drinking tea with an empty cup

I woke at 5am and threw on my torn jeans clean enough t shirt and my doc martins and skipped out the door.  I gave a cheerful wave to my dedicated fan club and went across the street for my coffee, doughnut newspaper and cigs.

You might think that I was taking quite a risk in so exposing myself each day, not owning a bullet proof vest and all.  But my building was basically right across from the Hilton hotel and next door to the Hotel California, statistically people almost never get shot near major hotels.  Sombody gets shot right in front of major tourist centers, next thing you know the press is there, then calls for the politicos to do something about the rampant crime in the city.  Then the cops hit the streets with a vengeance.  Its bad for business.  So my going out each morning wasn’t as risky as it seemed and it gave me a chance to smile and wave.  And I want my coffee and cigs, no bunch of addlepatted gang bangers are keeping me from my coffee and cigs.

I get my morning supplies and skip back across the street giving a cheerful wave to one and all.

Back home I sit sipping my coffee smoking my morning camel reading the paper.  The news, a lesbian lacrosse coach was eaten by her neo Nazi neighbors dogs.  I do love this city.

I finish my coffee and stand stretching.  I feel a little tingle of pleasure down my spine.  It’s not often you have complete license to annoy people.  They had spent some weeks annoying the shit out of me and now,, it was my turn.

I put on my cd of rock music.  That is every sound on the cd is rocks, banging rocks, rolling rocks, rocks scraping, falling dropping rocks,.  You see why I just had to have it, an honest to god rock album.

I pull a book off my groaning book shelves put on my glasses, poured a glass of ice tea and sat down in my golden wicker chair.

“Have you ever read the Illiad?”

On and on I went in a dull droning cadence that would have made any dusty college professor proud.  Every once in a while I would change the music to the squirrel maddening cd.

By the second hour of my reading, they were complaining more about my choice of reading material,  then they were my music.  Apparently gang bangers, crack heads and mobster hit men wanta be’s hate the classics.

I took a break from my reading to watch a series of John Cless sketches called how to annoy people.  I took notes.

While I was relaxing on my bed I used a long bamboo pole to tap on the ceiling, right about where I figured they had installed the microphone.  Tap, tap, tap, tap.  Before the first hour of that they were screaming for me to stop.

By the end of the second day I was really starting to enjoy myself.

The dremile, a tool of a thousand and one uses.  I used mine to drill onto the brick wall near the location of their mics.  ARRRRRRGGGGGGG. 

Lovely.

A week passed, each morning I went out for my coffee and cigs.  Each morning I smiled and waved at my demented fan club.  I sent each day in a series of creative annoyances.

I finished reading the Iliad and moved on to Plato.  I played my cd of Japanese classical flute, it’s rather like listening to three cats involved in an orgy.  I introduced them to my cd of Liposuction set to a dance track  (not kidding).  Himalayan throat singers, Norwegian yodelers.  I of course do have a cd of bagpipes, a musical instrument that was created to be a weapon of war.

Sunday afternoon, men are in the down stairs apartment using power tools.  They seem to be cutting, drilling into the ceiling of the apartment, under my floor.

Well what ever their doing I’m sure it’s not installing cable.

I consider the problem.  I think of medieval castles and sieges.  Defenders of castles used molten lead to discourage unwanted visitors .  I didn’t have any molten lead, but one good thing about my apartment was the tubs never ending supply of scalding hot water.

I take my largest stock pot and fill it with hot hot water and set it on the stove to boil.  When it’s all nice and hot I add some bleach and glue and ohh why not some red paint?  I carry the pot to a set of pipes that run straight down to the apartment below.  I sigh, this is going to ruin my carpet.  Ahh well, never did like the beige wall to wall carpet.  I begin pouring the water.

An idea strikes me.  I rummage around under my kitchen sink.  A spray can of super glue, great stuff.  I take up my garbage bag and head out the door.  I drop the garbage down the garbage shoot on my way down stairs.  In my stocking feet I tip toe to the door of the down stairs apartment.  I spray the glue over the peep hole of the door and then into the door lock and around the handle of the door,  Whistling a merry little tune I skip back upstairs.

I return to filling my stock pot with scalding water and various cleaning supplies.  The third pot of water I poured down the apartment below the shouting begins.

I pick up my can of raid and spray it into the gaps in the floor where the pipes lead down. 

The men down stairs are shouting and coughing, loudly.

They head for the door.

Ooops.  The door is quite detrimentally glued shut. 

I spray more raid.  I pour more of my scalding pots of witches brew.

Shouting and coughing they thow open the windows.

“Who the Fuck is this Bitch?  Rambo’s sister?”

(no man, just a pissed off whore with a can of super glue)

It was a busy afternoon.  In the end they got what ever it was installed in the space between the ceiling of the apartment down stairs and my floor.

A locksmith is called to free the men down stairs.  Somebody thought is was funny.

I rest on my bed my feet off the now sodden carpet.

I hear something moving under my floor and laughter coming from upstairs.