I’ll make you feel better, but it will be a long story.
About six years ago, Mrs. pld and I were living in Ohio City, a section on the near West Side of Cleveland which contains some . . . er, gentrified areas and some not-so-gentrified. Guess which section we lived in?
Our was a two-family home, which also had an attic apartment. We lived on the bottom, and the attic was occupied by a single guy. He was OK, for the most part. There was a young couple and their baby living on the second floor. They moved out, however, and shortly thereafter, he moved in.
He(let’s all him Andy), I found out much later, was some sort of second cousin by marriage or something to our landlord. He and his girlfriend moved in, and at first, we had no problems with them.
I have to interject here to explain the garage situation. The garage was behind the house. There were two garage spaces, each with it’s own door, and a third outdoor space next to them. The outdoor space belonged to Attic Guy. The garage next to it was the neighbor’s; the rightmost garage was mine. At the time Andy moved in, we did not own a car, and were storing a few things in the (locked) garage. Keep all this in mind.
That winter, we often slept in the living room, on the futon, because the place had old-fashioned steam radiators, and the master bedroom was just freezing at night. A few times, we had noticed loud music, but in the interest of being neighborly, we didn’t say anything. One night, he had the stereo blasting, and I couldn’t sleep. So, I called him and asked him to turn it down. He starts giving me shit right away over the phone, and tells me he doesn’t have it very loud. I tell him it’s pretty goddamned loud in my living room. He invites me to come upstairs and hear it, so I do. It’s blasting. I tell him so, and invite him to come into my living room. He comes down, and of course thinks it isn’t very loud. I tell him it’s loud enough to keep me from sleeping. He tells me in no uncertain terms he’s not turning it down. I call my landlord and let him know this.
From here, it starts. The music. The parties. Long, loud parties starting Friday night and going to about 4:00 a.m. Saturday. Music I can hear coming out of the upper floor of my house from more than a block away. Top-of-the-lungs screaming fights between Andy and his girlfriend, day and night. And this old house carries sound like you wouldn’t believe. I complain to the landlord several times, but nothing happens. I’m not calling the police in this neighborhood, because I’ll never see them.
Then, one day, we bought a car. We come home, and go to park it in what we think is our empty garage. I go to raise the door, which, to my surprise, is not locked. Huh. The door goes up . . .
. . . and the garage is full. Full of Andy’s roofing and landscaping supplies. Lumber. Shingles. Tiles. Bags of concrete. Taking up all the floor space in my goddamned garage.
I do what any red-blooded American boy would do–I say to myself, “Fuck this,” and I start hauling it all out of there. Along comes Bob, the Attic Guy, and asks me what I’m doing. I tell him, and he says, “Oh, Andy said he made a deal with you to rent your garage.” News to me, I tell him. He asks me if I’ve noticed that Andy is kind of a hothead. Well, duh. He tells me not to worry for now, he’ll talk to Andy’s girlfriend and tell her to tell him he needs to get his stuff out of there. He helps me take the stuff and put it back, for now. I park parallel to my garage door, with the back of my car against the little wall separating our property from the next door neighboor’s.
Flash to about 3:00 a.m. We’re asleep, and there’s a furious knocking at the door. I mean, it sounds like the thing is about to come off the hinges. I open it, and Andy breaks the lock on my screen door, grabs me by the shirt, and says, “You better quit fucking with me or I’m gonna fucking kill you! Get out there and move your fucking car, now! I can’t get in my fucking garage!”
I tell Leigh-Anne, “Call Neil (our landlord), then when I tell you, call the cops.” Andy is drunker than I have ever seen him. I grab a large kitchen knife (the only time I wished I owned a firearm), stick it in my jacket, and walk out back. I look, and approximately 2 inches of my bumper are protruding into the vicinity of his garage door. Oh, Mabel, this is just great.
He starts ranting and raving about me blocking his garage, then points down and says, “What the fuck is this? Huh?” There is some concrete mix spilled there. I tell him, “That’s from where I was moving your shit out of my garage, until Bob convinced me not to. And what’s this bullshit about a rental agreement?” The motherfucker shoves me, hard, in the chest, and says, “What the fuck? What are you doing messing with my stuff??” Keep in mind I’m about 5’9", 175 lbs., and he’s about 6’3" abou 215, all muscle. I’m not about to go mano a mano with this guy. So I tell him, “Number one, you lay your fucking hands on me again, and one of us is going to fucking jail. Number two, if my garage wasn’t full of your shit, I could’ve parked in it.” He apologizes, and starts to hand me money, saying, “How much do you want? I’m sorry. What do you want, $50, $100? I’m sorry man, I’m having a hard time with my business and my girlfriend. Shit.”
About this time, our landlord show up. I tell him, “I want this shit out of my garage tonight, and if you do not start eviction proceedings against this asshole, I’m filing charges.” So the landlord stays there until 5:00 a.m., making sure my garage is emptied.
He started an eviction proceeding, but the guy decided to squat and fight it. His girlfriend moved out, and things got worse–constant music, constant parties, constant yelling, threats, etc. One night I called our landlord, “This asshole is standing up in his kitchen shouting threats at us. We are going to a hotel, and you are paying for it.” He came over and talked to him, then came down to our place. I told him, “That’s it, we are finding a new place, we are breaking our lease, and you are not going to charge us one goddamned cent in penalties.” And we did.