Last Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun evenings, someone that also lives on the courtyard that my top floor apartment over looks blasted a stereo for hours. And not after ten p.m., but before. Berkeley has an ordnance that prohibits loud music that intrudes into any residential space after 10 p.m. and our leases in this building prohibit loud stereos after 10 p.m. but also all the time. Enjoy one's music, sure, but one does not have to get the walls vibrating two floors up to enjoy listening to music.
I did not complain about last Thurs, Fri, Sat or Sun because I was sure other neighbors would and I took on the role of noise-complainer for years and I'd tired of it. And, so far, assuming others will complaint about noise that drills into my soull -- it is not music when muffled by two floors, when not chosen by the listeners, when it disrupts the ability to talk to a person in the next chair. It is not music when my walls are vibrating.
So, when the loud booming noise got going this Monday evening, and I actually felt kinda sick, like I wanted to crawl out of myself to get away from it, I decided to figure out which apartment the noise came from and then ask them to turn down the music.
When I first moved here, management asked residents to never take noise complaints directly to neighbors because one never knows what they might experience. The loud noisemaker might be drunk or high or just violent. I have lived here 8.5 years and never gone directly to a neighbor to ask them to turn down music but the fifth day of this, I swear, unbearably loud, pulsing, pounding and profanity laced, 'music' had worn me down.
When I knocked on the door, no one answered. Maybe they could not hear me because, as I have indicated, the noise was wicked loud. I could not hear myself think, barely hear my knocking.
So I came back up, closed my windows but I could still hear the noise. Thus demonstrating the noise was unusually loud because our windows are soundproofed. It was warm most of these days (it is not so warm today) so as soon as I closed my windows to shut out some of her music noise, my place became stultifying, breathless.
On Monday, I took matters into my own hands and returned to the offender's door so I could record on my smartphone the noise, to demonstrate to my property manager the next morning how truly unacceptable the noise was.
Just as I rolled up to the door, and this gives me the sense that she knew it had been me who had knocked, meaning she heard me and looked through her peephole, she turned off the music just as I got near her place and she came out of her apartment. So I said "I was going to record your noise but I am still going to report you in the morning."
Without missing half a beat, she began to speak to me in a sneering, angry, disgusting tone. Just the tone of her voice creeped me but her words creeped me more. "You know what?" she said, "You are a white racist bitch, that's what you are. No, I take that back, you a pink racist bitch." To which I pointed out that until she emerged from her apartment I did not know her race and that it is not racist to object to her loud stereo music. She repeated the racist thing many times but she changed it up by standing over me on my mobility scooter, looming, closed fist raised and saying "How about I beat you? How about I hurt you real good? What you gonna do? You can't do nothing. I could beat you up and you couldn't do anything." To which I, never at a loss for moxie, said "Well, one thing I would do is do my best to hit you back." What, did she think I'd let her beat me up and just passive sit there? As if. She repeated her lines, I came up with new ones. "And another thing I would do for sure is file an assault report and do my best to get you arrested and I am pretty sure you will be evicted if you beat me up." [I am quite sure of this! It says right in our lease that we all have a right to be safe in our homes and in our halls and assaulting another resident is grounds for eviction.]
I didn't understand, not until I talked to my property manager to report the assault (such a threat is an assault on its own, look up the law if you doubt me here), that she must have been saying that "What you gonna do if I beat the heck out of you? You caint do nothing, I could hurt you and you couldnt do a thing." because she had, wrongly, assumed I could not stand up and defend myself. I use the scooter because I need two new knee replacements that I can't get because of my medical history. I use the scooter because my heart failure leaves me breathless if I walk more than a block or two. But I can walk. I can stand up to an abusive bully.
So, she was leaving and she headed to the elevator lobby, as did I. On my scooter, I have to use the elevator but she, in a moment of wisdom, decided to take the stairs down (I was headed up). But then she came back to the floor landing to threaten me anew, holding her closed fist over me, vibrating with her anger that I had dared to challenge her five days of boom boom boom pounding stereo beat and she said "I am going to hit you and you caint do nothing about it." So I stood up, got off my scooter, believing I was about to get hit and I thought standing up would allow me to better fend her off. I have never actually exchanged fisticuffs with anyone, I have seen my four brothers and boys they knew fight. Plus I have been hit by a long ago abusive husband. I never even thought to strike him back but this gal, I was actually thinking about what strategy I would use to stop her hurting me. As I stood up and stepped away from the scooter, her closed fist still in the air but no longer so above me, she began to mock me for having stood up. She laughed, in a nasty way, saying "You see? I have scared you. You know I could hurt you so you jumped." That last comment shocked me, that she was so callous and cruel that she was mocking me for reacting to her threats. "I did not jump", I said, "I got up so I could hit you back." Then, and I wish I had remembered this sooner, I remembered the newly installed security camera across from all the elevators. I pointed to the camera and said "Smile for the camera. I can prove how you are behaving." With that she left.
My property manager said she would get her business' attorney to handle dealing with the woman. Since Monday, I have not heard her stereo! And I may not see her for years. I had never seen her before but was told she has lived in building, but not in that particular unit, for a few years. I had never seen her before.
And my property manager also said this, when I told her about 'you a racist' and 'you a pink racist' (spoken in a scream, so some neighbors along the hall opened the door to see who was screaming, then quickly closed their doors again . . ": she said "With Trump, for most black people these days, they see a white person and they see a racist." I didn't say this to my would-be assailant or to my nice property manager, who is black, but I wanted to say "I think every one has some racism taught to them but if I am one of the bad racists, a threat to black people, then we are all totally screwed because I am one of the good guys about race."
Did I mention my scooter is festooned with Berkeley Stands Against Hatred? Did I mention that I could move to many white communities that black neighbors might have trouble renting in? So I choose to live where I do, in a mostly black resident building. Would a racist live here by choice?
Did I mention I cried for more than an hour after she screamed at me and threatened to hurt me? Except for my long ago abusive husband, oh, and my older brother when I was very little, no one has ever struck me. I have not struck another human ever. Once or twice, I think I lightly swatted my toddler's diapered fanny when she was ignoring my warnings about something along the lines of "don't touch the hot stove" or don't you ever run out into the street like that again!
I can have a gruffness about me but I am not violent. And while I do think, with great regret, that all people of all colors tend to have some acculturated bigotry bred into them. I know, as this angry, violent neighbor does not, that I grew up on Chicago's South Side in the fifties and sixties in, yes, a white neighborhood but my parents were, for that era, very liberal about accepting blacks. Blacks were the only color besides white in my childhood world and I didn't actually know any until I started h.s. My dad worked for the city and worked with some black men. In forbidding his kids to ever say any of the endless names whites had in those days (and some probably still have) to denigrate black humans. I never heard my father use a single word of profanity. Not ever. I never heard him make a racist hate statement. And my mother was similar. Mom leaned Republican and I heard my parents fighting about that but mom was just as liberal about forbidding her children to refer to black people in derisive terms.
Sure I have some cultural racism bred into me, just like my violent neighbor with the powerful stereo has some bred into her.
I did not like hearing her scream that I was a pink, white racist bitch but what cut me hard, left me in tears more than once since the ugly interaction five days ago, was that closed fist raised above me and her threat to hurt me, her demeaning, angry tone as she said "I could hurt you so bad and there is nothing you can do about it." Now I am smiling. I am too raw to laugh but I am smiling. The way she kept saying, in her nasty, sneering, obviously wanting to come across as mean tone that she could hurt me and there was nothing I could do about it influenced me to feel helpless, feeble, defenseless, even as I shared my feisty thoughts about how if she did hit, I'd sure as heck try to hit her back. I did not share with her, but will share here, that I had decided, when I got off the scooter to face her eye to eye (I turned out to be much taller than her when I stood -- she had not calculated on that, methinks!), that I had decided I do my best to strike her in the face, reasoning privately that she would be surprised if I struck a painful blow, I was most likely to inflict pain if I struck her face. Yes, I had such awful thoughts. But, as I have written, when I stood up, although she mocked me as a scaredy cat for 'jumping up', I believe she finally left because she rightly interpreted my getting up as indicative of my determined intention . . . to fight back. Thank goddess she did not hit me, that she ran away.
Once a Puerto Rican neighbor who no longer lives in this buildilng accused me, and everyone else including the black neighbors, at a community meeting of all being racists. He said the blacks had internalized racism and turned it on themselves but that me and the only other white in the meeting, a man married to a black woman, with black kids, were the worst racists. To which I said "If I am one of the worst racists, the world is in trouble because I am one of the good guys."Why was he angry with me? The meeting was to discuss building security. It says right in our lease that no resident should admit someone they do not know up to the residential floors, that if someone is here to visit someone, that person should let their visitor in. But this Puerto Rican guy saw racism in that. I remind: me and one white man married to a black woman were the only whites at the meeting. He said he works with disadvantaged youths over in SF and sometimes his kids (his work kids, not his actual children who I would happily have let up anytime. . . ). He said if anyone in the building didn't let up his racially diverse kid clients if they came to see him here, and they sometimes did, that we were all racists. So I said "I can't know who your client kids are and it is unfair to ask me to let them up. You let them up, that's how it works". Then the guy, who may have been having a sucky day, started shouting, choked up and ran out. His wife, a Japanese woman, cried after he left and didn't seem to know what she should do. When she started crying, though, she left.
My property manager said the incident was elder abuse and ordinary abuse, that yes indeed it violates our leases to assault neighbors, to threaten them with violence.
No stereo tonight, none from any apartment. Music usually rises over the weekend when neighbors know no one is in the office to stop them.
True confession: once she began threatening to hurt me and calling me a racist just because I didn't want to hear her loud music, I called her a cunt. And I saw how that greatly pissed her off so each time she insulted me as a racist or renewed her threats to hit me good, I called her a cunt again. I confessed this to my property manager. I feel bad that I called her a cunt several times. I was wrong to do so. . . . . but five days of her stressful music and it being over 30 years since anyone held a clenched fist over me . . and, 30 years ago, someone did hit me. Many times.
Altho my ex husband preferred to use what he called 'rubber punches'. He said if he hit me just right, he would not leave bruises. But I bruise very easily and I always have. When I got shots as a kid, I'd have dark purple, baseball-size bruises afterwards. So my long ago husband would see my bruises and hit me for bruising. Our marriage counselor testified under oath that he was the cruelest person he, the doctor, had met in 20+ years of marriage counseling. That doctor said 'most people have a certain threshold of decency beneath which they will not stoop and as far as I can tell, Tree's husband has no such threshold." The father of my child. He stopped hitting me and developed a new favorite violence: he would drag me around the house, up stairs or down stairs, by my hair.
For those who have never endured this particular violence, and I never shared this with him -- he did not need more motivation to hurt me -- it is really awful. Your hair comes out in clumps, leaving little bleeding holes in your scale. And as they develop scabs as part of the healing and then you brush your hair, you tear the scabs. And it hurts like heck. It hurt like hell. All of my weight dragged by a fistful of my hair clutched in his vicious hand.
But my kid has a relationship with him. Not me. Just him. I never told her about the hair dragging or most of his abuse. She was a child. And he was an asshole to her, too, so I didn't need to unload my history with him onto her steep pile. I wonder how she can be FB friends with him, and her boyfriend be FB friends with him, because I know what he did to her, even if she doesn't know what he did to me.
Another thing our doctor said under oath: he was not sure someone could be as viciously abused as I had been and ever be fully whole but that if anyone could do it, it would be me. He said I separated my unhappiness with him from my joyful relationship with my daughter.
Our doctor, who had initially been our marriage counselor and then I stayed in therapy, instinctively understanding I needed help to leave and save my kid, also said my ex had three personality disorders, with a very severe case of narcissism - like DonnyJohn! He said my ex needed extended psychiatric hospitalizetion, like five to seven years and, even then, he, the doc, doubted my husband could ever be normal. he also said he did not think my ex should have any unsupervised visits. A prescient insight given what he did to our daughter a few years on. But she has a door open with him. Not me.
My property manager said the incident was elder abuse and ordinary abuse, that yes indeed it violates our leases to assault neighbors, to threaten them with violence.
No stereo tonight, none from any apartment. Music usually rises over the weekend when neighbors know no one is in the office to stop them.
True confession: once she began threatening to hurt me and calling me a racist just because I didn't want to hear her loud music, I called her a cunt. And I saw how that greatly pissed her off so each time she insulted me as a racist or renewed her threats to hit me good, I called her a cunt again. I confessed this to my property manager. I feel bad that I called her a cunt several times. I was wrong to do so. . . . . but five days of her stressful music and it being over 30 years since anyone held a clenched fist over me . . and, 30 years ago, someone did hit me. Many times.
Altho my ex husband preferred to use what he called 'rubber punches'. He said if he hit me just right, he would not leave bruises. But I bruise very easily and I always have. When I got shots as a kid, I'd have dark purple, baseball-size bruises afterwards. So my long ago husband would see my bruises and hit me for bruising. Our marriage counselor testified under oath that he was the cruelest person he, the doctor, had met in 20+ years of marriage counseling. That doctor said 'most people have a certain threshold of decency beneath which they will not stoop and as far as I can tell, Tree's husband has no such threshold." The father of my child. He stopped hitting me and developed a new favorite violence: he would drag me around the house, up stairs or down stairs, by my hair.
For those who have never endured this particular violence, and I never shared this with him -- he did not need more motivation to hurt me -- it is really awful. Your hair comes out in clumps, leaving little bleeding holes in your scale. And as they develop scabs as part of the healing and then you brush your hair, you tear the scabs. And it hurts like heck. It hurt like hell. All of my weight dragged by a fistful of my hair clutched in his vicious hand.
But my kid has a relationship with him. Not me. Just him. I never told her about the hair dragging or most of his abuse. She was a child. And he was an asshole to her, too, so I didn't need to unload my history with him onto her steep pile. I wonder how she can be FB friends with him, and her boyfriend be FB friends with him, because I know what he did to her, even if she doesn't know what he did to me.
Another thing our doctor said under oath: he was not sure someone could be as viciously abused as I had been and ever be fully whole but that if anyone could do it, it would be me. He said I separated my unhappiness with him from my joyful relationship with my daughter.
Our doctor, who had initially been our marriage counselor and then I stayed in therapy, instinctively understanding I needed help to leave and save my kid, also said my ex had three personality disorders, with a very severe case of narcissism - like DonnyJohn! He said my ex needed extended psychiatric hospitalizetion, like five to seven years and, even then, he, the doc, doubted my husband could ever be normal. he also said he did not think my ex should have any unsupervised visits. A prescient insight given what he did to our daughter a few years on. But she has a door open with him. Not me.
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