In my current apartment, I have two neighbors. Maria is a twenty-something stripper at De-lite, a club downtown. She rents out the place two doors down from me, next to the guy to my left. She's a nice girl and brings me baked goods every now and then. Jeff thinks I've 'scored bigtime' by having a stipper as a neighbor. I'd agree...the cookies and muffins are very good indeed.

Dylan is the neighbor directly to the left of me. He's probably just over twenty, works at a clothing store downtown, and is gay. I wouldn't mention him or his sexual orientation, except for the fact that a very strange thing happened the other night. It was around 2am when I heard a knock at my door. I opened it, expecting it to be Jeff or Rose or at least someone I was familiar with. Instead, it was Dylan.
"Can I come in?" He walked in as he asked, really leaving me with no other option than to say, "Yeah, sure."
He circled my living room once or twice before sitting in the recliner and putting his feet up. I sat on the couch across from him and asked him what was up. He didn't say anything at first, but just stared at painting I have on my wall.
Finally, he spoke up. "Greg and I have been seeing each other for a fucking year, man. Why the hell did you have to fuck him? Couldn't you find your own man?" He continued to stare at the wall as I stared at him in jaw-dropped confusion. I stammered out my reply, attepting to make it very clear to him that not only did I not having anything to do with this Greg character, but that I'm not even gay.
I had to explain this to him several different ways before he even looked in my direction. After I had cleared myself of all guilt at least ten times, he put his feet down and got up. "Well, if it wasn't you..."

As it turns out, Dylan had gotten a note from Greg confessing to an infedelitous romp with "dylan's neighbor." Dylan assumed that since Greg was gay, I was the neighbor he had slept with. After I had cleared my name, Dylan went to his other neighbor, Maria. Maria confessed to everything, not knowing Greg was gay or was Dylan's boyfriend.

Thats about all I know, except for the fact that early this evening, there was a whole bunch of yelling coming from the apartment to my left.
Isn't love grand...

My parents divorced a long time ago, when I was 7. In our button down, white collar neighborhood, divorce was almost as bad as saying you didn't believe in God. My mother, an athiest, was shunned by others on our street when they found out Dad was leaving for good. One night, long after he had gone, she packed us all up and left. We moved to my grandmother's, and I never saw that house again.

My father moved to LA with a woman named Theresa and had two kids, Christine and Brian. Brian was born when I was eight, Christine when I was ten. I only met them once. For Christmas a couple years ago, Dad sent me and invitation to spend the holiday with him and his family. Reluctantly, I accepted, hoping to make peace with these estranged relatives.

Seeing Dad for the first time in God knows how long was hard; many horrible memories of him had to be suppressed in order to enjoy/tolerate his company. His wife stayed out of the way, making only small talk when she was forced. Christine was twelve and very shy; for most of my visit, she sat in the corner of her room and read.

Brian was the most interesting member of the family (please note the use of 'interesting' with a negative connotation.) He was 14 and very into the newly developing internet. On Christmas Eve, he invited me into his room to show me his favorite site: Lesbian Online.
"I like to come here and make fun of the dykes," he said, as if it was a very normal pastime. I asked him if his father knew what he was doing, and he said no.
"Dad would kill me if he knew I was on a site that had to do with Gays. He fucking hates them."
Brian entered a chat room designed to support women in their decision to come out of the closet and proceded to post the most grotesque, hateful messages I had ever seen. I sat in horror for a few minutes before reaching beside him and pulling the plug on his internet connection.
"What the fuck did you do that for? We were having fun!"
I left his room in silence and regarded Brian with a quiet disgust for the rest of my visit. Upon my departure, my father asked if I'd like to visit again some time. I told him probably not.

Dad called me today, crying. Brian was driving with some friends last night when they went off the road and plowed into the side of a house. No one in the house was injured, but the three boys in the car were pronounced DOA. I consoled my father the best I could but eventually had to hang up and go to work.
And all day long, I was plauged by pleasure stemming from this boy's death.

I feel like a bad person. Hopefully, a good night's rest will bring relief.

I almost crashed tonight.
Driving down Front Street, I noticed my back interior lights were on. I reached back to turn them off, taking my eyes momentarily off the road. Apparently, I also nudged the wheel a bit too; when I had succesfully turned off the lights, I was directly in the path of an oncoming SUV. Without any thought of remaining calm, I jerked the wheel back in the opposite direction, hoping to quell my fears of death. I managed to aviod the SUV (the driver honked and made lewd gestures as he drove past), but ended up on the lawn of a dentist office. I got back the road and back home as fast as possible, keeping my eyes unblinking and on the pavement.

What If I had done real damage? Suppose a mother and a young child were in the car and my unintentional carelessness had killed them both. Maybe it's best if I never set foot near any sort of automobile again, as to aviod possible carnage inflicted by my own stupidity. Oh well. I guess I should be grateful; car tracks in a dentist's well-landscaped lawn are preferable to the mom/child scenario.

I awoke with dried blood underneith my fingernails and caked on my left leg. Standing in the mirror, I could have easily passed as some addled victim of a war-torn country; i mussed up my hair to add effect. I quickly got over the wonder of my new apperance, and began pondering why the blood was there in the first place. Huge scratches ran up and down my thigh that had not been there last night. The window was open, but unless mesquitos had significantly grown in size/power, they weren't the problem. The door was bolted shut, so no psychopaths could have taken their knives to me.

And then, I remembered the dream.

Wil was standing at the edge of a cliff, remarking on the beautiful scenery below him. As per usual, I hated his guts, so I decided to kill him. I went up right behind him and pushed as hard as I could, so that he fell right off the cliff. Somehow I had miscalculated how this was going to work because, all of a sudden, all he had hold of was my leg. He was clawing at it desperatly, begging me to let him up. Feeling no remorse, I stood there until I woke up, enjoying his screams of terror.

In the dream, Wil had scratched up my leg. In real life, it was me. Somehow, my subconcious decided that I'm not in enough pain, physical or otherwise. So, I create flesh wounds while I sleep. Hurrah.

Rosemary called. The tone in her voice was cheery, but I could tell she was still upset over last Thursday. Her philosophy is to put things behind her and worry only about the future. Unfortunatly, this leads to the suppression of many an important occurance.

"Dad died. But I do have a date tomorrow. I wonder what I'll wear."

It's okay. Rose is, for the most part, an alright girl. She's just got some shit to figure out. I suppose the best of us do.

As for the apartment situation, I'm about ready to sign the damn lease and pay what I have to; anything is going to be better than living in this rat trap. Plus, I doubt the place on Thurman Avenue will have upstairs neighbors who insist on sharing their intimate activities with the rest of the building.