It’s the low life’s stupid. So far, the main difference I’ve found living in Brooklyn South (AKA the Isle of Staten) is how basically bereft of low life cafones it is around my new abode.
I guess to a degree I became inured to the institutionalized ugliness of life in my old ‘hood, where angry, noxious, unctuous, civility free life forms (I refuse to acknowledge them using the word ‘human’) trampled upon the quality of life of others due to their rude, up yours, fuck everyone else attitude.
Here in Richmond County, I have yet to encounter a single reprehensible, smug, tacky, boorish, discourteous creep. Okay, I know this place has its share of such cretins, heck friends and members of my family live here, but I’ve yet to encounter anyone who has made me think “Jeez, what a prick’. Maybe my newly acquired rose colored glasses need to be cleaned, but back in my old digs, I’d rarely go an hour in public without encountering someone who made me lose all hope for humanity.
Of course, using public transportation in limited doses and not having been on a subway train in a few weeks in particular, has no doubt contributed to the fact that I am shielded from most of my cities less civil examples of humanity. But here among home owners, and owners who are working people, after all this is not some upscale neighborhood of high rolling Wall Street types, the people seem to have an investment in maintaining decency, in courting good behavior, and in treating each other with the common courtesies and kindness virtually extinct for all too many back on my former slab of concrete and razor wire in Boro Park.
Yes, those ‘little things’ do matter. And here on this block, just a few hundred feet from main roads and public transportation, those things are a given, not something obscure. Manners and niceness are not museum pieces, trapped in the amber of time that can only be seen by appointment.
Fortunately I am acclimating to the lack of rancid people who are more things than people as my areas inhabitants, and doing so relatively quickly. I may never adjust to raking leaves, cutting grass, or watering the plants (something I do every morning now…wait, is that ME watering pretty flowers?) but it is a galaxy removed from my former chores of re stocking the moat around my old castle with specially bred pit bull piranha fish, tightening up the 600 volt trip wires on the roof, and seeing to it that the security camera lenses were free of graffiti. It’s the proverbial sea change in living conditions.
Indeed the only people around here who tend to revive my apoplectic level rage, are the sloth’s who barrel down my block with their boom box cars, bashing out bruising levels of bass, as their sub woofers spill out deafening levels of sub sonic noise, interrupting the relative quiescence of my new abode. Those people, I do FUCKING HATE!
Fortunately, mine is not a street that gets much traffic, by foot or car. Unless one lives here or has other business here, one is unlikely to be here. Yet many rap loving residents of an adjacent neighborhood will be stopped at the traffic light up the corner, oblivious to the impact of inflicting their music upon us using 30” woofers. Fun for them, but painful for the rest of us.
I have ventured out my front door, in full territorial rage to yell “Get off my block” ( Yes it is already ‘mine’) at these quality of life abusers, awaiting the light s change of status which brings blessed relief from the reek of the noise such interlopers bring. I require no reminders of the clattering cacophony that was at times a constant back in the corrections facility that housed me for so many decades.
And in case you are wondering, this is a fairly diverse neighborhood, not the ‘White Landia’ Curtis Sliwa use to refer to some portions of the metroplex area as. I did not move to the Isle of Staten seeking that. The key difference here is, people seem to be significantly more civil, not inclined to be disrespectful on some DNA level. Once again, I’m adapting, after all, I am so use to saying “Well fuck you too” two or three dozen times a day, that I’m actually going thru some type of obscenity usage withdrawal.
Heck I have not heard anyone use the word nigger to describe themselves or others in weeks now. I was reminded of what was the old norm recently, when some mofo was stuck at the traffic light, his car stereo booming out a rap song that used the words ‘shit’ and ‘motherfucker’ approximately 177 times in about 30 seconds. I do not miss the hideous language that assaulted me as soon as I exited my prior accommodations, language some of my old neighbors bandied about around children and others sensitive to such, without shame.
Somehow I never came to appreciate being greeted in the morning with a hale and hearty “What are looking at motherfucker?” by the rodents that infested my immediate surroundings.
But they were, and no doubt are still living lives devoid of quality. And so they have no quarrel with seeing to it that those within range of their repulsive selves suffer the same lack of quality of life. Part of their mission is to degrade others; after all, if their lives are gonna suck, well then, so shall yours. Obviously in my new locale, that prime directive, or should I say, that primal directive, is seemingly nonexistent!
Let me provide you with perhaps the most illuminating example of what I am talking about, as I reflect back upon certain moments that were instrumental in giving me the impetuous to finally throw off the oppressive yolk of life in wartime.
In my last days of tolerance of my races least tolerable things, after I’d found the home I now call home, I exited the front door of my apartment house to find some thing of undetermined point of origin, certainly not a resident of my property, sitting on my stoop.
By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with what a ‘stoop’ is, that is a city term used to describe the steps providing egress to the property. Stoops are useful for seating, and were once the essential ingredient in playing “stoop ball’, a game in which a “Sapaldeen” (spelled as it was verbalized, a pink tennis sized bouncy ball) was bounced off the stoop. This was a city form of catch, which along with the game of stickball that popularized the “Spalding” has now become virtually extinct.
Anyway, as I exited my front door I looked down upon this thing. I stopped and waited for this thing to acknowledge my presence. Perhaps this interloper would say hello, or good morning or perhaps just get off my property where it had no reason to be. Silly me!
Instead this thing glared back at me, issuing a look that without his needing to speak at all, said “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing even looking at me as I sit here on this property I have no right to be on you asshole?”. Okay, I may have read a bit more into his look of abject derision for me than it was really relaying but I believe my interpretation of his glare was relatively correct.
This trespasser was looking at me as if I was the intruder! A cursory once over of this thing also made it obvious that I would not want to tangle with him, no less ask this thing to remove itself from my property.
I’d put the age of this young thing at twenty-something, jail muscles bulging prodigiously. There was a tattoo on it’s arm using that dumb gang styled lettering often found splayed across the arms or chests of rappers, such as the late Tupac Shakur whose ‘Thug for Life’ Tat is emblematic of the style and also of the disease that are tats which proudly champion bad behavior and incivility.
I looked at this thing with curiosity and it stared back at me. Finally the thing spoke, and spoke but a single word, spitting out “What?”. That was it. No courtesy, no hello, no nod towards civility, just a disgusted “What?” as I was daring to look upon it.
I then made the error of saying “Can I help you pal?” That elicited an even angrier look of contempt for me, followed by the De rigueur “What the fuck do you want?” retort, one I should have expected from this jackanape.
I held my temper and reminded myself that as I was weeks away from leaving such filth in the garbage pail of bad memories where such almost human detritus belonged, I should ignore this things encroachment upon the property I actually believed was mine, and not upset this temporarily free inmate, so I could indeed, get out of Dodge alive! Once again I ceded my property to some exemplar of the crudeness of the less evolved amongst us.
I had come to realize that MY property (so to speak) was no longer worth fighting for. Injuring myself or worse, to defend my right to control my property, was surely not worth it!
So, I moved on, secure in the happy knowledge that shortly, things such as this loser would no longer be a part of my life. Just knowing that made easy, walking away from that thing without inciting a fight. It even elicited within me, a feeling of calm, because I knew freedom was on the horizon, and I also knew that this thing would still be suffering the ignominy of his wretched life, while I moved on to secure the quality of life that had been so elusive to date. Yeah, that thought actually made me smile. And yes, it was a ‘fuck him’ smile. No longer would such low lives be a daily part of living.
Now, I exit my property to be greeted by kind, decent, caring, helpful, nice people! Yeah, it is tough assimilating when my norm was yelling at my neighbors because of their boorish behavior, their kids deciding to start playing basketball at 9 PM, and yappy dogs yapping into the wee hours, but I think I can be rehabilitated.
Why the other day, I put out my recyclables, not realizing it was not the day such pickups are made. That meant stacks of properly tied and flattened cardboard boxes and the like. That could have cost me a fine, except one of my neighbors noticed it, and as I slept late, brought it all back in to a place on my property where it would not bring me a sanitation fine. Quality neighbors make life all the better. A move of ten miles seems like ten thousand in terms of the quality of people I now proudly call neighbors!
Back in Boro Park, my neighbors would toss their garbage into mine, recyclables and all, leaving me with thousands of dollars in sanitation fines I had to pay at the closing on my old homes sale, because they were such thoughtless dopes!
I’ve long been reticent about even spitting on the sidewalk when I walk down the street, and I would watch people do that and more as they strolled past my property. More than once did some contemptuous creep go down my front basement steps to relieve themselves! And then look at me with anger when I upbraided them for daring to treat my home as their urinal. Although in retrospect, it had become little more than that, surrounded as it was by decaying properties not maintained by their absentee owners.
The ongoing war that was life is now over. No doubt I’ll encounter my share of nastiness here, as this is New York City, and in the past I’ve dealt with more than a few creep around these parts, but the ratio of civil people to assholes, is significantly smaller here, thankfully.
Brother Dave took some pics of yours truly on the way out the door of the old outhouse. The one posted above showed me exiting as resident for the last time, with the new building super standing behind me, visions of taking residence in the old Lightning studio careening about his head. You are welcome to it pally! I hope it is a more pleasant place for him to reside than it was for me.
Well, so much for the all new adventures of the almost suburban John P. Lightning. Don’t worry, I’ll find enough things to piss me off to rant about to keep you entertained. Expect our next meeting on the radio to be a rather loose affair, as I have no idea what I’ll do and as all my writing and stuff is still lost in boxes I may not locate for months to come, but we will fake something entertaining for you!
Oh geez, some putz with a boom box car just went up the street, excuse me while I head out front to tell him “Get off MY block’!
John L.
