The Singing Neighbor

We’re okay that everything is out of order, yes? Meaning, when I started this post, which is, obviously, about the singer, Singer, Chad and Heather hadn’t thought to fix Singer up with Ike yet, so the post just before this one, “I’m going to knock on your door to come cuddle with you…” happened after we met Singer.

Why mention the confusion on the order of the posts? Well, I’m getting to that point where my posts are starting to blur. I really don’t know what I’ve said/written about (although I know I’ve said that before). I’m not about to go back and check earlier post to keep from repeating myself. The move has fried my brain a bit. And, I’ve given up on always making total sense. (It’s too much work.)

So, it was about however many weeks ago, and there we are, Heather and me. We were just chill'n outside, like we often do at least one night a week (usually on Friday nights), sometimes Saturdays, too, and drink’n and home’n. That’s my slang for how nice it is when the people outside your kitchen door, your neighbors, who are only 5’ away, are a couple of the people you like to hang out with on a Friday night when you have that glass of wine or two. This way, you don’t have to drink and drive.

Heather and I, we were having one of our conversations, about I cannot remember what (still typical of my brain lately), and as we were sitting there, surrounded by the many (probably too many) succulents and flowers I've accumulated through the years (those babies were a bitch to move), suddenly Heather says, "Shhh. Can you hear that?" And I could. It was singing. Great singing.

The girl's voice, a bit haunting and beautiful, was coming from one of the neighbor's windows. Not from a neighbor in our bungalow row (old style bungalow duplexes), but from the closer of the two more-kept-up and modern two-story apartments near us. Both apartment buildings sandwich and stack up on the modest and dilapidated, one-story, almost condemned 3x by the city, place I called home for the last 13 years. (Remember? It was the low rent in the high-rent neighborhood that kept me there. Location, location, location.)

Heather and I move closer to the arch that opens up to this singing neighbor's window, and we pressed our ears to the air and to the distance between us and her voice. "She's good," I said. "Really good," Heather said. "Right?!" I agreed.

It was a heart break song we were hearing. She was writing as she was singing. There went the chorus...no, the melody...okay, back to chorus. Who cares the song wasn't worked out. I was feeling it because I was missing Watt. (I know. Watt, Watt, Watt. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. That missing him, missing being with someone, that's not going away over night. I’ll dwell on him for at least another month, or until I meet my man.)

Heather wanted Chad to hear our Singing Neighbor. When Heather went inside to get Chad, the singing stopped for a spell. Singer answered her phone. She was telling someone that she was wanting to go to the studio and that she was just writing.
Oddly, since that first night, I never heard Singer mention studio time or a desire to do anything with her singing again. Maybe her singing that night was just her way of introducing herself to the neighborhood. It worked.

Heather was so impressed by Singer’s singing that some get-up-and-go got a hold of her. "Hold on!” Heather said to me, holding her hand up to the air and me. It was a stop everything “hold on”. Then Heather got up from her chair, walked out of our back area between kitchens, down the bedroom alley of our bungalow row, and the next thing I hear, from Singer’s window, is Singer saying into the phone, “Wait a second. Someone is at my door.”

“Hey. I’m your neighbor,” Heather said. Me and my friend, another neighbor, were just listening to you sing and thought you sounded great. So what’s your story? You a singer?”

I can’t remember how Singer responded, I just remember Heather’s voice coming from Singer’s window even louder, and when I turned around Heather was pointing to where we live(d) below and was asking Singer if she wanted to come hang out with us. From her living room window Singer waved to me. I waved back.

About 15 minutes went by. Time enough for Singer to tell the person on the other end of the phone that she’s never felt more alive, that a new neighbor could come over and compliment her singing, believe in her singing more. She mentioned something about breaking up. (I can only assume now that she was talking to either Keeping-Him-Around guy or to the prison ex-boyfriend.)

Then, Singer came over.

Next I know, Heather is showing Singer into her living room to show her that she and Chad have a used coffin for a coffee table. Then Heather and Singer are off and running. Heather is telling Singer about her renegade roller derby. I think I remember Singer might have mentioned something about having a fake tooth, but wanted to do roller derby also and anyway. Someone mentioned something being angry about some things in life (probably Singer). Heather probably parroted the anger.

Singer apologized for being so faded, and told us about her prison ex-boyfriend. Oddly, this prison guy he’s got the same name as Watt. No. His name is not Watt, because that is a made up name, but prison guy has the same uncommon of a name as Watt’s real name. That was weird for me, especially because Singer tells me that prison guy, her ex, and my Watt are the same age and from the same city. (Thank you Face Book for making people’s pictures so available so I could see that my Watt wasn’t suddenly some liar with a past, a prison record, and another girlfriend.)

Scarier, is the difference between saying you’re faded when you are 40 vs. 20 years old. At 20 it means you are on a path of youthful annihilation (drugs and such). At 40, it either means: Take me home honey; I’m tired. Or, I am a little tipsier than I might have wanted to get.

Then, after the conversation about smoking-out happened (smoking pot), out came the oxy conversation. (Again, refer to my most previous blog for an oxy definition.) Singer explained how oxy is a cleaner high than “H” and how you can smoke it, shoot it, whatever. (For those in the dark, like I was, “H” is the street slang for heroine.) As a reminder, this, when the oxy convo started, is when I had to go pee and didn’t come back.

Disclaimer: I am not saying anyone did oxy. It’s up to you to decide what a conversation about oxy means.

While back at my house, fake peeing, and safe on my couch in front of my TV and ready to prepare to watch one of my favorite recorded TV episodes, “How I Met Your Mother,” I thought: Huh. Singer said she didn’t have an appetite and couldn’t drink because she just broke up with her boyfriend, yet… Uh, yeah, loss of appetite can also happen when… (Just saying… )

It was all so out of my zone. My friends, my generation, we drank too young. We smoked cigarettes and ate French fries and onion rings too late at Bob’s Big Boy. We snuck out of our houses to kiss boys. We went places we were too young to be. We used our allowance for Atari and Bionic Woman stuff. We used too much hairspray on our bangs by the time we were teenagers. We made the mistake of mixing black lace with neon (I blame Madona) and were stupid enough to think hyper-color was cool. And, we only showed our bellies in public (not all of our flesh) for a period of three years when the misguided idea of crop tops were fashionable.

We did not show our butt cracks and thong underwear, nor boxers, as fashion. We didn’t stand in the street in our underwear and argue with our boyfriends. We didn’t “discuss” the street names of hard drugs nor do them. (Well, some kids did.) We didn’t spend our money per pill. We didn’t pierce our eyebrows or tongues or stretch holes into our earlobes. (We just pierced our ears twice…oooh, so daring.) We didn’t try to make our teeth look like we had bad decay with gold caps. We didn’t have friends in common and say things like, “I know that guy, too. He tried to rape my friend.”

This is not me being judgmental. People can do whatever they want. I’m not going to think more or less of them. I might worry more than less though. My point? I’m just not always going to be comfortable around it.

Back when I used to be around one of my cousins who did drugs, who used to take me to people’s houses in bad neighborhoods to do those drugs, and who used to introduce me to people who looked like they’d have their picture posted in the post office, I was uncomfortable then.

Coincidentally, when I pressed play on the “How I Met Your Mother” episode, it happened to be the one with the Murtaug list, where they talk about all the things they are getting too old for, like how Murtaugh, from “Leathal Weapon” kept saying, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit."

That’s one of the reasons I also know it was time for me to move. I love Chad and Heather. If they had not moved in I would not have been able to bear the B.S. from the other butthead neighbors. Chad and Heather will always be in my life if they keep up with our friendship. But Chad and Heather are close to 15 years younger than me. I am too old to be doing the things they do, even when all they are doing is staying up past 10:30 p.m.

The thing that sucks, is that I have been too old to share walls (in an apartment) since I was 26. I have been too old, and too OVER, hearing the noise of other people who don’t live with me. And while I always have been, I don’t want to be careful about my noise either. I don’t want to have to put a robe on when I get out of the shower for fear that a neighbor can see into my window and will see the sideways sag of my 40 year old breasts.

As much as I love people, what I want is not to rent. I want to own. I want to be noisy and naked where no one can hear or see me. Beach house without close-by neighbors, where are you?

What’s funny, is before Watt, I thought I wasn't getting laid because I was boring. Um, no. I've since figured out that I'm not boring. I’m just reasonable and responsible and I am not reckless.

On my first date with Watt, I didn't want him to park in this space where he might get a ticket. He didn't care if he got a ticket, but he moved his truck for me and parked elsewhere to appease me. Then we parked in a parking lot where you are required to pay using the honor system. Slip your two bucks in the numbered space where you parked, and yer set.

Watt never paid for our slot that night. I was so mesmerized by him I didn’t realize it. It was three weeks later when he told me, teased me about how he didn’t pay. It was a week after that that he’d gotten a parking ticket for something else and got all pissed off. “See?” I said. Karma is a bitch.

Guess I'm just not a rule breaker. I like cussing. Does that make me a rebel? Sigh. Probably not. Ah, well. I'm fine with my play it safe, courteous self. What I lack in edge in that way I far make up for in passion. So, go me!

Since this is about the night I met Singer, though, I’ll get back to her and give the latest on what I know, as now that I have moved I may not know much anymore. I can report that to my knowledge Singer and Ike are still at it.

I felt like I was on one of their first dates. Singer reminded me, the morning after we’d all hung out, Chad, Heather, Ike, her and me, that I’d promised to go get burritos with her and Ike the morning after. (Ike had stayed the night at Singer’s place that night.) As the three of us walked up to this famous local breakfast burrito place, Nick's Deli in Seal Beach, Singer reached for Ike’s hand for the first time. It was sweet. I was a third wheel. (At least the burrito I got was A-mazing!)

Once again, Universe, I am ready for naked, noisy, and my man. For that matter, I am ready for naked and noisy with my man.

That is going to be FABULOUS!