There’s a Kind of a Hush All Over the World Tonight

They’re out.
Gone.
Vamoosed.

Praise the long-armed reach of absentee landlords (take that, Ireland!): the bohunk renters across the alley have been evicted.

After my earlier post about these five college lads’ disruptive partying tendencies, things got worse.

They hit a new high the night that Phat Boy Renter and his Li’l Blondie girl sat outside the house in her car, blaring country music at 17 on the volume dial, drinking beers (the trunk of empties clanked resoundingly each time they finished swigging, got out of the car, tossed the bottle into the bottomless well of its peers, and grabbed another. During this process, a song entitled “Marianne” thumped again and again, hammering out a psychosis-inducing tattoo. On its third go-round, I was certain that, no matter what Marianne had done to earn the gullible singer’s admiration, Bitch Stole My Chips).

Every fifteen minutes or so, to spice up the potential monotony of “drink a beer/toss the empty/ grab a new one,” Phat Boy Renter would lurch out of the car, half-filled bottle in hand, and stagger off to pee in the yard. At one point, another of the renters, this one named Dimwit, pulled up with his girl, and they, too, remained parked outside the house. Dimwit and His Girl were in the middle of a fight, apparently. At one point, Dimwit slammed out of the car and ran down the alley, causing Phat Boy and Blondie to jump out of their car, with Phat Boy chasing Dimwit and Blondie hopping into the second car next to Dimwit’s Girl. Much drama played out before Dimwit eventually meandered back home, twenty minutes later, and retrieved a sleeping bag out of the trunk of his car. His Girl had already taken her sleeping bag from the trunk and gone into the house, but Dimwit took his bag and went and slept on the lawn. (pssst, fellas…a little tip here: you’re paying money to have access to that house; you should take your drinks and sleeps inside the damn place)

All the while, Phat Boy Renter and Blondie counseled and consoled and hit the trunk for fresh beers and kept the tunes a’throbbin’, teaching the entire coulda-been-sleeping neighborhood comprised of young children, pregnant women, and solidly-employed types that–get this!–life is a highway, and those crazy college kids were going to ride it all. night. long.

I witnessed every subtlety of the drama, watching it from my back porch that night, where I lay on the couch, wrapped in a fleece blanket, shivering, yawning, muttering my own private commentary about their ongoing monkeyshine.

From my seat in the loge, all the world was The Renters’ stage from roughly 1:30 a.m. until 3 a.m., when I finally passed out into sleep. The cops, whom I’d called at 1:30 a.m., had still not arrived, denying me the much-hoped-for pleasure of seeing each blockhead receive a “drinking as a minor” citation. As I waited and waited, I wanted to huff around about how the police certainly weren’t doing their jobs that night, but the fact that my city swells by approximately 25,000 college students each August kept me sympathetic. It just might have been, at bar-closing time on a Saturday night in September, that the cops had bigger Alpha Tau Omegas to fry. Eventually, perhaps as the sun rose, Phat Boy and Li’l Blondie and Marianne, hissing, shielded themselves from the light and relinquished themselves to hangover-inducing sleep.

As they do, even when one is fatigued or hungover, the days and weeks passed. The renters, already in possession of one dog, brought back on board the ceaseless barker (of my previous post on this issue). The freshmen dunderknots drank nightly, smoked and called each other “faggot” twenty feet from my children at play during the daylight, and generally brought the vibe of Age 18 Hollister to our gentle neighborhood of Middle-Aged Coldwater Creek. Their antics made it increasingly hard to remain stuffily removed.

But then.
The landlord called.
From Arizona.
Just to check in with us.
To see if everything was going okay.
Ever since he’d given the striplings a cell phone lashing after their inaugural party some weeks before.

Sometimes I have a lot of words. So I used them.

He did okay with the part about “Marianne” and my calling the cops. Clearly, he had never heard “Marianne,” or his outrage would have been more immediate and palpable.

However, when I mentioned the dogs, old Tuscon Tom snapped. DOGS? DOOOOOOGS? DAAAAAAAAWWWGGGGSSSSS?

Seems there was a little clause in the lease that mentioned the words “castration,” “hobbling” and ultimately “eviction,” should any animal ever enter the premises.

Clutching protectively at their ‘nads and ankles, the lads got their notice. They had two weeks to get out.

Two weeks and three days later, they started packing. The whole moving process was like a Three Stooges movie starring Robert Downey, Jr., Kiefer Sutherland, and Judd Apatow, featuring a guest appearance by Mickey Rourke (Fifth Renter was noticably absent from the proceedings, no doubt drowned in a fifth of a different sort near a bus stop somewhere)…

what with Phat Boy’s only contribution being, inexplicably, to deposit a pair of shoes onto the side lawn–perhaps to mark the spots where he’d drunkenly peed;

Dimwit dragging out various pieces of his possessions to the car–all of them jammed inside a sleeping bag;

Kyle clambering into the trash can in an attempt to stuff in just seven more pizza boxes;

and Joshua fumbling through the long-empty packs of smokes that littered the driveway, seeking out one last puff as he sat on the cooler and considered the asphalt, for quite a very long while, before slowly standing up.

Eventually, after they’d all worked really, really hard, in the fashion of Paris Hilton making her own way in the world, they hopped into their cars and drove away, crashing into whatever unsuspecting neighborhood will be saddled with them next. Call Mommy! Call Daddy! America’s Best had not only lived on their own for the first time; they had also moved out of a place, all on their own, for the first time!

But what they had failed to do, for the first (and certainly not the last) time, was reclaim their security deposit. For three days after their departure, a cleaning lady scoured the place, a handy man came in to repair the holes punched into the walls, and a carpet dude came to pull out the rugs and put in new ones. And that was just the inside work. Here’s a little math problem for you, College Boys:

+

=

That crying Native American there? It’s probably for the best that, at the close of this commercial, he stepped out into speeding traffic and was taken down by a mail truck. Had he survived, he’d have needed a full-on box of Kleenex Aloe Vera and a whole new treaty struck with the White Man’s King after looking down into the ravine next door to the now-empty rental–

a ravine, curiously, where the creek was newly dammed

with a couch

and a bookshelf

furniture that had spent the previous three days perched outside, on the porch of the rental, mysteriously “disappearing” (with great ruckus at midnight) just as the knucklebutts left for good.

Suffice it to say, there were more phone calls: to the landlord, to the delinquents (who swore they dinn’t know nuffin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies, Mizz Scarlett!), nearly to the cops. They were given two days to get the furniture out of the ravine. It was out the next day.

And left there, next to the ravine, on the sidewalk.

At this point, while I was still gunning for police work and enormous fines, the beleaguered landlord discovered his inner Native American and decided that instead of continuing to fight past exhaustion and nearly to extinction, he would, in the interests of self-preservation,

step back, let the feckless bastards move on, give them ample time, and feel secure in the knowledge that

the idiots will eventually hang themselves in a web of their own weaving.

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25 responses to “There’s a Kind of a Hush All Over the World Tonight”

  1. Pam Avatar
    Pam

    I am praying, oh yes praying that idiots like these infest where we have had to leave.The rental tribunal told us as much “leave as soon as you can,with this appropriate paperwork.You have the landlord from hell”-plastic on the carpets, felt pads on our pictures,”no hanging basket full of pretty flowers thank-you it will dent the wood, no outside potplants(may leave a mark), did not lodge our ever increasing bond amounts each year, ripped us off for water levies,spotless carpets which were plasticised must be shampood without fail every year at tennants cost,and twenty other illegal demands.Would you believe lists of what brand cleaning products to use, where to purchase them, and to use a scourer only a couple of times and throw it away,bathroom scourers MUST be new each time “When you clean the inside kitchen window I will not allow you to have your feet on the sink – only on the laminate with a teatowel underneath”.I can tell you that I would have split myself in half.Even “I can see a smear on your shower screen!”So we’re taking the advice and getting out ( after she demanded twelve hours of open inspections in two weeks during packing time, was reprimanded and admitted she was just “trying it on”.) Oh please tell me there’s retribution somewhere.Never had a party here, paid the rent on time, kept it spotless, treated like *#!*. Oh how I’d love idiots to move it and stain those carpets with their alcohol of choice, and put their filthy feet on the sink while the contraband dog barks on.

  2. Pam Avatar
    Pam

    Gee, sorry, didn’t know it was going to be that long!!!

  3. citizen of the world Avatar
    citizen of the world

    Well, I’m glad they are out. But I can’t believe the landlord was concerned only when it involved possible damage to his property through the dogs. Apparently the kids’ infringing on your rights for peace didn’t matter. Sheesh.

  4. Balou Avatar
    Balou

    Yikes. I hope the next tenants are not of the same ilk. Maybe Tucson man should hire you to rent out and manage his house.

  5. choochoo Avatar
    choochoo

    lol. Well, thank god that’s over. I was very happy to move far, far away from the idjit upstairs ppl last month, so I know exactly how you feel:D

  6. Maddy Avatar
    Maddy

    A sad tale of woe that I’m pretty sure is repeated the world over. I don’t think it’s a question of blame, more an issue of making sure that our own children are in the position to make different choices, preferably independently from us, if you know what I mean.
    Best wishes

  7. chelle Avatar
    chelle

    ugh … renting and being near renters is never fun. Sounds like they were totally immature and not in tune to the big wide world yet. I have never understood the no respect for others concept.

    YAY for them being out!

  8. furiousBall Avatar
    furiousBall

    you have it right, this is another example of folks that have that alarmingly prevailing sense of self-entitlement and the constant search for an excuse for their circumstance. some say dare to fail, they say fail to dare.

  9. Jazz Avatar
    Jazz

    Sometimes I have a lot of words. So I used them.

    Darling, you always have a lot of words and, as usual, use them brilliantly.

  10. Franki Avatar
    Franki

    Enjoy your peace.

    Neighbors are scary.

  11. Shania Avatar
    Shania

    I’ve never heard Marianne, but I’m outraged for you anyway!

  12. pistols at dawn Avatar
    pistols at dawn

    Yipes. There go my schoolgirl dreams of living in a quiet college town full of donnish young scholars, hearts aflutter with chaos theory and Kantian metaphysics.

    I haven’t been this upset since I went to New Haven and realized what a pit that place is.

  13. lime Avatar
    lime

    i do so hope pictures of them hung in their own web will bear striking similarity to when frodo the hobbit was mummified by the giant spider. likewise i hope the pictures will be available for publishing right her

  14. flutter Avatar
    flutter

    that poor elmo slipper, that poor poor elmo slipper.

  15. Glamourpuss Avatar
    Glamourpuss

    Kids today! No respect! Little shits.

    Puss

  16. yinyang Avatar
    yinyang

    I wish our annoying neighbors would leave. They like to party really loudly, especially on Fridays – but any school night will do – and one night they decided to light up in their basement (I’m not sure it was cigarettes, though, because it smelled strange). The miasma of smoke diffused through the cracks in my wall and stunk up the whole basement, forcing me to sleep in the living room.

    Ah, well – that’s what we get for living on Renter’s Lane in Suburban Homeowner’s Paradise.

  17. ms. changes pants while driving Avatar
    ms. changes pants while driving

    wonderful post. i’m sorry you went through this. i lived in a beach town for about a year. every august through about june the place would bump and thump with late night fights, late night tears. i actually took a picture of a girl kneeling in a driveway after having driven herself (probably drunkly) to her ex boyfriend’s driveway to beg for him back. you can’t reason with them. you can’t explain things to them. parties at 2am on a tuesday? they know nothing of having to go to work early. and their fresh young bodies (damn them!) don’t get hangovers like we old folk do.

    they park their cars in the street, and they leave their car doors open while getting in, putting their make up on, flossing, or whatever the hell it is that they need to do with the car door open. a honk of the horn only gets you an evil stink eye.

    UGH. so i feel yer pain. and i feel yer joy!!!

  18. ms. changes pants while driving Avatar
    ms. changes pants while driving

    hahahaa… that poor elmo slipper. flutter is funny.

  19. That Chick Over There Avatar
    That Chick Over There

    The country music ALONE would have been enough to make me kick their asses.

    I applaud you, once again.

  20. susan Avatar
    susan

    Noise, holes in the wall, pee, puke and all that goes with that…and all the owner is worried about is the poor dog? Geez, get a clue!

    If they ever rent out to more partiers you now know to get them a puppy!

  21. Todd Lund Avatar
    Todd Lund

    The unabated dissemination of the genes of Bevis, Butthead, and Bart Simpson have a lot to answer for. I was perusing my latest copy of The Journal of American Genetics, and noted with interest that a “Clueless DpShit” gene has recently been discovered on chromosome 4p19 along with the locus for the “StpdCluck” phenotype. Apparently, this gene is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait, and is often associated with HaplessDunderFuck Syndrome, a low forehead, limited intelligence, poor memory, and as well as a significantly retarded vocabulary, early alcoholism, sociopathic behavior, and lack of control of the oral, anal, and urethral sphincter muscles. I was thinking that, if you had the time, you might consider writing up in a case report the occurrence of such a concentration of these phenotypes in so many individuals in the same place at the same time (i.e. across the alley from you). I suspect that The Journal would be very receptive indeed to one of your always objective, accurate and analytical descriptions of individuals clearly afflicted with these genetic traits.

  22. Karen MEG Avatar
    Karen MEG

    Ugh, what a nightmare. But at least they’re GONE!!!

    I just hope the landlord is a bit more discriminating the next time around.

  23. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    I think Phat Boy is/was in my FYE class. He missed the last two weeks because he’d been kicked out of his house, he said. Bummer for him. Happy ending for you.

    Living in a college town…nuff said.

  24. Ann(ie) Avatar
    Ann(ie)

    buh bye. Neighbors can really suck. Mine aren’t even that bad!!! Well they sorta are actually. 🙂

  25. Say It Avatar
    Say It

    Deep breath in, deep breath out. Whew, they are out and gone.

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