Friday, February 06, 2004
neighborhoodI forgot to say that when Minnie and I walked in the front gate this morning there was the across the street guy, Joe, standing on the patio poking at the trashcan and looking around in a vaguely thoughtful way. I was minorly weirded out and tried to beam thoughts to him to leave the area... but Minnie was a seething machine of radiant hostility. LEAVE THE BRONX I thought frantically at the hapless drooling old man.
Later I met the previous owners (in town for 2 days) and they were nice as pie. They said that Old Joe is possibly the most lonely person around, yet is not horrible and has an extraordinary back yard garden. Perhaps rather than creepily invading our back patio and peering into the front window and engaging me in rambling conversations about my admirable youth and energy and how the Lord Blesses Me... (and I didn't even sneeze?) he will instead let me tour his garden and see its former glory. I can't imagine that it has present glory. How could he do it? How does he even walk?
The other neighbors are from here and according to pleasantly gossipy previous house owners, sometimes hold enormous parties at which they roast an entire whole dead pig in some kind of pit. Hmm wow!
Other across the street neighbors are the Large Family whose house I used to look at in a friendly way walking about the neighborhood with baby Moomin in a stroller. Their yard is full of fun toys and the older kids are always nicely playing with the toddlers and amusing them lovingly. Old Owners said that the Large Family has been trying to buy the Harrison People's Collective no. 241 for years.
Fascinating only to me, but. there you go.
I sighted the second Old Man in the Hat the other day on the playground collecting cans. There are two (obviously) One polite, bien educado, well spoken I guess is what to say, and always used to sweetly compliment Moomin's infant beauty and (later, when he figured out the gender) manly strength. The second one is his friend and they seem to spend a fair amount of time walking slowly around the block together in their Mexican cowboy hats or one would be walking to visit the other one. Since I was often also walking around the block I saw them a lot. Once the First Abuelito del Sombrero had some roosters in his yard and I was intensely curious but he acted all guilty and would not talk about it but kept changing the subject. Later I realized they must have been fighting cocks. And then I wanted more than ever to accost him on the subject because I had just been translating the bit out of Fl0rentino y el D1@blo where they are using all this cockfighting terminology which I'm sure would be different for mexico and v3nezuela but still I was all hot to try out my newly learned vocabulary about what happens in a cockfight and to show off how i know the different words for the different colors of fighting cock. They have special names like the colors of horses. By the time I worked myself up to do it the roosters were gone and I felt too foolish...
It's cool to be moving back there. I will have to talk to little PaulJohn's irritating though friendly dad, Mr. Blue Collar Chip on Shoulder, and the mom who is Okay and the grandma who is sort of a bitch but strangely fascinating from the slutty things she sells at their garage sales. I believe I own several lacy black lingerie items, see through blouses, and at least one sparkling metal mesh purse with gold chain that I bought from her. Rihat the muslim convert preadolescent whose books I used to borrow is still living there in our old apartment building. Possibly now adolescent. I liked him and his mom and grandma. Also in that building still - our upstairs neighbor who has, oh hell i forget the name of it but some very very uncommon horrible paralyzing syndrome and when I met her she had just gotten a fancy motorized wheelchair after being fucking trapped in bed with a crappy wheelchair she was unable to push herself in, for a long while. She seems to have been a fun loving gang member party girl until she got sick. She has gang tattoos all over her neck. What WERE they doing up there every night that sounded very much like an octopus scootching around in the bathtub, i will never know. Sex in the tub? What? And the 4am vacuuming for fuck's sake. Her mom worked the night shift but why vacuum at 4am? It was her who had L@rz the fantastically sleazy male stripper for her b@achelorette party... I shall write more about that event some other day!
It will be odd to see all these people again regularly as they live half a block away. I am sure that to them I am also a figure of mild interest and easy categorization.
posted by badgerbag 2/06/2004 11:00:00 PM comment
