The Story Before, or The Old Woman Who Lived Under the Stairs

Eleven months ago, I thought I found my dream apartment. It was a very large one bedroom on Liberty Street in San Francisco. Liberty Street is pretty famous, historically speaking. The fires that ravaged the city after the 1906 earthquake were stopped right at Liberty Street because of a fire hydrant at the corner of Church and 20th. Every year on the anniversary of the fire, the hydrant is repainted gold and festooned with flowers to inaugurate the occasion. For the most part, the houses on Liberty are beautiful, large Victorians, and if you're on the right side, you get a great view of Dolores Park, downtown, and the Bay Bridge. Every time I said I lived on Liberty, the response was invariably, "I love Liberty Street!"

Now what they didn't know was that I lived on the one slightly ghetto block of Liberty, on the wrong side of the tracks. My view was not of the sparkly lovely park, or downtown, or the bridge. No, my view was of the ugly grey prison-like apartment building across the street and its inhabitants. But still and all, I loved my apartment itself. Until the 18-year-old wannabe ghetto Vanilla Ice and his friends moved in upstairs. From that moment on, I became the Mean Old Woman Who Lived Under the Stairs. After too many times complaining about the noise at 3:30a on a Tuesday (typical responses to the question "Hey, it's 3:30am. Can you turn down the noise?" ranged from a vague "Well, I'll do my best..." said much in the manner of Valmont in Dangerous Liasons when he repeatedly claimed "It's beyond my control..." to a coked-up "Well, I don't have a T.V. in my room, and I'd kinda like to watch T.V., so can't you just turn a fan on?"), I developed a severe sleeping disorder and a huge chip on my shoulder. Yes, I'd called the landlord. I called the feeble property management company. I even called the nonresponsive cops. Twice. Nothing. The teenagers had won.

(This is the extremely condensed version of how I morphed into the Mean Old Woman. The much longer version includes such unavoidably overheard quotes such as "Remember last year? When I thought I was preganant but I was only fat?" and "Ladies, my dick is 3 inches in girth! You know what that can do to you? And I'm a kinky muthafucker! I'll put it anywhere! And I love to titty fuck!" and the 16-year-old girls' simultaneous response "I love being titty fucked!" I thought my ears were going to start shooting blood right then and there.)