Everything was fine last night util around 11:30 when I began noticing it while laying in bed: the low-grade rumble of a radio that was not mine. One thing, a HUGE thing, to note about me is that I cannot stand hearing radio (more specifically – BASS) coming through my wall. I’m fine with it at a concert or in my own car, but there is something about it filtering through my wall that clashes with my sanity, creeps under my skin, flips my bitch switch. So what started out as a nice night quickly morphed into WHERE IS THAT COMING FROM AND WHO DO I HAVE TO KILL TONIGHT?!
Henry, of course, didn’t hear anything because he doesn’t have psychotic aural powers like I do.
Henry quickly assured me that no one was home next door, because we have decent neighbors post-Boots’ arrest & eviction, and Henry will do anything to preserve our docile relationship with them. He looked out of our bedroom window and noticed that there was someone (“a fat white guy,” Henry eloquently noted) sitting in a running car in front of our house. “It’s just this car out there. He’s probably waiting to pick someone up. It’ll stop soon.”
But what I heard was, “Some cocksucker is outside my house with complete disregard for the residents on this street and now he must die.”
Several minutes passed and he was still out there. It didn’t matter that I had Kpop playing on our own bedroom radio, now that I knew there was foreign noise flitting about outside my bedroom wall. In fact, it seemed louder now.
“It’s not even music he’s listening to, it’s talk radio,” Henry pointed out and I was like “I KNOW, IT SOUNDS LIKE CHARLIE BROWN’S TEACHER IS OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE SQUAWKING IN A BULLHORN.”
Another fifteen minutes passed and now it sounded like Rush Limbaugh was LIVE FROM ERIN KELLY’S BEDSIDE. Literally, my skull was vibrating in time with the monotone murmurs from outside.
“Let’s just throw a brick at his car.”
“NO. WE CANNOT THROW A BRICK AT HIS CAR.” Henry is so fucking quick to snuff out all of my brilliant solutions.
By now it was after midnight. My next plan was to go downstairs, whip open the front door, and stare at him menacingly from my front door. Except that I didn’t have my contacts in and all I could see was a maroon blob that was presumably the source of the commotion. I flicked the porch light on and off several times, hoping he would catch on to my impromptu signal for STFU AND GET AWAY FROM MY HOUSE YOU CUNT.
This didn’t work so I threw on a coat and was ready to go out and confront this motherfucker face-to-face. Henry was quickly trying to get dressed in case he needed to follow me out and actually, god forbid, protect me.
I had two strategies in mind:
- Go out with proverbial guns blazing and scream my face at him
- Fill him with guilt by sweetly telling him that my sick baby was trying to sleep and THIS GUY’S RADIO kept waking him up. I mean, Chooch was a baby once. And he’s kind of sick right now?
But then we discussed this and Henry convinced me that a personal visit was probably not safe because what if it escalated and knowing me, it would probably escalate. When I reach this level of irrational anger, I am a completely different person and feel invincible and want to fight the fucking world. And this guy’s talk radio was pushing me to let Erratic Erin out to play.
I HATE THAT I CAN’T EVEN BE MAD WITHOUT THE RISK OF GETTING SHOT NOW.
“Ew, are you wearing Chooch’s shoes?” Henry asked as he noticed my Midnight Confrontation Costume: winter jacket, bare legs, Chooch’s tennis shoes.
And then I realized that EW GROSS yes I was wearing Chooch’s shoes WITH NO SOCKS time to burn my feet off.
But before the feet-incineration, I started pressuring Henry to just call the police.
“ISN’T THAT WHAT THOSE BASTARDS ARE THERE FOR? SO PEOPLE LIKE US, HARMLESS CITIZENS, DON’T HAVE TO RISK GETTING A FIST IN THE FACE BY CONFRONTING PEOPLE ON THEIR OWN?”
Plus, it was now 1:00am. That guy could have cruised up to our house straight from the bar, who the hell knows.
So Henry, knowing that his night was over no matter what option was chosen, reluctantly called the police and made the most petty complaint of all time, right next to when our other neighbor called the police because someone’s car was blocking the driveway by a centimeter and a beaten-down cop had to go door-to-door to find the owner of the car.
After Henry made the call, we went back up to bedroom to see if anyone would actually come. Henry’s your basic middle-aged white man-bitch who has the police scanner app on his phone, so that was turned on with a quickness. There was lots of reporting of a girl in red pants and a green shirt running through traffic on the Liberty Bridge, clearly one of Santa’s elves, so that was exciting. Then we heard the dispatcher bleep in about an ordinance call from our address and we perked up.
“I’m in Brookline,” some copper chimed in and we were all OH SHIT ITS ON. Well, I was all OH SHIT ITS ON. Henry was too busy stepping inside his ever-growing frown with a bindle stuffed with his balls and a few issues of Good Housekeeping, and hitching a ride to What Have I Done? Town.
Within minutes, a cop car rolled by slowly, inspecting the scene.
Before that cop had a chance to turn around, another cop pulled up and stopped across the street, shining a light at the PERP.
Then another cop rolled up with lights blazing, and by then the first cop had turned around and come back so now there were three police cars outside our house, shining lights at the perp’s car.
Seconds later, the guy’s radio went quiet and the cops were gone.
“Good job, Erin,” Henry mumbled. “Now we’re marked as the house who makes petty police calls.”
“You should have given them Hot Naybor Chris’s name and address! They’re used to getting those calls from over there,” I laughed, and then spent the next 10 minutes cracking the fuck up while Henry tried in vain to fall asleep.
“Wait—I think I hear it again!” I yelled.
Henry looks out the window and said, “Well he’s not even there anymore, so….”
I guess at that point, the noise was just embedded in my ear drums.
But just to summarize:
Amount of cops sent when a lunatic was trying to bash in my old neighbor Boots’ door last year, threatening to kill him: 0
Amount of cops sent last night when we called about a car parked in front of our house for over an hour with the radio blasting at 1am: 3