The Wilderness Years- Neighbors (Episode 1)

The only problem with living in these transient neighborhoods is all the fucking transients... it was a statement uttered many years ago by a rather drunk and disheveled Kono as he stood in his living room while the gay disco raged on in the downstairs apartment, an apartment occupied by Ebony and Ivory, a lovely gay couple consisting of a short, pudgy, alcoholic white guy and a thin, bony, crack loving brother who was equally tiny... i'm not sure how long they had lived there, they were florists, a statement i actually wish i was making up but was true, and were quasi-friends/ employees of the shady landlady and her son... since this place was a dump i'm not sure if anyone was living above them for a while until now and it was a bit of an adjustment period for them as far as things went, trying to remember not to throw raging parties on a Wednesday that seemed to start around 2AM, remembering that people could now hear them when they beat the shit out of each other when one the other or both were whacked out of their heads, it was entertaining at times to say the least, i mean i was just the guy upstairs who moved as much weed as i could get my hands on while spending my spare time in strip clubs and doing any illicit drug put in front of me and Ebony and Ivory made me feel like a fucking boy scout, maybe it was the difference between recreation and addiction, who knows, either way i was a square compared to their exploits...

The one thing i did know that Ebony and Ivory possessed was a rather powerful stereo system, they could shake our whole apartment with it, probably all the way to the third floor as well when they really let loose, i used to joke about how one day when i heard them leave i was going to go down and climb in their window and take the fucking thing, not because i wanted it but because i wanted it gone, it was my old superstition of the noise violation, how many fucking idiots did i know who went down because of a stereo and an overzealous member of law enforcement screaming probable cause, this was 1996, an overzealous cop stepping on a few rights was not about to get a drug charge dropped or conviction overturned, loud stereos made me nervous, even if it wasn't in my place it was in my building and being the paranoid type it made me jittery and sometimes a bit angry with my two little neighbors...

And so one fine Saturday it began, roughly around 2pm i'd say, the stereo went on and for the next few hours the volume would rise and fall, always loud enough to hear and sometimes loud enough to feel but always the same song, a song by a Canadian chap about a big lake they call Gitche Gumee, hell i grew up near the shores of Lake Erie, grew up on Cleveland radio, i was more than familiar with the whole story and the dangers of shipping on the Great Lakes... luckily for  Eb and Ive it was a Saturday and the afternoon started early down at the local boozer, once again shooting pool and playing shitty jukebox music and watching the odd sporting event on the crap telly, the good Doctor, the Lawyer and I had chuckle about it as we sat finishing beers before heading to the local, the Lawyer and i smoked a bit and off we went... around six we came back and Gordon was still telling us how the bell had rung 29 times for each man and we all looked at each other and burst out laughing, somewhat not believing it was still playing and now speculating on what could be the cause of the this sudden obsession with Canadian singer/songwriters and lost shipping vessels... we opened the big heavy wooden door and bounded up the steps, the song played one more time, started over and then a few seconds in abruptly stopped...

The good Doctor and the Lawyer pulled up their familiar seats in front of the telly and settled in for a few hours of video gaming, i checked my messages and made a few call backs, ordered a pizza, waited, took care of some business, took a few more calls and did a little more business, waited, and in general hung out and drank beer, fucked about playing records and wandering around the apartment, then suddenly it started again, the familiar strains and smooth voice, Gordon Lightfoot was back to serenade us once more, it was roughly 8:30 or so, i was still doing a bit of business and it became something of a running joke, my customers would stop by and laugh as the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald played over and over at top volume... but by midnight it had gotten a bit old... by 2am if was downright fucking torture, at some point you begin to hallucinate and wonder if you were actually on the fucking ship and ended up in some strange hell where you listen to this song about the ship you were on and how it sank on fucking repeat for all eternity, as for the good Doctor and the Lawyer, the fifth of bourbon they had consumed since coming home had stood them in good stead, the good Doctor snoring loudly from his chair and the Lawyer lolling in a stupor and mumbling incoherently, Jess of course was raging cuz she had to work in the morning, (though i don't think the state of her man helped her disposition any) and so i finally said fuck it and bounded down the steps...

I pounded a few times on the door... from inside came the sounds of stumbling and bumbling, furniture being crashed into, a half-hearted muffled argument and the phrase "turn it down" as the lock clicked and the door opened, being well into Saturday night i wasn't in the best shape wasted wise but Ivory was fucking wrecked, i was well into caveman phase at this point and close to a foot taller than Ive, i glared at him and he looked up sheepishly and said sorry about the noise, i just looked at him, it was around this point as i began to speak both he and i realized that he was standing there naked from the waist down, his cock and balls dangling away, he attempted to clandestinely pull his t-shirt down over his exposed groin as i berated him for not only blasting music all night but for blasting the same fucking song, what the fuck was that all about? by this time it was i almost laughing as we both pretended to not notice my neighbors lack of pants, him nodding and apologizing, me being pissed and tired of listening to the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald for the last eight or ten or who knows how many hours, Ivory fidgeted some more and muttered more apologies and said it wouldn't happen again and i said please don't and told him i wanted shit to be cool and didn't want to be a dick but a little fucking respect and shit for other people would go a long way, it was not lost on me that it was laughable of me to be the moral authority here given the circumstances, he agreed and kept his shirt pulled over his cock, of course by the end of the conversation i was practically laughing my ass off, it's difficult to berate a guy with no pants on and in the end neither one of us acknowledged the fact he was naked from the waste down, i smiled politely, took a deep breath, told him to have a nice night and walked up the steps...