As part of the wave of gentrification in my slightly sketchy neighborhood, there are many things I might worry about. Getting mugged. Having my apartment broken into. Being run over by an ostentatiously decked-out SUV running a red (admittedly the odds of this happening are 120% higher in Philadelphia).
These fears pale in comparison to infestation by that dreaded urban scourge, The Bedbug. A number of nearby buildings have fallen prey, with mattresses and entire wardrobes dumped onto sidewalks, ominous warnings spraypainted across. I’ve heard horror stories from friends who suffered through an infestation, and at one point during the summer I sported psychosomatic hives from constant research on the fiendish little buggers.
This evening, there was a knock on my apartment door. Neither my roommate nor I were expecting anybody. Opening it we found our upstairs neighbors darkening our doorstep. Their mere presence was an ill omen; the few and brief encounters we’ve had with them have been…less than pleasant. Living in my building is like living in Roman Polanski’s ‘The Tenant’: you can hear everyone and they can hear you, from the lightest footfall to, in our first meeting of the folks upstairs, 2 hours of screaming and stomping directly above our heads. As things didn’t appear to be petering out on their own, I enlisted my brawniest roommate to come upstairs with me and see if we couldn’t talk them down. Just before ringing the doorbell, we heard the following:
“DON’T YOU TALK ABOUT MY DEAD MOTHER LIKE THAT!!!! DON’T YOU DARE!!!!”
“FUCK YOU, BITCH!”
“….YOU HAVE NO RIGHT! DON’T YOU DARE SAY THAT!!!!’
stomping across the hall, door slamming, stomping from a second person, door opening…
“GET OUT OF MY ROOM! GET OUUUUTTTTTT!”
A young man answered the door, and realizing what we’d come to say, sheepishly invited us in.
“QUIT KICKING ME IN THE HEAD! QUIT KICKING MEEEEEEEE!!!!”
“Uh, yeah, they get into arguments sometimes…”
Was there anything we could do to help? Just then a large young woman came thudding out of a bedroom, ran across the floor, and locked herself into the bathroom, screaming the entire while.
“Nooo, I think they’re calming down.”
Another large girl, presumably the kickee, stuck her head out the door and screamed “GET OUT AND STAAAAY OUUUUTTT! FUCK AAAWWWWFFFF!!!”, then slammed the door. We quietly backed out as the young man attempted to talk to the girl in the bathroom through the door.
Similar screaming matches broke out sporadically over the next few months, though I only had to speak to them again once, when their incessant blasting in short, repeated bursts of the same Technotronic song at 1:30 AM prevented me from sleeping (in case you were wondering, it was ‘This Beat is Technotronic’. I went upstairs in my jammies, knocked on the door, and heard in a loud stage whisper:
“oh shit! shh shh shh….” “everyone just be cool! shhh shhh…” “oh man! oh man….”
The light coming from under the door went out. I knocked again and waited. About 2 minutes later I heard creaking and someone opening the peephole.
“It’s a person!” “…see what they want!!”
The door opened and I found myself face to face with the same young man, apparently apartment spokesperson, and very, very stoned. I asked if they could kindly turn down the music as I had work the next morning. He reassured me they could indeed, then seemed to recall himself, and turned the light back on, revealing his roommates hiding in the kitchen. I wished them goodnight.
Most recently, I heard the following exchange immediately above my head just as I settled in for the night:
SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!
(effete-sounding fellow): “Come iiin.”
(one of the larger girls: inarticulate angry mumbling)
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”
“YOU STOLE DRUGS FROM MY ROOM AND PUT THEM UP YOUR NOSE!”
“…Are you drunk right now?”
“DO I LOOK DRUNK?! You ASSHOLE! Face it, you are a SHADY motherfucker. You made a bad decision…and you can’t even deal with it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Try calling Bobby.”
“I AM calling Bobby. Don’t think he’ll cover for you. Don’t make me kick your ass, dude!”
Over the next 3 hours the fellow feebly protested his innocence in the face of increasingly obvious evidence, including the third roommate finding part of the bag the drugs were stashed in by the guy’s chair, while the girl very angrily yet also calmly enumerated the reasons why this was a very fucked up thing to do and that he needed to leave the apartment. Permanently. Now. As in, right now, at what was then 2:30 in the AM. His arguments back were so pitiful I wanted to go up there and slap some sense into him. He tried saying she was human, so she couldn’t tell him she’d never done anything bad, and therefore had no right to judge him. Poor baby.
Back to the present encounter, the two large girls stood in our doorway. I resisted the urge to ask whether they’d kicked out the drug thief. They greeted us cheerily and told us in the same breath they were spraying for bedbugs. My roommate and I stood silent, paralyzed by the implications. Mere feet above our heads! They sensed our discomfort and said they were doing the neighborly thing, warning us because once the exterminator came in, the pestilence would likely leave their apartment….and find another. “Don’t worry too much though; they usually crawl up,” one offered. They CRAWL UP?! Don’t insult my intelligence! Don’t insult theirs! They are parasites seeking food and shelter! Up and down make no difference! If I start being feasted on at 3:30AM I will curse you in the deepest recesses of my heart, you woe-betiding harridan! After they left my roommate and I bagged everything of cloth, giving the place a distinctly Howard Hughes feel. Now I await my and my mattress’ fate, to see whether or not the ninth plague passes over our door or whether I become an unwilling host.
