Fact: I do not live in the nicest neighborhood. We are one meth house explosion away from being declared a condemned area and being shut down by the county. In the past six months, the same house has had a 3-alarm fire situation twice and it’s not being lived in. You tell me what’s going on in there. 

My desire to move is outweighed by my desire to live a comfortable life on a non-profit salary and still be able to afford a Tod’s bag or a pair of Louboutins once a year. Yes, I use my savings account to fund ridiculous purchases instead of saving up to buy a car that was not made the year I started high school and keeps taking a shit all over my bank account. Sallie Mae has likely ruined my credit beyond repair and the chances of me moving into a one-bedroom apartment rivals the chance of Jennifer Lopez ever winning an Oscar. So I continue to live in rent-free…bliss, if you would, and continue to run my errands and conduct all business in what would be considered the next town over if this city had suburbs. 

Even though it’s a much older neighborhood and most of the residents have been here since the Vietnam War-save the one family who seems to have a revolving door of couch-crashers and a front lawn ruined by years of parking cars in varying states of decay on it-I don’t know and really don’t care to know my neighbors. The only time we bond is after the third fire truck goes screaming past the main road that passes our street towards the forever burning meth house. No one puts on their shoes until they hear the third one-it’s like the code of the ghetto. Two weeks ago two ambulances came to a house on my street and no one came out. Well, I did. That’s how I knew no one came out. Three fire trucks deems it a serious situation. I’m not above it. I run out of my house just as fast as the next person, likely in my gym shorts that I probably put on backwards in a rush to put on the first pair of pants I could find and an ill-fitting t-shirt that is covered in stains as an homage to recent visits to questionable fast-food establishments. The amazing part is that I look like I put in the most effort compared to my neighbors who will run out of their homes like they’re being chased by the INS wearing ensembles that look like they dove into a dirty hamper to get.

My house is on the corner so the most energy I have to exert to get a good view of the show is walk across the front yard which my mom tries to pass off as desert landscaping and lean across the fence. I’m not sure that she is aware that tumbleweeds aren’t generally sold as part of the package when you actually purchase desert landscaping, but when she is trying to describe the location of our house she usually says “Look for the corner house with the desert landscaping.” I’ve seen many a person pull up to the house and look into the front yard with disgust, probably feeling cheated by her false description. The rest of my neighbors have to pass my house to get a good view, so I get a double feature-the meth house blazing away and the parade of neighbors who I only interact with at times like this. These are people who feel it is their civic duty to stand a few feet away from the fire trucks and direct traffic, tell the firemen what they think happened, start break dancing sessions in the road and then report back to the invalids in their respective homes on what transpired in the two hours they stood around watching a house smolder.  If I have my glasses on, it’s like front row seating. If I don’t, it’s what I imagine being on hallucinogens is like-lots of colors, loud noises and movement, but nothing really makes sense and when it’s over you’re not sure you want to experience it again.

After everyone shuffles in, we go back to pretending like we don’t know each other. Except for my neighbor Phil. Phil doesn’t just pretend to know everything and everyone, he does. Phil probably knows how the fire started, who was on scene first and which station the fire trucks came from. The firemen likely know his first name.  On a scale of one to ten of nosy neighbors Phil is a seventeen. He won’t admit it, but he’s one of the most bigoted people I’ve ever met and has gone as far as using the term “colored” to my face to describe a black person. I should’ve prefaced this by saying that before I was born Phil was in a horrifying car accident, suffered severe brain damage and now has the mentality of a 3rd grader. Censorship is a foreign concept to him. Once I heard him scream at one of our hispanic neighbors whom he was fighting with “Talk to me when you have your papers Mr. Cholo!” You didn’t have to tell me twice to run in the house, lock the door, pretend like I heard and saw nothing and prepare for the inevitable spray of gunfire from either party. When my grandparents were alive, both they and my mom could vouch for what a crazy mean individual he was before his accident. Currently, the best personality comparison I can make for him is Kevin from The Office. Once he was talking about taking me jet skiing once he was done fixing his boat and his exact words were “You’re going to have a hard time getting into your wetsuit though. You know, because of your big boobs.” Who knew you needed a wetsuit for jet skiing? 

I’m not sure what Phil did for work before his accident but ever since I can remember, his daily life consists of scavenging the town for junk and hauling it in the back of his pickup truck back to his house. This is not an another-man’s-trash situation. Phil lives for scavenging. At any given time on his property Phil could have an above ground pool full of headboards of varying sizes, a shopping cart full of rusted boat parts, three trucks in the driveway (only one drives and that’s only down the street and back), the hoods of cars of varying makes and models and enough dog kennels to furnish the nearby no-kill animal shelter. Last week, I put a rusty shower rod in the garbage and set the garbage out on the curb for the proper people to take away the next morning. I came back out minutes later to put another bag of garbage in the trash and the rod was gone. I’d like to think he wasn’t watching me, but that would be naive. Him and his dad are the white version of Sanford and Son. Whenever my mom or I give directions to our house, we tell whoever is getting the directions that they’ll know they’ve arrived at the right home if the house across the street looks like a makeshift junkyard. They collect dumpster-sized portions of everything. Some of it they sell and the rest, I don’t know. But if the inside of their house looks anything like the outside, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone died in that house without their knowledge. The only time they’ve ever cleaned the yard was when code enforcement pays them a visit to mandate it and since code enforcement is only responsible for the outside God knows who’s responsible for the inside. 

To add to it, at one point they had over 20 hot dog dogs. Imagine walking to your car every morning and being greeted by a chorus of overly aggressive 5 pound dogs. To a person who can’t stand the sound of her own voice in the morning, the noise from the dogs was enough for me to consider running my car into the brick wall that separated us and ending what I considered years of harassment. Nine times out of ten in my morning rush I used to (and still do) forget to close the gate and it would (and still does) infuriate my mom. I stand firm by my belief that one of her worst nightmares was coming home to a yard full of accidentally freed hot dog dogs peeing and pooping all over our desert landscaping. My grandparents had lived in this house before we did and the dogs were a constant source of distress for my grandmother who could not wrap her head around people living in such filth.  ”Imagine what their house smells like Melia,” she would say to me. Probably like a condemned zoo. I feigned sadness every time Phil told me one of the Oscar Meyers had been a victim of cannibalism or had run loose in the street and found a better home with fewer dogs. I was secretly grateful for one less dog verbally assaulting me before I’d had my morning coffee. 

Whenever I tell someone about Phil, I usually use the anecdote of “The night I went to the 24-hour Starbucks”. It was a Saturday evening right before summer about two years ago. I had been home all day bored and stir crazy and my mom in a rare instance had plans that evening and wasn’t home. So I put on my only clean pants, a pair of sweats that shouldn’t be worn outside the perimeters of my home and headed to Barnes and Noble before it closed. After reading part of a very depressing Nora Ephron book about divorce, I decided to go to a 24-hour Starbucks that wasn’t too far and read something else which sounds pretty boring, so let’s be real. By reading, I mean people watching. I love to people watch. I see everything. 

I hadn’t been there more than a half hour when I get a text from my mom telling me to not plan on coming home any time soon. I was intrigued and ready to jump in the car and find out what I should not be coming home for, but she called me moments later, a hint of fear in her voice.

“What’s happening over there?” I demanded.
“The POLICE are here!” she whispered.

“Where are you?”

“Hiding in my car in the driveway!”

Now I was really intrigued because based on this exchange I was led to believe that my mom, who spent her free time reading to crack babies at the county foster care facility, had been involved in a high speed chase, drove home, parked the car in the driveway and was now hiding in her car that was surrounded by cops. Classic mom!

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Really? Where are you?”

“Shut up, shut up! I can’t hear what’s going on!”

This made more sense. My mom was spying. 

“Why’d you call me if you’re just going to tell me to shut up?”

“I’m giving you the inside scoop as it happens, now hush!”

There was a few beats of silence and my mom then decided it was safe for her to very quickly tell me what happened before she called.

“I came home and Phil was standing in the street and his face was covered in blood. I asked him what happened and he said these two black ‘punks’ tried to rob him and he fought them and one punched him in the face! In the FACE Melia!”

“That’s where a fist usually makes contact in a fight,” I yawned. “And what were they trying to steal?”

“One of the cars. Joke would’ve been on them when the transmission blew up as they were trying to speed away. It gets better. So then they threatened him and said they were going to come back and bust his face open with some brass knuckles! Who uses those anymore? So he was waiting in the street for them, but I told him to call the police just in case.” The pitch of her voice was getting higher and she was talking so fast I was sure she was going to choke on her own spit shortly.

“So I’m waiting out there and this car pulls up, parks in front of our house and this black kid gets out and starts casing the house. He walks up to the gate and is just kind of snooping around like he was looking for something-“

“Wait. You were still in the car.”

“Yup.”

“You didn’t think it would’ve been safer to go in the house should the brass knuckle wielding thieves return?”

“You would’ve done the same thing. Anyway, the police pull up and Phil runs out at the same time, pointing at the snooper screaming ‘That’s him! That’s him!’ and the cop gets really nervous and Phil is screaming at him to arrest him. So the guy goes to reach into his pocket and the cop pulls out his gun!  He’s yelling at the kid to get on the ground and spread eagle it and Phil is yelling about brass knuckles and car theft so of course the cop is getting flustered and is just pointing the gun at anything that flinches. He would’ve shot himself if he could’ve moved.That’s when I laid the seat down so he couldn’t see me.”

“You what?”

“I laid the seat down. Horizontal. But I’m sneaking peeks.”

I was picturing my mom doing sit-ups in her car just trying to see who the cop was going to shoot first.

“So then Phil’s niece comes running out of the house screaming that the snooper is her friend! HER FRIEND! He was there to pick her up. Then everyone started screaming and that’s when I called you. What 14 year old girl has a boy picking her up at 10:30 on a Saturday night?”

“Wait so he wasn’t one of the brass knuckle assailants?”

“Nope. You know all black people look alike to Phil. Especially in the dark. Except us of course.”