The War of the Door

[jack_babalon]

For the past few months I have been engaged in a campaign of territorial dominance and passive aggresion with my downstairs neighbor, 'John the Cat Man', over the locking of our apartment's front door. It began sometime last year when I was leaving the apartment and saw a note scrawled in black marker taped to the back of the previously mentioned door demanding that residents keep the building locked at all times due to rising crime in the neighborhood. To emphasize this point he also taped a printed out sheet detailing a half-dozen reported incidents in the area over the last three months. These included a robbery two blocks away, an attempted car break-in down the block, reports of gas siphoning from the rear parking lot and a series of brawls that occured in the Little Five Points area. To drive the point home he highlighted both the addresses and the crimes in yellow... in case, I don't know... there might be a test on the subject later.

Believing the unremitting stench of cat piss that wafts out of his apartment and drenches our hallway in an eye-watering miasma (as frequently commented on by my infrequent guests) would deter any would-be theives, I left the door wide open anyway in the hopes of airing the place out a bit.

This only served to piss off 'John the Cat Man' who lives in constant fear of the barbarian hordes (i.e. the poor and the minorities) from descending upon our humble abode in mass to abscond with our hard earned luxuries. John is that rare breed of beast that is both rabid right-wing conservative and impassioned animal rights activist. Last year he wore with pride a little button pinned to his shirt that read - "CATS FOR MCCAIN!" - which featured two kitten faces against a backdrop of red and white stripes. Occasionally he would stop me in the hallway when I passed by, trying despereately to get me into a conversation where he compared Obama's presidency to Michael Vick's treatment of dogs. I forget the finer nuances of that particular arguement but needless to say my muffled snickering told him exactly where I stood on the issue of our president forcing American's to strip naked and fight to the death with their bare teeth (in fact this was the inspiration to my short-story/almost a short film - 'Dog Fight'). He also lectured me last October, when I ran into him at the local Kro-zhay check out line, about the perils of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters - believing this might encourage children from "the wrong neighborhood" to roam our idyllic streets at night seeking out all sorts of mischief. Needless to say, in his mind the only thing keeping the fall of the American Empire from reaching the shores of our apartments is a single twist of a bolt-lock. Well, that and Big Rush, Sarah Palin and the Heroes of Fox News I imagine.

So it was that everytime I left the apartment - whether for the day or just simply to run a few errands down the street - he would run down the stairs to immediately lock the door behind me. Whenever I came home and didn't properly secure the entrance behind me, I would hear him slam open his door, stomp down the stairs and slam loudly the door, followed by more footsteps and muttered curses. This was all kind of amusing until the night he locked me out of the building when I went to take the trash out back. Not thinking I would need my keys for such a minor task I ended up barefoot, walletless and without my cell-phone spending the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to break back into my own home.

This, as they say in the old cartoons, meant war!

Not only did I leave the building with the door open now... I also took an espeically sick delight in sneaking down the stairs whenever I heard him lock the door behind me and would quietly unlock and leave it wide open with the deadly stealth of the Ninja - knowing full well this left the house vulnerable to Michael Vick, President Obama and those darn kids from the 'wrong neighborhoods'. Some mornings I would wake up to hear him cursing loudly when he would discover that his security measures had been sabotaged and I would smile before going back to sleep. Even better is that I sometimes randomly lock the door behind me... just to throw him off. I get a special kick out of hearing him trudge down the stairs muttering, unlock the door, lock it again and then start cursing loudly as he remounts the steps back up to his apartment.

Yes, I am a petty man and as such not above to serving up a side of Schadenfreude eggs for my hapless downstairs neighbor.

The funny thing is that when we run into each other we are both completely cordial to one another - offering friendly "Hello's" and "How ya doings?" to one another with polite smiles as we check the mail or pass each other in the hall.

As of this date, the 'war of the door' continues. Every other month John will post a fresh dispatch detailing the rampant crime spree spreading across our neck of the hood and will reiterate his demands for a complete lock-down lest one of us wake to a mob of liberal ne'er do wells who have snuck into our homes to steal our television sets and kidnap our pets to, no doubt, force them into campaigning for same sex marriage. "For Chrissakes won't anyone please think of the little kitties!".

Meanwhile I have learned to take my keys with me whenever I take the trash out and resist the impulse to unscrew the lock from the front door to induce in John a Grand Mal. It's tempting, but who would look after his platoon of wayward cats if he was gone? It's enough to know that he must lay in bed at night wondering whether the Lovecraftian horrors of the poor are gathering outside in the hallway, pinching their noses in disgust and waiting to ambush him when he leaves the work the next day.

Comments

[meemeedarling.livejournal.com]

It is true that when I think of cat piss, I do think of McCain.

[efire360.livejournal.com]

Hey man, at least he's saving you from zombies! Who knows what other manner of beast roam L5P?