tend to give scumbags the benefit of the doubt and they continually don’t deserve it. The truth is I’ve never been comfortable with this neighbor, but then I’m not exactly a people person, especially in Topeka.
That Saturday morning, I got up and went out to the garage promptly at nine in the morning. I tried to open the big door to the garage, but it was locked and I didn’t know which key to use on it, so I opened the smaller door and opened the gate to the back lot, and I started cleaning the place up. He did not show up. He continued to not show up. I could hear him driving a tractor or something around close by, and I rather suspected that he knew damn well that I was working in the garage. I forget how, but at some point the large garage door was open, unless I’m thinking of a later adventure in the garage.
Eventually, Aunt Ethel showed up in her fascist screeching harpy mode, bitching at me for a series of stupid trivial things, as if her whole purpose for showing up was to piss me off. She went off on me because I hadn’t mowed the lawn in a whopping two weeks, because the asshole neighbor had a car parked on my property (as if that were my fault—and I spelled out to her the fact that I had not given the creep permission), because both the back gates were open so the dog couldn’t go out in the back yard (so what if the dog had been out earlier and the reason the gates were open was so that I could promptly take things out of the garage to the trash and to my car—the latter for the sake of taking things to Goodwill). As if my evil step-neighbor hadn’t annoyed me enough, this evil step-relative had to make absolutely sure that my Saturday was ruined. When she paused, sort of smiled, and smugly said something like, “Now I’ve given you my earful,” I glared and said coldly, “Good-bye.” Either she didn’t hear me, or she chose not to acknowledge that I had spoken.
Oh, but the screeching harpy wasn’t done antagonizing me. The whole time she was in the garage, looking through stuff to see if there was something she wanted, she first of all was distracting me from my work by talking and showing me things she’d find, and in addition discouraging me by looking around and making it quite clear that it was impossible to clean all this up. Worst of all, she kept biting my head off whenever I said anything on any topic. For instance, when she found a box for holding the large old-fashioned floppy disks, she went off on me, seeming to think that the fact that I don’t print out every bloody thing on my computer, but rather save it all on floppy disks (I’m not sure she’s even figured out how to save things on floppy disks!), she snapped at me—in self-righteous finger-shaking mode--something like, “Oh, and what will you do when the computer doesn’t work?” I said coldly, “Take the disk to the library or Kinko’s.” She made some sneering, smug look/remark. That wasn’t the only topic that was an excuse to bite my head off, but I think I have a fairly detailed account of this in my therapeutic journal document about this fascist harpy, so I don’t need to type it all over again here. This may have even, ironically, been immediately after the evening on the phone when she had the audacity to describe herself as “a sweet old lady.” Her hypocrisy and smugness have no limits.
Eventually, the neighbor finally showed up—like around 11, two hours later than he had agreed to come over. I told him about my back injury (oh, yes, this ordeal was shortly after my back injury, and probably prolonged my pain!) and persuaded him to move some boxes of magazines and books onto the worktables along the back wall. He said, “You’re even more of a pack rat than Bud,” to which I replied that no, all these boxes were full of Uncle Buddy’s stuff. I felt indignant that he could accuse me of being more of a packrat than my uncle, who kept the house full of newspapers and magazines and rotten cans of food and all kinds of ugly, ugly clutter. At least my clutter consists of books and artwork, and there is considerably less of it.
At some point, Aunt Heinrich Himmler left, and I seem to recall that I set foot out of the garage at some point I crossed the yard to the front of the house and loaded garage stuff into the back of the car. When I got back to the garage, the neighbor was gone. Sure, he had moved a bunch of boxes onto the tables, perhaps all of them, but the garage was still definitely a cluttered mess and it had a long way to go. The way he had spoken earlier that week, he made it sound like he really wanted to rent the garage as soon as possible and would do a lot of the cleaning up, like even take things up to the attic space. As it was, he did not come back that day, and I was on my own. I forget how late I worked in the garage, but I do recall taking two trips to Goodwill and having a great deal of junk out at the alley. And my back hurt.
The car remained on my property. The grass underneath it turned yellow, while the grass around it continued to be green and healthy. Eventually other vehicles ended up on my property, like as many as two trucks at a time. Over two months ago, a white trailer (about the size and shape of a Victorian bathing machine) appeared in front of and even partially on the compost heap that’s behind my back fence, and I do believe it has just sat there ever since. That alone is grounds for calling the city and getting it towed. For a while he had a white pick-up truck parked on my back lot most of the time, but for the past month or so it’s usually been a red pick-up truck with a trailer behind it covered with tractors and lawn mowers. Because of this, I can’t even get my trash out to the alley half the time, which of course means my trash doesn’t get picked up.
On top of that, other white trash neighbors a couple weeks ago decided that my back lot is the local dump, and I found all this crap on my property—a broken lawn mower, pieces of ladders and windows, etc. It was a lot of junk, and it had appeared there within one week. I took what I could get to and, grumbling about evil step-neighbors the whole time, threw it all onto the other side of the alley. Fortunately, that all disappeared rather than reappearing on my property, but it had all appeared there in only one week’s time. True, I’m merely assuming that it wasn’t all from the creep next door.
At the same time that I found all that trash, I found a bunch of trash—including a beer bottle—inside my dumpster. Because of the vehicles this crap neighbor had on my property, I had actually left the dumpster out there all week rather than bring it in after Friday, even though I know better—I know that if you don’t want something to happen to your dumpster, you should get it back in the gated part of the yard. There has been gang graffiti on the dumpster since before I moved here. Not only do I have to maneuver the dumpster around his truck, but sometimes there simply isn’t enough space to get the dumpster past the truck. That is, back when he still drove the truck away, which he hasn’t done for some time now.
This may seem a bit off the subject of the neighbor, but it is relevant: before I went to Ireland, the tree by the garage was struck by lightning and the garage was damaged, and I contacted Allstate immediately, and at first I intended to hire the next-door neighbor to fix the roof, since that is one of his little privately-owned businesses. After I came back from Ireland, another branch fell onto the roof, and this one lay way up there, and eventually I persuaded the White Tree Service guy to remove it (although at first he accused me of not paying for the first tree branch, even though I had handed the bill to an Allstate agent—it turned out that somehow Allstate had forgotten, but fortunately I’ve, well, reminded them, and they finally paid this guy—apparently he waited for their check before he was willing to remove this second branch, by which time I’d given up on him and was trying to decide what to do to get the branch off my garage roof, when finally about two weeks after I spoke with him, he came by and did it).
In the past, this jerk of a neighbor has accosted me in the yard, like when I’m going out to my car to go to work, he’s pulled over and talked to me. I’ve been waiting for that to happen, for different reasons. At first, right after I got back from Ireland and found that Allstate had sent me a check for the storm damage, I had still been half-heartedly planning on renting my garage out to him (even though I really didn’t want to and have been angry with him ever since he started parking on my property) and hiring him to fix my garage roof, still doing this “idiot Bodhisattva” thing of telling myself that I had agreed to rent the garage (after much nagging on his part) and that I didn’t want to make enemies with my neighbor—a futile attitude by that time. After all, technically I’m not making an enemy of my neighbor; his behavior has been unacceptable for a long time now, and I had been pretending otherwise. Anyway, I was at that point hoping I’d run into the jerk so that I could ask him to fix the garage roof, and in exchange I’d let him rent the garage but get him to send me a bill, thanks to the check from Allstate.
Then the day came along when I couldn’t get my wheeled dumpster past his truck and left it as a really big hint right by his truck, thinking he might move it before trash pick-up (which he did not do). The following week involved not only my having difficulties getting past his truck, but also the above incident with the neighborhood deciding that my back lot is the local dump. At that point, my patience completely died and my reason for wanting to run into this obnoxious neighbor outdoors suddenly transformed into this: so that I can tell him to get his crap off my property and keep it off my property (as politely as I can say something like that), but funny thing—he hasn’t accosted me since before I went to Ireland. I get the impression that perhaps he’s avoiding me, although at the same time I realize that I’m not exactly spending hours working on a garden, whereas I have tons of work to do inside the house. Oh and incidentally, since right before I went to Ireland, the garage has had enough space in it for a vehicle—enough for about one and a half Geo Metros, actually. But, gee, I’ve changed my mind about renting the garage to him and about hiring him to fix the storm damage on the garage roof. After contacting White Tree Service, I jotted down the name of a roofing company that had a sign in front of a house they had recently worked on.
If you antagonize me, then why should I hire you or rent my garage to you?! That really isn’t the way to win me over. For some time, I’ve had the notion that this neighbor wouldn’t treat Uncle Buddy that way, and that they got along, and that this neighbor has lived next door since I was a little kid, if not longer. It therefore didn’t make sense for him to treat me like this, unless of course he’s a Stupid White Male and a misogynist git who thinks he can walk all over me merely because I don’t have a penis. No wonder he got along with Uncle Buddy, another white male supremacist. Flocking together. I kept telling myself not to jump to this conclusion, and then alternately telling myself to stop fooling myself. Yesterday my cousin Donald stopped by so I could pay him for mowing the lawn, and he confirmed my suspicion, saying that the jerk neighbor’s acting that way because I’m a woman. That’s when I decided that I definitely shall call the city—I think they give only one warning before they tow it away. I’ve given the prick months to get his vehicles off my property, and he hasn’t done it, but squeezes in as many vehicles as he can, so on Monday I’m making the call…finally. This isn’t the first incident that rather gives me the impression that if you’re female and you treat barbaric Stupid White Men with just normal common courtesy, they take that as an invitation to walk all over you.

10/20/2005
The saga continues.
When I called the city office, the response I got was basically that I had to settle this with the jerk, and that the only thing they’d do is get at me, because the vehicles are on my property. I should know better than to expect a government office to be of any help rather than the complete opposite of help. I don’t know whether they sent Uncle Buddy a bill when they towed my gramma’s ’68 Dodge off the back lot—they probably did. Of course, I would stick it in the jerk neighbor’s mailbox, if things come to that. I wouldn’t mind in the least if the city towed his vehicles!
Of course, I simply don’t have time to pace up and down in my front yard, waiting for the chance to run into this neighbor, nor am I outgoing enough to go over and bang on his door or call him on the phone. Maybe aggressive is the word for that. Calling unexpectedly, with my phone voice that sounds like a five year old, to rant at this neighbor, just doesn’t sound like the thing to do. I would want the encounter to seem casual, unrehearsed, as it would if he’d accost me as he used to, before he started pretending like my back lot is his junk yard.
About a week ago, at which time there was more trash on my back lot, I went out and picked up everything I could with my bare hands, carried it and dumped it on the creep’s property. Pieces of wood and roof stuff (gee, I might want to snag some of that back for my garage) and a big empty trash can and probably some trash that I can’t name—I took all of it and dumped it on his side of the fence, just off the alley. Not only was I getting it OFF my property, but also—whether or not any of these smaller things are his—perhaps (gasp) he’d take a hint that maybe I object to his having vehicles parked on my grass. Did I mention this was sod that the perp has parked his crap on? I don’t believe he’s even moved the pickup truck in the past three weeks, and no doubt he plans to leave his vehicles on my property over the winter. That is so not going to happen.

Sure enough, the jerk has not taken the hint—the vehicles are still there. I haven’t peeked over to see whether he’s moved the crap I dumped on his property.
I have run over and over in my head what I want to say to him if he gets within earshot: “You get your trailers and your truck off my property. You keep them off my property. You don’t park anything on my property ever again.” Sometimes I imagine adding, “Otherwise, I’m getting a lawyer.” If he nags me about renting my garage to him, I imagine saying, “Since you pretend as if my back lot is your parking lot, I am NOT renting my garage to you. Neither am I renting my grass to you, so get your crap off my property.” If he wanted to rent my garage that badly, then he shouldn’t have chosen to antagonize me as much as possible. Stupider than a sack of bricks. No doubt he’s a republican.
Perhaps next time I see Donald, I’ll ask him if he knows anyone who knows how to hotwire a pickup truck. Jokingly... or not.


In the past two weeks, I have called and left messages on the answering machines of two roofing companies, neither of which has called me back. Since they don’t want to do business with me, they don’t get any of the money that Allstate gave me for the storm damage. I had forgotten about that, in my rage about the neighbor, until I suddenly remembered this afternoon, and that was something else to fume about mentally. I have the names and phone numbers of two other roofing companies, and if I get answering machines, I’m not even going to bother leaving a message.
Everywhere I’ve lived since graduating from college, I’ve had at least one neighbor who was a menace. The worst is—if not the current one—the one who banged on my door and screamed at me because, horrors, I was watching TV at normal volume at 8 pm (the first time I’d turned on the TV in two weeks), and who furthermore locked Cosette in the basement a couple times, so that she barfed all over the basement floor. On the other hand, the cigarette ashes and butts on the landing, stinking up my living room in addition to the landing and stairs, is probably the most intolerable, given my allergy and utter repellence toward cigarettes. I’ve lost count of how many St. Louis neighbors seemed to think they own the public street, yelling at me because, horrors, I parked in front of their house or near their la-de-da car.

10/22/2005
I am feeling so much better now!
About a month ago, I received an Oakland community flier that mentioned Whelan’s, a business down the street on Seward, would be accepting junk—like trash that’s been sitting out and that the trash collectors don’t pick up—on the morning of October 22. So I loaded one TV into the back of my car and took it there. One of the guys filling the big dumpsters offered to help me get the other TV into the back of my car, and I took up the offer. He drove right behind me, we got to the alley, and I said, “Too bad I can’t take my obnoxious neighbor’s crap away!” He informed me that he’s a property inspector, and this obnoxious neighbor is written up and has received two notices already! He’s accosted him, and finally my neighbor, Ken Fisher, has relented and is going to get his vehicles off my property (and off other places, too). I was downright elated at the news. I told the inspector about my calling the city and how they wouldn’t help me, and he said that I could also have called the cops. Although they can’t force him to move his crap, they’d be wearing uniforms and have that authority, so chances are he’d take them seriously. Also, the inspector recommended that, after he gets his crap off my property, I can get a rope and string it across my back lot, and hang a “No Parking” sign on the rope. I had been thinking about a No Parking and No Trespassing sign, but the only place I thought of placing them was the back fence.
In any case, karma got to the jerk, without any help from me. I didn’t like the prospect of having an ugly scene with someone who would be living right next to me for a long time. True, even without such a situation, the experience of his turning my back lot into his junk yard has really affected my perception of him, and in future he will never have the opportunity of parking in my garage or getting hired by me to do construction work—he has proved himself to be thoroughly unreliable and untrustworthy.



2/10/2006
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF MY EVIL STEPNEIGHBOR

Last month, I found myself daily wondering why the prick’s vehicles are still on my property, given that I had spoken with the property inspector back in October. Day after day, this crossed my mind, and so finally I decided to give the property inspector a call. I asked around at work, “What phone number would you call if you wanted to speak with a property inspector?” and one of the catalogers (yes, I work with librarians—who better to ask!) gave me a phone number.
As I called, I suspected that it was the same phone number I had called previously with no results, but after some hesitance I called up and explained that I had spoken with a property inspector back in October and that my neighbor’s vehicles are still on my property. The woman I spoke with transferred me to the Oakland neighborhood property inspector, the one I had spoken with, and I left a message. I explained that I had spoken with him in October and that my neighbor’s vehicles were still on my property, and I gave him the name and address of the neighbor. Later, he called me back and he gave me the impression that he remembered me. He said that with his office, there’s a lot of paperwork, but to get things done quickly, I could call the police. He gave me the cell phone and office phone numbers of a particular officer who handled these situations, and so I left a message with the officer.
Shortly after I got to work the next morning, the police officer called me back. It turned out that he was already out in the alley behind my house, looking at the prick’s vehicles, and he said he’d sticker the vehicles and they’d be towed early next week. After I hung up, I turned around and gleefully announced this to my coworkers. Sure enough, within a week the vehicles were gone, and on the following Saturday morning I went out and roped off the back lot and put the “No Parking” sign on it.

When I took out my trash this morning, I heard a rustling to my left and was suddenly startled by the sound of the prick speaking to me. “Why did you give me a hard time? Why didn’t you ask me to move my stuff?” I was absolutely flabbergasted and shaking with shock. Who does this prick think he’s kidding?!
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“The police were here and everything!”
“Oh really? I thought you moved them yourself.”
“I did move them.”
“Well, it’s about time. You shouldn’t have been pretending as if my back lot is your junk yard in the first place.” I then turned and walked off without looking back, and soon heard the prick’s vehicle starting up very loudly.
If I had not been flabbergasted by this weirdo’s attack, if I had a way of speaking up immediately in crisis situations, I would have replied, “Why did you park on my property without my permission? Why did you continue parking on my property? Why did you leave abandoned vehicles on my property for six months? Why did you put me through hell for nine months, and then have the audacity to accuse me of giving you a ‘hard time’? I don’t know what planet you’re from, but on this planet your behavior is completely unacceptable, inexcusable, and inexplicable. Take a course in common courtesy; until then, do not speak to me.”
I do recall someone at work mentioning that it’s illegal to, like, leave a vehicle sitting around for more than two weeks. Six months is more than two weeks.
I’m thinking I’ll be writing an autobiographical epistolary novel called Greetings from Bigotville. Yeah, I’ll change names and stuff like that. I’ve already written most of it—it’s just a matter of gathering it all together into one document on a new floppy disk and getting it organized into novel form.