Won't you be my neighbor?

I’ve had a lot of crazy neighbors over the years. Between 1978 and 2005, I have moved 15 times. I can’t say that my thousands of neighbors have evolved into any lasting friendships. Some of them were okay and amused me with their fobiles and eccentricities. Others made my living space a total hell.

I’ve listened to neighbors beat the crap out of each other in their apartments, mistreat their children and pets, and chant Buddhist incantations at 4 ‘clock in the morning (time to get up everyone!). I’ve had neighbors who cried on my shoulder with their own lunacy and psychosis when I wasn’t exactly the pillar of stability myself; try to saw their doors down when they got locked out of their apartments; botch suicide attempts and turn their homes into crack houses.

My neighbors have fueled some of my best confrontations and fights. There were Tammi and Jose in Rogers Park, who stole my roommate’s and my mail, not thinking we’d notice getting two electric bills or the $673 worth of pay phone calls they made using a bogus phone card they took out in my roommate’s name.

There was Mr. Stain in Des Plaines, who let his dog crap on my lawn and his kid play in our parking lot, who thought he was hot shit because he owned some crappy duplex while we rented. He had a carpet cleaning service and would leave his van parked in front my building.

Once, when I went over to tell him not to let his kid build a sledding hill in our parking lot during a blizzard, we got into it. He told me everyone in the neighborhood thought I was crazy. I told him that I really didn’t care what my white-trash, Christian fundamentalist neighbors thought of me. I called him a pencil-dick and said there were a few carpets that needed cat-piss removed from them. For the rest of the winter I picked up the crap that his his dog left on my lawn and heaved it into his window screens that he left outside propped against the back of his garage. (Happy spring, Mr. Stain!)

My first negative encounter with a neighbor was with Dan Tressler, who lived next door to us when I was growing up. Mr. Tressler was obsessed with his lawn. At first, he was sweet. When I was about four, he’d invite me over to his house where I spent time with him and his family. Then one day he turned on me when I cut across his grass. After that, it was war between him and my father. There was a distinct property line between our houses; his grass mowed to the nub, while ours was long and raggedy with dandelions. We learned not to cross it.

Mr. Tressler called the police whenever we played ball in the street, once ripped a whistle I was blowing out of my mouth, and manhandled various neighborhood kids. Any ball that rolled on to his property he'd confiscate. Everyone on the block hated him. My old man was great at playing subversive mind games with Mr. Tressler. Once my father threw a can of paint against his garage. He'd go out at 2 a.m. and burn crop circles into Mr. Tressler’s lawn with fertilizer. As much as Mr. Tressler tried, he couldn’t figure out why a brown circle kept appearing on his prized front lawn.

My mother would occasionally hire Mr. Tressler’s daughter, Marsha, to baby-sit us. Marsha was a 15-year-old greaser chick with a stiff bouffant and chubby, pimply chipmunk cheeks, much like Lyndie England’s. My most vivid memory of Marsha is her chasing my older brothers to bed while hitting them with a broom handle. It wasn’t uncommon to see Marsha dashing out of her house in a black, leather jacket and jump into a car with some 35-year-old guy. I’ve often looked for Marsha on my high school alumni Web site but it’s as if she's dropped off the face of the earth. I’d love to find out what happened to her.

Eventually we moved out of that neighborhood and lived next door to a wonderful older couple who were thrilled that more children were moving in, because Mr. Rosen couldn’t take his afternoon nap on his back porch in the summers without the sounds of children yelling and screaming or climbing up on the roof high on Romilar cough syrup.

Last week, I received a frantic, early morning phone call from my old neighbor, Rob. I’ve known Rob for years from my first apartment in Des Plaines. We were a small group of self-contained units who lived in adjoining buildings. We’d come home from work and have a few beers in the courtyard and vent our troubles and woes, before retreating to our respective apartments where we would continue enjoying our lives of quiet desperation.

As long as I’ve known Rob, he’s had trouble with the ladies. He’s a good looking guy who just turned 50 and is very popular in the taverns throughout Des Plaines. I can’t say he’s a close friend, but he’s up there as a casual acquaintance. I used to think that Rob had boyfriend-potential until I found out there wasn’t a living brain cell in his head. I just enjoyed his goofiness, the eye-candy, and the occasional excitement of an angry husband who came around looking to kick his ass.

My friend Karol and I used to do surveillance on Rob’s apartment when I lived next door to him. One night after several hours of drinking and smoking pot, we heard Rob screaming into his phone at a neighbor woman with whom he was having an affair. We turned out the lights in my kitchen and crouched beneath my window, listening to him shriek, “YOU GAVE HIM A BLOW JOB, DIDN’T YOU?” He also owns a massive gun collection and shot a Derringer off after the Chicago Bulls won their last NBA championship, which brought the entire Des Plaines SWAT team swarming his building.

A few months ago, my boyfriend and I spent a Saturday afternoon with Rob bar-hopping at various taverns around Des Plaines. It reminded us both why we no longer go to bars in Des Plaines – nicotine smelling, dank caves full of barflies and our idiot peer group from the ‘70s repeating their same old boring stories. We both agreed it was a frightening, expensive foray into Rob’s world.

For the past four or five years Rob had been dating a woman who is actually quite intelligent. We couldn’t figure out what she saw in Rob, other than what was possibly a big penis. Her name was Laura, a fresh divorcee with three teenage sons who hated Rob. I really liked her. She was a marketing manager for a playground equipment company. She inherited quite a bit of money from her parents who both died while she was dating him.

Rob was distraught when he and Laura began drifting apart. It’s true what they say about money changing people. They’d break up, get back together, and then break up again. All of this was taking a toll on him. Last winter, Rob came over to tell us that he had been thrown out of a fundraiser for Laura’s son’s school when he showed up uninvited. Apparently, Rob drove up and down Milwaukee Avenue perusing the various banquet halls until he spied an outdoor sign advertising the school’s banquet dinner, where Laura was in charge of the silent auction.

He went in drunk and started screaming at her in front of the other parents. Two burly fathers came to Laura’s aid who Rob proceeded shoving. Eventually, some old guy intervened who kindly told Rob that it wasn’t the time or place to air his grievances with Laura. Rob left peacefully, but things were pretty much over between them after that.

He told us he was going counseling for anger management and asked if we thought he and Laura would get back together again. He also turned over his gun collection, which includes a Thompson submachine gun, to a friend to hold for him. We never brought up the subject of his failed relationship, unless Rob brought it up first. We’d ask him how it was going and you could see the guy was in pain. He tried dating other women, including a girl he brought over with Crohn’s disease who stunk up our bathroom. They broke up a week later.

In the last month, we learned that Laura was bringing Rob up on stalking charges. If convicted, Rob faced a ten-year prison sentence. It was pretty serious; even Rob’s attorney was pessimistic that he’d be able to get him off. According to Rob, some of Laura’s neighbors called the police when they found him asleep in his car in front of her house. He claimed he was waiting for her to come home so he could pick up some belongings he’d left at her house.

So last Monday, he called me at 8:30 a.m., screaming that one of his character witness failed to show up at his trial. His attorney told him he needed a female witness to get up on the stand and talk about what a great guy he was. I was on deadline for my fabulous job as a freelance newspaper stringer. But I agreed to go to the Rolling Meadows courthouse and help him out.

His trial was set to start at 9 a.m. I didn’t have time to shower or anything. I put on some professional clothes and jumped into my car. I was literally spitting Listerine out the window on my way there. I was also having a really bizarre bad-hair day. I showed up at court and listened to the dirt that the prosecutors had on Rob.

One of Laura’s neighbors claimed they saw Rob peeping into their windows, which he vehemently denied. I didn’t say anything because once, while I was still living across from Rob, I caught him peeping at me. I had just gotten out of the shower and was sitting on my sofa in my apartment wrapped in a bath towel watching “Siskel and Ebert.” I figured anyone who got off watching my fat ass was pretty desperate. I’m very European and really don’t care who sees me naked.

I didn’t know what I would say if I was called to the stand. If I really thought Rob was a danger to this woman, I wouldn’t have been there at all. I always thought that Laura was stringing him along toward the end and enjoyed being a professional victim. I figured the Holy Spirit would put the right words into my mouth.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to testify. Both attorneys went into the judge’s chambers and worked out a deal after Rob’s lawyer threatened to tear a new asshole into one of Laura’s sons if he took the stand. Rob’s restraining order was extended a year and the judge told him to submit a list of belongings that are still at Laura’s house, which consist mainly of old clothes, to his lawyer. The whole trial took about 90 minutes.

I think Rob learned his lesson. I don’t think he’s going to be bothering Laura any more. He’s happy to be going back to work and having cheap, meaningless encounters with his barflies.

Anyway, I got a million neighbor stories. I can’t believe I live such a tawdry existence and that I know so many nutcases. I’m an educated woman and should be hanging out with a better class of people.