i told christine a story last night and she asked me if it was true. "i know you like to embellish," she said. but she only knows that because i tell her so, not because she ever caught me doing it. tonight's story is true only in the sense that i tell it as i experienced it, and you would be justified in suspecting that the rest is entirely false.
tommy is my neighbor, which lately only increases our difficulties. i don't dare tell him when we really first met, or that i still have his skull. it's not my style really. sure i like skulls and all, but this one's all electric acid trip, and he printed it out on his inkjet. if the original is a watercolor like he says, tommy has a gift. a real gift with skulls. and demons, and s&m chicks, and hearts and flames, but that's pretty much it. he told me what separates himself from da vinci, really, is not drawing ability, but imagination. if da vinci had been limited to skulls and tits, he'd have done tattoos too.
but that was way back in august, when it was still warm out. he's wearing long sleeves now, otherwise i'd recognize him. maybe not by the skulls covering his arms, but by the hepatitis sores covering the skulls. i don't know how tommy got hepatitis, but i think i can explain why he's having a hard time establishing a client base in seattle. maybe he should try chicago. the sores might give him good cred out there. seattle isn't interested in street cred. maybe i'll suggest chicago. one thing's for sure, tommy needs to get out of seattle.
"we need to talk." i said ok, and i put down my book and followed him out to the balcony. i didn't remember him, but here i was treating him with the same indifferent neutrality as before. that's just how i am with strangers these days. if you stop me on the street i'll give you a cigarette and five minutes of undivided attention. he looked sketchy, so odds are decent he wants money, or he has something crazy to say, or...well something tells me he's a neighbor and he seems uncomfortable like he doesn't want to talk to me, so maybe it's about noise or some other neighborly complaint. "i need to know if you're tapping my phone, cause if you are just tell me." relief hits me. if this had been about my music, i'm sure we would have had an awkward argument and then we'd be weird around each other in the halls or out on the street. but i'm completely innocent of any phone-tapping, so i have the luxury of being completely honest in this conversation. i don't even have a phone. the previous occupant spliced cable into my apartment, but i don't hook it up to my tv, and my internet is shared wirelessly with my neighbor. i wonder if the cable has something to do with this. i heard the splicing was causing my downstairs neighbor to not get his HBO. "oh, are you in 203, the one with the fucked up HBO?" he is. well, this gets even easier. i can fully appreciate his situation, since i don't get HBO either. "well the guy who stole the cable could easily have spliced the phone line too. you should bug the landlord to get the whole damn thing fixed." he agrees. we both know no amount of hounding will get these things fixed. satisfied, i'm ready to go back to my dinner and my book, but tommy is still upset. "i told L___ about this and he's like, 'you're crazy tommy, nobody's bugging your phone. and then i dumped out this pile of microphones i pulled from the lights, and he still says 'what you want me to do? this doesn't prove anything. so, like, i don't even know what to think. i don't feel safe here. my intercom has been rewired into a microphone. fucking microphones everywhere, and the phone wires are goin straight to your apartment. i made L___ show me the wires in the basement, and it said '303'. so, like, i hate to ask you, you seem like a normal guy and all, but can i take a look, just to see?"
well tommy is more than justifying the time i'm spending with him. "of course you can!" and i was better than my word. i gave him the grand tour. we looked at the wires to my intercom. i showed him the phone jacks i knew about. i showed him behind the entertainment center and the desk, to prove nothing was hooked up to anything besides a socket. we looked in the kitchen, in my living room closet, everywhere. i'm delighted, because i have nothing to hide. when tommy sees the weed on my desk, he even cracks a joke. "well, i guess you're not a cop." it's not really a joke. the weed is strong evidence that i'm not a cop, and he seems to feel a little better. he explains how he found microphones in the lights. he shows me the extra wire running to my intercom, disconnected for now, but there, just in case. i am incredulous, but polite. he shows me where he pulled out some sort of phone line in the hallway. my intercom hasn't worked for a while.
when i took my garbage to the dumpsters behind the building later, tommy was at the door when i came back in. i gave a friendly "hey." he's probably not even the tenth person to see the inside of my apartment, and i think that qualifies us as friends. "man, everywhere i go, there you are. like you're following me." i give a dumb laugh, because it was a dumb joke. he gets mad. i get mad back when i realize he was serious. i'm covering up a faint sense of relief. there's a possibility this guy could be a problem. but he doesn't make dumb jokes, and i like that. after assuring tommy a second time that i'm not a cop, he gets over the initial shock of seeing me again so randomly. he tells me about the manager, the neighbors, what he hears, what he knows, what he suspects. i get so much dirt. in the end he advises me not to have lots of friends over and not to do lots of drugs. this place isn't right, he says. just watch your ass.
when the pigeons land on my windowsil to get out of the rain i act like it's the most natural thing in the world, trying to buy time to get my camera before they get spooked. i just nod and thank tommy for the advice. he's my new favorite neighbor, and i don't want him to get spooked.
