DRAMA UPSTAIRS

This morning at 3:43am I was awaken by sobbing from upstairs. The sobber was Teri, my neighbor who have been skidding downhill ever since I moved in. She's really loud no matter what she does - walking, talking, watching television. It's like living beneath an old person who is deaf. But Teri is not old and she's not deaf, she's a tweaker and she's inconsiderate. And I don't think it's the tweaking that makes her inconsiderate. I think she'd be inconsiderate even if she wasn't doing the crank. Heh. That's such a 70s term. In more contemporary slang I believe it's now just meth. Whatever, it's speed for the white trashies. And Teri has become a total white trashy. Right before my very eyes.

When I moved in she worked for Ralph Lauren. I think she was in charge of production, something I'm familiar with because my friend Jare used to do that for Marc Jacobs. You cannot be a dumbass and do the job - it's hard. It involves traveling to foreign countries and sourcing fabrics and finish items like buttons and zippers and dealing with manufacturers and making sure that whatever line is being produced is delivered on time. Teri used to drive a 5 series BMW, it was her company car. She used to spend tons of money on Jimmy Choo shoes.

Her boyfriend, Ron is a musician and was in that band War when she started dating him. But he was no longer in the band and was going through some hard times. She would scream at him - horrible, racist things. I hated her for it. Not only because she was waking me up, but because she was mean and degrading to a man who did not deserve it. I think this is when she started to do cocaine. Because she was up all night vacuuming and doing projects with power tools.

And then she changed jobs and went to work with the Marciano brothers at Guess. And they loved her. She was really into the drugs now and she would sometimes just not show up at work. They called Ron and asked him what was wrong? He was gone a lot so he had no good answer. They should've called me. I would've told them that her bitchy butt needed to be bounced into rehab p.d.q. - but they didn't. They did kind of know what was going on and they offered to pay to put her through rehab, but she said she didn't have a problem so they had to fire her. Then she started having all the yard sales. This was two years ago and I think that she's got to have sold almost everything she owns by now.

Ron has moved out. And he's got another woman. A woman he loves who loves him back. He started a cleaning business and he gave Teri a job since she's pretty much unemployable. But the company has done really well and he's ready to sell it so she won't have a job anymore. He's also told her that she has to move, but she's not paying attention. The other morning I woke up and there was a beat up old car on the driveway behind the building. It belonged to Teri's "friend", a bald, white guy who looked like the leader of some inland empire neo-nazi group who'd just cooked up a fresh batch of meth for distribution. I talked to Ron last weekend and told him that he was enabling her by not kicking her ass out and telling her that he was in love with someone else. She said he can't stand it when she cries and that she threatens to hurt herself and he'd feel responsible.

Um, she's already hurting herself. This is just the slow route which is bumming out the rest of us who have to live in close proximity.

So this morning when I heard her sobbing I was annoyed at being awakened, but I was glad, because I'm hoping he told her she's got to go. And that she really will.