It really seemed like a nice joint when we pulled into the parking lot; it really did. A lovely, flowing creek nestled beneath a blanket of brilliant autumn leaves, a quaint park across the street, and a seemingly nice fella who came out to show us the apartment.
AND - this is the important part - the apartment was NICE. You had to see where we were living at the time... we were growing alien-like mushrooms alongside our toilet, in our bedroom, in all of the places you never thought you'd ever see mushrooms growing. The ceiling leaked. On any given day, the place could randomly smell like an egg factory or a funeral home for no explicable reason. The neighbor in the apartment next-door ran an illegal daycare out of her one-bedroom apartment, the guy downstairs had sex with a lady and her daughter - at the same time - and the man in the house next-door killed deer and threw the bloody carcasses in our dumpster. It was not the kind of place you'd want to raise kids in... unless you're a psychotic, crackhead of an abusive parent.
It was so nice, we were convinced we'd never get it. So much for positivity, huh? But we did get it, and we were thrilled. The man who showed us the apartment (let's call him Ed) lived in apartment #1 and he seemed so sweet. He was a burly, carrot-topped dude in his late fifties; an ex-Marine. He lived with a younger guy we'll call Steve. Actually, our first thought was that they were gay. We didn't really care one way or the other, it just seemed... well... stereotypical, frankly. Either way, they were nice guys that made a hobby of smoking on the front porch all day.
Hey, whatever floats your boat.We thought surely nothing could be worse than what we had been living with, so chain-smokers on the porch was no biggie. And so 2 weeks after getting the go-ahead from our landlord, our small group at church moved us in, I decorated for Christmas, and we were good to go.
It was great at first. Ed told us everything we needed to know, from how to turn up the water temperature, to how get on the landlord's good side (paying the rent helps), and he helped us out with a few things here and there. He took care of the gardens out front and called me "sweetie" and seemed the grandfatherly type. There was a family downstairs consisting of a husband & wife, and two sons, one around 10 or 11 years old, and a baby. The boy and his father fought constantly, slammed a lot of doors, and screamed, but we sucked it up. Not much you could really do about family drama. Everyone else was nice but kept to themselves and that was fine with us.
I have since concluded that as long as you are living among the rest of society, there is no "nice" place to live. There's no Mayberry. It's all Crazy Town.
I don't remember when it all started to tank. There is no one incident in my mind that tipped me off to the reality that this place was just as much of an insane asylum (
typical that I would live in an insane asylum...) as The Bates Motel where we came from. It was in a nice area. It was a nice building coated in fresh paint. No leaks, cracks, or salad items growing in the bathroom. Heck, Ed even drove a Jaguar. Never judge a book by it's cover... or a parking lot by its Jag.
Slowly but surely, Ed's "sweeties" became "honeys" and eventually "babies" and eventually we graduated to "sexy." Pats on the back became hugs. YAY! HUGS FROM GRANDPA! Right?!?
RIGHT?!? Wrong. Hugs turned into kisses on the cheek. I'm not a naive person. I know it sounds like I'm totally naive and my Mormon mommy never let me ride my bike down the street alone, but seriously... I've been around the block. Still, I let the old sleaze ball kiss me and thought it was innocent.
Till that hickey.
Yes, that's what I said. I said hickey. He gave me a hickey. I was standing out front commenting on the weather one day when he leaned in to give me what I thought was going to be a peck on the cheek, and instead he grabbed my neck with his yellow-stained smoky chops and started sucking.
OK, I take it back. That was the first time I realized I was on the threshold of hell. Because, honestly, I can stick up for myself just fine. I come from a family where you can't be heard unless you're able to scream above everyone else. I'm not easily intimidated. But when an old man sucks on your neck... it's... something different. Can you slap a veteran? Don't you go to hell for that? I didn't know what to do.
I told my husband, who promptly proclaimed that he was going to kick some [expletive]. But he's not the [expletive]-kicking type. (And, yes, I'm very grateful for that.) He said he would at least say something to him, tell him he needed to leave his wife alone, go give Steve a hickey or something.
Just one little problem.
By that point, we had figured out that Steve was a druggie and a drunk. We're pretty sure he deals. He got violent a few times, slit his wrists once, even went after Ed with a knife, and was hauled away for it. I had visions of Scott telling Ed off, and Steve coming after him with an axe or something, his eyes all red and bloodshot. After much begging, pleading and arguing, I got him to agree to let it go. I'd just avoid his chops as much as possible. I'd rather have my carotid sucked on then slashed by a drug addict.
But Ed and Steve could not be avoided. They lived on the front porch. They didn't work. They just stood around and smoked and spit. When I walked out the door or got out of my car, they hooted and hollered and called me sexy and told me to "work it." If I wore high-heel boots, things really got out of control. I didn't tell Scott about that part. Listen, I've lived through sexual abuse and rape. I figured I could handle cat-calls. Looking back, I have to say that was ridiculous on my part. I might as well have hung a sign around my neck that said, "PLEASE ABUSE ME AGAIN!" But it wasn't a matter of self-respect. I just wanted to live. And the rent was affordable. Plus, there is admittedly a part of me that desperately wants to seem non-prudish. Prudes freak me out - I don't want to resemble one. Again... stupid, but that was my thought process.
In case you're wondering how we concluded that Steve sold drugs...
Well, there were the subtle things. The fact that he wore designer clothes, didn't have a job, and didn't even have a driver's license. (Lost it because of repeated DUI's.) He bought antiques and electronics and ferociously played the stock market. Random "friends" stopped by at random times during the day, and they'd disappear into the backyard. If we went anywhere near them, they promptly changed location and stood about 2 centimeters apart to talk.
Oh... and they grew pot in our backyard. At first, we didn't know it. It was hidden among the trees and we didn't know it was there until Ed flat out told us one day. But then Steve brought home an enormous pot plant... the thing was the size of a tree, no joke. It was growing in a pot and they kept it next to the picnic table out back. The landlord's kids mowed the lawn and raked the leaves and their mom waited for them while they did so, so clearly they either have no idea what marijuana looks like, or they were like us - they just wanted to live. As they say in the hood - "No Snitching."
Now, if I had seen Steve across the street at the park selling dime bags to little kids on the see-saw, yes, I would have called the police. Otherwise... OK, fine, great, you grow and sell drugs.
Please don't kill me.And, you know, it just sucks because I always told myself I'd never be one of those jerks who turns a blind eye to that stuff. But when it's literally right in your own backyard, you don't know what to do. Scott was worried about me; I was worried about Scott. It doesn't matter how far you hide in the land of Suburbia, the crap will find you, and it found us... or we found IT, however you want to look at it.
But things were about to get worse, when Steve's mother moved with him and Ed.
More to come...
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