"GIRLS GONE WILD"

NOTE: The story that follows is 100% true, and only the names have been changed in order to avoid the two principal parties described herein accidentally stumbling upon this post and finding them spurred on to pump Zyklon B into my apartment while I sleep.

Allow me to state that the better part of the past Monday evening was taken up babysitting two very wrecked neighbors from my within my building, and it was irritating like you would not believe. Here's the epic recap of the evening's events:

Shortly before 9pm, I was interrupted in my reading by a knock on the door from Shauna, my cute neighbor from down the hall. Since she moved in she's had non-stop issues with a leak from her bathroom, a leak that's caused all kinds of problems for her downstairs neighbor, Ann, a 56-year-old incredibly loud and volatile Sicilian/Cuban chick who's lived in this building longer than me (by two years). The two of them have been battling the landlord over this issue and the landlord has pulled all sorts of moves that result in little or nothing being done, and he's sent multiple unlicensed repair crews to allegedly fix everything. These workers basically show up, fiddle about for a bit and affect the the most crudely-executed of repairs, and sometimes have damaged items in Shauna's apartment and/or stolen small items from the place, including her much-needed prescription mood stabilizers.

A small sample of the crapsack workmanship perpetrated by the landlord's unlicensed dirt-cheap contractors.

Shauna summoned me to witness the shoddy workmanship that was done on her bathroom just a few hours earlier, so I went over to her apartment armed with my camera. When I walked in I saw that Ann was also there and it was obvious that the two of them had been polishing off at least one bottle of white wine. They were both drunk enough to be very,very loud and shrill, but I tried to be patient and considerate and listen to their venting while I took detailed pictures for evidence. (They're planning to sue our landlord.) After that I sat there and tried to help them work out a rational game plan for dealing with the landlord, and the more I heard of their dealings with him, the more disgusted I became, because it's obvious that the creepy fuck is using the ongoing go-nowhere repairs to try to get some alone time with Shauna (who, though around 36, looks like she's at least ten years younger and is very cute, plus he mistakenly thinks she's Jewish). I told her to come and get me to just hang in her place whenever she knows he's going to show up, especially when he shows up at 10pm or later (!!!) and once that happened, she and Ann requested my contact info (despite the fact that they can just knock whenever they like). I figured that would not be a big deal, so I gave them my info. More on that later...

I went and got my laptop so I could burn the evidence photos to a discs, so Shauna went out to buy another bottle of wine. (NOTE: I was not drinking with them. I'd had my moderate fill at Woodwork the previous night and I make it a point only to drink with a lovely group of friends at a favorite Manhattan pub on Fridays or at my weekly movie night at Prospect Heights' Woodwork pub, and that's it for the week, plus, I am not a wine drinker.) The problem with this was that Shauna freely admits to being an alcoholic, something I already knew from the numerous nights when she would return home from an evening out with her boyfriend and practically shriek down the building while fucking wasted beyond belief, so her continuing to drink turned her into a ticking time bomb of obnoxiousness. (She's also bulimic, a condition that does not mesh well with alcoholism, or much of anything else, for that matter.) Upon returning from getting another bottle, she, Ann and myself began to chat about various things and it was admittedly fun, but then the wine really kicked in on Shauna — who it turned out had eaten nothing all day — and she began to get more and more drunkenly obnoxious with every passing moment. She is apparently seriously hung up about race, so she began grilling me about my ethnic mix and was shocked to discover I was (mostly) black and not Latino, prompting her to walk over and hold her arm next to mine and loudly point out how dark I wasn't. At that point I decided it would be best if I politely took my leave, so I told them I had not eaten since breakfast and that I intended to cook something for dinner (by this point it was 10pm), and if they needed me I would be around.

I should not have said that.

As I was cooking there was a knock at the door, so I opened it to find the two drunk chicks who, with a fresh bottle of wine and glasses in hand, then barged their way in and took seats on my futon/couch. They proceeded to get further inebriated and while Ann was visibly drunk but able to hold her liquor and behave (though I did have to constantly remind her to keep her annoyingly shrill voice down), Shauna just got worse and worse. At one point, following a lengthy attempt at sorting out my "trinity" in the horoscope and going on and on about how she and Ann were Scorpios, she asked if I were dating anybody and when I told her that my prospects for a full-time girlfriend were rather limited at the moment, she was shocked to discover I was not a homosexual. I've gotten that one many times before, so I was neither surprised nor offended, but the very wasted Shauna would not let go of her amazement at my heterosexuality, her assumption of my presumed homosexuality being based on the fact that I'm a nice and erudite person. Then she went on and on about how embarrassed she was at having "offended" me, all while Ann chimed in to chide her over how she never got the gay vibe from me. Shauna then began an endless repetition of all the annoying things she'd been saying all evening and then requested I call our neighbor Jennifer and try to drag her into her half-baked (but well-marinaded) lawsuit scheme, so I called up Jennifer since I knew she'd had issues with the leak as well and had also had problems with our landlord. I briefly discussed it with her but Shauna kept demanding to speak with her, so I put Jennifer on hold and told Shauna that if she was serious about the lawsuit, it would be best for her to talk to any other residents when she was sober. That shut her up for the remainder of my phone time with Jennifer but the second I ended the call, Shauna verbally attacked me for daring to mention she was drunk while Jennifer could have heard her. Needless to say, I did not put up with that and I corrected her, with Ann occasionally chiming in to apologize for bringing the wine to Shauna, her excuse being that she thought she could handle it. (Ann had not previously encountered Shauna's drunken side.) Shauna then ran back to her place to get a photo album to show to us (oh, yay) and during that brief respite I filled Ann in on how Shauna is an unstable alcoholic. She sheepishly looked at me and said "I didn't know," to which I firmly responded with "Well now you DO."

Shauna soon returned and tried to interest myself and Ann in photos of her boring college friends whom we did not know (Shauna is, like myself, a SUNY Purchase grad, which, considering her level of intoxication, came as no shock) and she then suddenly became obsessed with becoming my friend on Facebook. To facilitate this and hopefully shut her up for a while, I allowed her access to my computer but for some reason when she logged onto FB, I would not show up when she did a search and the same applied when I tried to search for her. She then long-windedly/drunkenly droned on about how she'd done work for the CIA (!!!) and FBI and Israeli intelligence, despite having previously stated her vocation as a P.R. representative, so she had all manner of blocks on her FB account. Nonetheless, she incredibly annoyingly would not let it rest and spent the next half hour jabbering and obsessing about connecting with me while loudly bemoaning the fact that she'd drank up all the wine ("Is there no more alcohol to be consumed?") and that I did not have any weed with which she could get further destroyed. (Not that I'm against it for others, but longtime readers of this blog know I swore off weed around three years ago.) Ann was no help whatsoever during any of this and loudly bitched and moaned about the uselessness of social media, though she would occasionally cut me a look that said "I am SO sorry for inflicting this upon you."

Then Shauna began to kittenishly get physically "friendly" with me, rubbing up against me and attempting to kiss me, at which point Ann finally perked up and attempted to do likewise, even going so far as to close her eyes and gently try to pull my head close to hers for a deep "toungie." I politely fought them off until Shauna suddenly announced she was "a girl gone wild" and began to repetitively shriek the lyrics to some stupid Madonna/Cyndi Lauper song mashup as she attempted to dance around the limited confines of my apartment. Her internal gyroscope was by this time completely fuchachteh and she fell over several times, nearly landing on my open laptop, requiring myself or Ann to either catch her or help her up when she hit the floor. Shauna, not at all cognizant of how wasted she was or that she was barely able to stand, decided to move the so-called party into her apartment, so she staggered to my door but was too wrecked to remember how to use the doorknob. (No, seriously.) When I let her out, there was enough time for Ann to once again apologize and ask me if I were mad. I told her I was rather annoyed because I had stuff to do that evening (a lie) but my time was instead wasted with babysitting two grown women. When she left, I looked at Ann and gritted my teeth, contorting my face into a hideous rictus as I mimed strangling Shauna. Ann attempted to chide me for that, stating "Awww, ya just gotta be nice ta her. She's just sayin' what she feels." I wasn't having it and I shot Ann a look that immediately silenced her so-called advice.

Ann and I entered Shauna's apartment to find that Shauna had produced a bottle of Scotch from somewhere and had begun nipping from it. She then turned on her stereo to that horrible Madonna/Cyndi Lauper song and began to dance wildly about the apartment, loudly proclaiming she was a professional dancer and a "girl gone wild." She lost her balance several times before noticing her full-length mirror, in front of which she began to drunkenly and utterly unappealingly "sexily" gyrate. Well, unappealing to me, but Ann, who claims to be neither a lesbian nor bi, was clearly getting heated-up by Shauna's "amateur night at the Flaming Cave Lounge" antics. Shauna tried to get me to dance with her but I remained rooted to the leather couch as I proclaimed that I would soon be leaving because I wanted to talk to a long-distance female friend on the phone. (The friend in question is also currently unemployed, so calling her at Jesus o'clock in the morning is not an issue.) I called my friend and asked her how late she would be up, thus further establishing to Ann and Shauna that I had something else I needed to be doing. Ann, who had previously proclaimed her inability to dance, was by this time dancing with Shauna, and Shauna jumped up onto her bed, which was located flush with the window, screaming "girl gone wild," lost her balance and nearly went through the window. I launched myself to catch her and I managed to grab her by the arm and haul her off the bed. Shauna tried to thank me with a sloppy, Scotch-reeking kiss (which I was able to evade) and she then suggested I call my friend from her place because it would be funny grab the phone from me and tell my long-distance female friend that she and Ann were having sex with me. That was the last straw, so I tried (and failed) to be polite as I made my exit to the disappointed sounds of Ann and Shauna trying to get me to stay and play with them.

It was now midnight.

I came back to my apartment, which is basically next door to Shauna's so I could still hear them acting like morons, and I got on the phone with my lady friend to recount the story you have just read, She found it hilarious although she did offer sympathy, but then I heard scratching at my door and the sounds of someone making "meow" noises. It was Shauna, trying to get me to come back, but I simply told her to go away since I was talking to my lady friend. She tried to be funny by yelling about how she and Ann were going to fuck me, in hope that my lady friend would hear it, but I just ignored her while keeping said lady friend abreast of what was going on. I then heard the two of them attempt to go upstairs, presumably to bother Jennifer and/or Mark, the other resident who lived up there, but they were too wasted to climb all those stairs (Jennifer lives on the top floor) so they stumblingly came back down.

I was still talking with my lady friend when a knock once again came from my door. This time, it was Shauna begging for me to help her since she and Ann had locked themselves out of the apartment. I told my lady friend I would call her back, shifted to "help girls in need" mode and exited my apartment. A shoeless Shauna and Ann were ready to cry and were standing on wobbly legs as they supported each other, so I whipped out an old and spent Metrocard that I keep in my wallet in case I need to jimmy a lock and went to work. (I've had to help other tenants break into their apartments more than once, and I find a strip cut from a plastic soda bottle works best, but I did not have one on hand on the night in question.) As I fussed with the lock, Shauna started up again and began to dance, but this time she totally lost her balance and ended up falling very hard and headfirst into the metal door of the apartment across the hall from hers, bounced off and nearly took a header down the stairs, but Ann caught her in time and hauled her into a sitting position against the wall. Shauna slumped to the floor, clutching her head, and began to sob and keen, and the noise was simply unholy. Ann tried to calm her down and while that was going on I stated that I couldn't budge the lock. It was then that Ann handed me the keys. Yes, they had the keys the whole time but they were too fucked up to be able to determine which one simple key they needed to open the lock, and there was a total of five keys on the ring, one of which was quite obviously the under-sized lobby mailbox key. I immediately opened the door, much to their visible relief, and as they hauled themselves up from the floor, Ann was astounded and asked me how I figured it out. I ignored her query and ushered them into Shauna's flat, closing the door as they once again tried to get me to join them. I went back to my apartment and called my very amused lady friend with the rest of the story, but then my call waiting alert went off. You guessed it: it was Shauna, calling to see if everything was okay between us. She wanted to chat but I once again made it clear that I was talking to my lady friend. She reluctantly (and, disturbingly, in a little girl voice) said "okay" and I hung up and resumed my previous chat. I heard Ann leave a little bit later and she thankfully did not bother me any further.

I tell you it was just over three hours of sheer hell, and I'm curious to see if Shauna makes an attempt to apologize at some point. I kinda doubt it.

EPILOGUE

I sent Jennifer the recap of all this mess the other night and my hunch about Shauna and Ann making their way upstairs near midnight to bother her or the other tenant on her floor proved to be correct. This morning I received the following from Jennifer (the Olaf she mentions is her live-in boyfriend):

OH.MY.GOD.

I can't believe you had such a crazy night. You know, they did come all the way up here and knock on mine AND Mark's doors.

Mark, luckily for him, is in Puerto Rico and Olaf was home but in his underwear watching TV and didn't know who it was knocking so he just hid out. I'm so glad he did or they may have tried to seduce him too! think I'm going to limit contact with those two....sorry you had to go through all that Bunche! I'm so glad I missed all the drama!

And, no lie, as I finish writing this, at this very moment Ann is outside Shauna's apartment, shrieking like a banshee and haranguing Shauna for her apparent lack of help in furthering the lawsuit against the landlord. I turned off my TV and put my cell phone on vibrate so I can more effectively pretend not to be at home in case they try to drag me into this latest round of drama. Fuck that shit...