An Open Letter to my Downstairs Neighbors

Dear patio vomiters,

It's been an exciting year between our two camps. So much has transpired between us in these 365 days. It seems as if it was just yesterday when the young Eastern European starlet moved out from downstairs, moved into her hazy and troubled future of continued verbal abuse at the hands of her equally intoxicated brother, and you took your cue as the successor in the role of our downstairs neighbors.

The moment we knew something special was happening downstairs came within days of your arrival. Who could forget the day C headed out the front door only to find that one of your minions had decided that smoking cigarettes in the hallway was not only an acceptable idea, but also followed it up by putting your butts out directly into the carpeting itself. Kudos on that move, gents! It showed great initiative on your part, without doubt, but it also foretold a coming year of wonder far beyond the mere damping of a filthy, burning tube of paper and tobacco.

And before long we were treated to the thunderous pounding of your all-night Halo sessions. Yes, while you were obliviously slaughtering other emotionally stunted half-wits in your darkened lair, our children were attempting to steal a few precious hours of slumber in their bedroom placed almost directly above your game/living room.

But all of this paled in comparison to the behaviors you adopted in response to the acquisition of your new dog. To celebrate this you brought your degeneracy to a new level. As spring hurled violently and without mercy into summer we discovered that your way of handling the canine-which-transfers-meals-into-fecal-and-urinary-bodily-waste was to open the patio door, and let the dog out, whereupon he dutifully shat and pissed his life away onto the summer-heated cement.

And then you simply left it there.

In the moist, sweltering Houston summer air.

The effect up here on our balcony, in our stairwell, was beyond visceral. It was practically criminal. The intense odor of drying waste coated our lungs and kept us holding our breath whenever we left the apartment.

And so we complained to the landlord. Repeatedly. And eventually you went out, and bought a hose. With your hose you sprayed it all into the garden beds just beyond your fence. And that was all you did. Just sprayed it away as though this somehow erased any sign of the offending waste.

So the smell persisted. Persists today.

And then you came up with your coup-de-grace.

As young, lost men you worked hard to develop a drinking problem. It was so easy for you. Perhaps it ran in your backwoods families.

And with this newfound skill you came up with a most devious plan. Sure you had a toilet in your home, sure there were a number of sinks. But what if you were to take your excessive drinking outside, to the patio, and what if you were to expunge the signs of your acute alcohol poisoning directly onto the patio, thus upping your douchebag ante so far into the stratosphere, no one would ever again question the depths to which you would stoop in your quest to be crowned the kings of idiotic, neighborly nastiness?

And god knows you had serious competition in the complex. Who could forget the exploits of the drunken, fighting lesbian women well beyond the ability to control their screaming and overly-excessive emotional outbursts?

Or what about the demonic children a few doors down who never seem to sleep (even on school nights), appear to have no guardian, and throw rocks on the sidewalk right next to our cars?

All a pain in the ass, but none a match for your asshole mastery.

And today, it all came to a final, glorious end.

Your coterie of depraved, dishonorable and utterly pathetic wastes of life (except for the poor, neglected dog - merely a casualty in this war), moved out today. Gone. Done. At last.

I watched as you carried your bedframe to the car, hauled your bile-soaked pink couch into the truck, and drove off into the sunset.

It's been a hard year for many reasons. Won't be the last. Could have been much, much worse. But after all was said and done, your presence below us, below our little family that could, beneath this home of people trying valiantly to carve a tiny niche of sanity in a sea of madness, has made it all that much less pleasant, that much more disappointing, demoralizing, and depressing.

So here's to you, total loser ex-neighbors. May your move back up north of town, to your backwoods keg parties, to your futures ripe with failures compounded upon failures, to your photoshopped fantasies, your You Tubed escapades, and your half-baked vanity plates, make you as happy as you can possibly be.

Just knowing you are gone has granted me a modicum of joy, for now.

But then again, I wonder who will take your place?

Friday

Well, another new year. Yay.

I am starting the year (and this post) doing something I seem to do quite often - basically apologizing for submitting so little to the Blind Butcher. As you may know, when I decided to start this blog it was my intention to keep things up as regularly as could be expected. By those rather loose parameters I suppose it has been a success. And by other measures things have moved along rather swimmingly. In many ways we accomplished a great deal of what we set out to do. We have sent out pleas for submissions to many of our most respected and most interesting friends, and we have been rewarded with a fair number of well-written and thought-provoking posts. I personally want to thank each of you for taking the time to make it happen knowing full well myself the efforts it can take to get much of anything done these days.

I won't make excuses for not posting. I have been lazy, first and foremost, and that has done little to shake me of my creative funk, writer's block and/or near-total lack of inspiration, for a period that is quickly moving beyond months and into the realm of a year. No damn good.

In the world of music death has swept through the end of 2009 with ferocity. Epically talented guitarist Jack Rose died suddenly several weeks ago leaving many shocked by such a huge loss. Singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt, someone I somehow managed to completely miss the train on for his entire life, died Christmas day after his ultimate attempt at suicide. Just yesterday, Roland Howard, member of Australia's utterly fantastic The Birthday Party, succumbed to cancer at 50. All three of those guys cut huge paths through their respected musical universes, and have left equally huge holes behind them for the rest of us to fill as best we can.

We all trudge forward today, one year left in the first decade of the 2000s, none of us too sure about the health of this world, its inhabitants, or, for that matter, what there is to hang on to amidst the mire or our own making.

I'll tell you. There's family, that old saw - that family of yours. The people who love you enough to sit around and mysteriously still love you while you (okay, more I) are pathetic, weak and the prodigal vessel of uncertainty and fear.

I absolutely must get back on track. I have got to pull the rabbit out of my ass and show the people what I've got. What have I got?  I'm alive. Maybe that's enough.

Is there confusion? It's malignant, ever-present, unyielding, and yet - so what. We all have a bit of that, more for some, for others less. Big deal. Move on.

The alternative? I'm fond of referring to it, but I am tired of imagining it.

It's a touch boring.

I grouse. It's a trait that rubs many the wrong way. I struggle with that. I could do this alone, on a private blog if I so desired. But I don't so desire. What I desire is to use the Blind Butcher as a place to realize whatever it is I feel could use a little air. I don't promise hilarity, warmth, motivational gloss, or anything of the sort. All I have ever promised in here was that I would make every effort to be honest. Okay, maybe that's a lie.

It's 2010. I have fallen so far behind I don't even recognize the person that I see in the mirror. That guy, don'tcha know, is a fucking asshole.

There's so little magic in writing. It's just like every other creative pursuit. If you do it a lot, if you work your fucking ass off at it, writing through the days (most of them) during which you feel yourself a fraud, eventually you will be able to look back and realize you have something to show for yourself. It's fleeting. God damn, is it ever fleeting. Take a little break and you are on a creative sabbatical. Try to come back and you are treated to a sense of betrayal from your own mind. It's not a pretty thing to experience. Yeah, there's just nothing like trying to use words to express yourself and ultimately finding that you are instead gripped by the deeper feeling of having nothing of value to say.

It doesn't matter. Say it anyway. Otherwise you're dead. Or worse, you are slowly dying. You are right there, shovel in hand, helping the grave-digger make a place for you in the black, pungent earth.

I just have to do these. It just is. If you can't stand posts like this, go back to Farmville, go back to the Simpsons, go back to your comfortable world of mixed drinks on Friday, beautiful, perfect little children with the keys to forever in their hands, to your energy-efficient hybrid car, to your endless venues of promise, of hope, and of joy.

This is the Blind Butcher. This is not a love song.

Okay, maybe it is.

Happy new year.

Like you need another one.