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Notes from the Village

In my mind, Icall him Mr. Droopy Pants, my elderly neighbor who shuffles down thehall every morning to steal my paper, his orange toupee askew.
[additional-authors]
February 26, 1998

In my mind, Icall him Mr. Droopy Pants, my elderly neighbor who shuffles down thehall every morning to steal my paper, his orange toupee askew. I lethim steal my paper because I know it is one of his few pleasures,along with listening to the baseball games that I hear blaringthrough his door from a buzzy AM radio.

It’s difficult to talk to Mr. Droopy Pants, who isancient and hard of hearing, but from our limited conversations I’vededuced that he has been living in my building for 30 years. The rentis dirt cheap and all he can afford after retiring from a series ofjobs he calls “manual labor, mostly.” In his tenure here, he has seencountless homicides on our block, been mugged four times and had hismonthly government check stolen from his bedroom.

For Mr. Droopy Pants, this is God’s Waiting Room;it is where he will die. For others in our decrepit building, this isjust a cheap launch pad, a place we will look back on when we laughabout the roaches and the omnipresent ice cream truck that constantlyblares “You Light Up My Life,” as if to announce what we all know –that the vehicle outside sells more crack than Popsicles. I hope Ifall into the launch pad category, but I can’t be sure how long I’llstay. And every day, as I pass my neighbors coming in and out of thecracked glass front door, I wonder how they got here, and what keepsthem up at night when the helicopters or car alarms turn our creepylittle stomping grounds into a scene from “Platoon.” I’m fascinatedby them all.

There’s Tired Man, who lives upstairs and who mybuilding manager informs me is suffering from chronic fatiguesyndrome. Tired Man can’t be older than 30, but he must be prettytired because I often find myself holding the door open for the Mealson Wheels delivery man, who comes to bring Tired Man beige plastictrays brimming with peas and carrots. I rarely see his neighbor, aHispanic woman with a daughter who is severely retarded. I oncecalled 911 when I heard her wailing in Spanish early one morning,frightened to death at the sight of her tiny daughter having aviolent but benign seizure.

Across the hall from me is an Asian transsexual.She has stopped the process of surgically removing her malenessbecause her HIV has become AIDS and it is all she can do to get outof bed some days.

Down my hall are two gay men who both drivemotorcycles and once entertained the possibility of being actors. Ilove these men because they are the closest thing I have to friendsin the Village of the Damned. They comment on the guys who come tocall on me. They notice the sound of workout videos blaring from mystudio apartment and tell me, “Girl, you look good.” They knock on mydoor when the meter maid has rounded the corner and is greedilyeyeing my windshield.

My upstairs neighbor looks like he’s barely 19.Unfortunately, he’s a dancer, a profession which forces him to listento the same eight counts of En Vogue for hours on end when I’msitting at my computer trying to write and able to think only “Nevergone get it, never gonna get it, never gonna get it, never gonna getit.” My motorcycle friends tell me he is quite talented, the tacitunderstanding being that he isn’t long for our Central Hollywoodabode.

When I tell people where I live and they ask theinevitable question — why — I give them my stock answer, “For thecrack.” I can’t explain the whole truth to those who ask. What’s anice Jewish girl doing in a ‘hood like this? True, there arefinancial considerations, the life of a freelance writer andperformer being precarious and often less than lucrative. But that’snot the only thing that keeps me here. Part of me feels at home,having always lived in urban areas on the edge of safety. I belonghere in some odd way, clutching my pepper spray, giving up my dailypaper to Mr. Droopy Pants and wondering what small pleasures keep myneighbors surviving.

This is my first apartment in Los Angeles, one Ichose six months ago in a hurry and in the deceivingly calm light ofday. I’ve tried to move, but the thought of increasing my overheadsends me into a panic, as if the act of moving will curse me and I’llnever work again. I could find a roommate, but than I’d have to worryabout interacting constantly with another human being, one who islikely to eat my food and take sloppy phone messages. For somereason, I’d rather risk my life here in Beirut.

I guess some would call it scarcity mentality, astate of mind I’ve probably inherited from my grandparents, two dirtpoor Jewish kids from the Bronx who managed to eke their way into themiddle class. Still, they always looked over their shoulder for thepoverty Boogie Man, the way I scurry into my building with one eyeout for a gun-toting gang member.

My grandmother never left Denny’s without wrappingup any stray piece of toast and stuffing into her handbag along witha few packs of Sweet N’ Low and several plastic squares of scarystrawberry jelly. I doubt she ever ate the toast, but she had it,just in case of sudden poverty or a nuclear holocaust.

I try to cultivate abundance mentality, mostly bybuying really expensive soap or the occasional pair of pricey NineWest shoes. Still, I remain here, sometimes knowing this will be aquaint story about my humble beginnings and sometimes imaginingmyself shuffling down the hall to steal some youngster’s paper in 50years.

For now, I don’t mind the address that evenDomino’s Pizza men fear. It’s the dormitory for the disenfranchised.It’s a dump, but it’s my dump.

Teresa Strasser is a twentysomethingcontributing writer for The Jewish Journal.


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