Sunday, September 10, 2006

Ugh

I'm very interested in this* house, which is a couple blocks north of The Senator Theater on York Road and is within walking distance of the Belvedere Square Market and Deadalus Books and some fine eateries.

It seems foolish to move our in-laws across the alley behind us and then ditch them, but I'm nearing the end of my psychological rope with the Towson U students in our neighborhood. Yesterday I talked with one of the roomies next door--he said "we're done with parties because Rush Week is over. You won't hear a peep! Somebody barfed all over the living room last night and I'm just tired of it." I assured him I, too, was 'tired of it,' given the astonishing number of huge parties they'd had in one week's time. Then the other kid (and partial owner of the house with his mother) dropped by and gave us a $100 gift certificate to The Melting Pot as an apology for Monday and Thursday nights when I had to go tell them to shut things down at 1am.

Of course I suspected the gift certificate was less an apology than a bribe, and sure enough things started to go haywire about 11pm last eve. Huge groups of drunken students stumbled through our yard, some of them peering in the windows, trying to find the party. They were parked all over the alley, blocking our garage, blocking traffic, and pissing in the shadows. I saw a kid hide something behind my trash cans, and found a big red backpack full of Busch Lite, which I promptly put IN the trashcan next door. Then I heard banging in the front yard, and saw a guy kicking my composter. I went out and said "Can I help you?" and two jocks were quite surprised to see me. "Oh, sorry man--we wondered what that thing was! We weren't fucking with it, we're just curious." "I dunno," I said. "Kicking it is fucking with it in my opinion." They left. I returned to the back of the house to find three girls and a guy climbing over the fence into our yard. The girls ran down the alley, the guy sat in one of our deck chairs. I went outside and saw he had a major shiner under his left eye. "What happened to your eye, man?" I asked. "Somebody sucker punched me in there." "Well, if you don't get off my fucking property I'm going to give you a matching one on the other side." He quickly left.

The person I'd like to be would never threaten violence to a drunk wounded teen. The person I'd like to be would offer succour, and perhaps treatment in the form of aspirin or ice in a plastic baggie. Obviously I'm far from the person I'd like to be, and will likely continue in that vein until we get the hell out of town. This morning our neighborhood looked like a recycling factory exploded, with bottles, cans and plastic cups EVERYWHERE, including all over our front yard.

*Damn, the house sold before its Open House today at noon even commenced!

5 comments:

Silenus said...

PLAY SLAYER!

Anonymous said...

Pretty nifty digs. I'd make an offer, if I were you.

Geoff said...

It's too late, natch. Single-family abodes under 400k don't last long.

Nick said...

Under 400k because it's smack dab in the middle of another college party avenue--one made even worse by the Swallow and whatever the hell that other tavern/bar is called on the corner of York/Northern Pkwy. So don't feel bad, you wouldn't want that anyway. That's why WE moved from that area: college students on every side and 2AM disturbances every weekend night. I don't know how you and your better half put up with it--every time I read one of these posts I get a sick feeling in my gut and have flashbacks. Did I tell you about that time 30 kids ganged up on one poor soul in the back yard--like the soap-in-a-sock scene from Full Metal. Scary.

Geoff said...

Yeah, you've told me that story as many times as I've told you the one about the Loyola/Notre Dame library snowstorm.

I think since Gator's shut down that the college crowd has diminished down there.

As I type this I've got shit vibrating on my mantel from the booming bass next door. At 12:11 am. This is karma catching up to me for similarly torturing neighbors when I was similarly aged.