More Neighbour Drama

If you are a long time reader you’ll know about my crazy neighbour.  If not let me sum it up:

Moved in this flat 5 years ago, upstairs neighbour was 16 year old girl W. and her 24-ish year old boyfriend, J.   Wasn’t long before we put 2 and 2 together.  He does a lot of drugs, he beats her and she puts up with it all.  Over the years there were good points and bad points.  Some bad points ranging from constantly being asked to use our phone (they didn’t have one) … seriously multiple times a day… being woken up in the middle of the night by screams and bangs,  her coming to our place crying and bruised.

1.5 – 2 years ago she left him.  It was about damn time.  He spiraled, more drugs, depression, and general insanity.  He seemed ok for a while but yeah, that was a farce.

Anyhow, you get the picture so lets fast forward to this weekend. 

Sunday morning at 8:30am Xander was on his way out to pick up our construction guy who was going to finish the tiling in our kitchen.  On his way down the stairwell he dropped his key and it fell all the way to the basement.  The basement is where we all have our storage rooms, and where J. seems to think the entire thing is his storage room.  Under the stairs in the basement is completely chalked full of garbage.  HIS GARBAGE.  Wood from his renovations, old beat up bicycles he probably stole, and actual bags of trash. 

The dumbass didn’t even have the brains to not leave envelopes with his name all over them in the bags.  Oh and he’s a carpenter too, hence all the wood… which ALSO had his name on it!

Yet… for the past four years (yes, it’s been there that long!) he still kept denying it was his garbage.  Kids, this is your brain on drugs!

When Xander dropped his key into that pile of rubbish, he got pissed off.   I tried not to say I told you so, but it didn’t work.  He keeps his car key loose because he can’t stand a keychain and other keys swinging against his leg.  I told him that was asking for trouble.  Moving on…

He’d asked Jan to get rid of that junk a number of times, as have other neighbours and it’s never been done.  So Xander had to move it all to get under there to find the key.  That left him with a choice of where to put it when he pulled it out from under the stairs.  He wasn’t going to leave it in the walkway at the bottom, as it would be in everyone’s way.  The most logical choice (and the one that would maybe finally light a fire under his ass) was to put it in front of the door of his storage room… which was right next to the pile anyway.

I went down to help him and I agreed that it was bad enough that we had to move his 4 year old garbage OUT, but we’d be damned if we were going to move it all back in!

Tonight he came to the door FUMING.  We weren’t that surprised knowing how completely unstable he is but still.  When Xander tried to explain about losing the key, J. wasn’t hearing any of it.  He kept cutting Xander off and growing more and more red faced and eventually Xander lost it and (in a stern tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard Xander use before) told J. to SHUT UP AND LISTEN (in Dutch). 

Well, that’s when J. lost it and started getting aggressive.  Telling Xander that he would hurt him etc, but not actually making any move to do so.  Before long there was four of us screaming in the doorway.  J. and his gf/sister/niece/hourly friend and me and Xander.  J. went up the stairs and started throwing things down, screaming abuse and threats.  Not exactly comforting coming from someone who once bragged to us about the people he’s put in the hospital, but I guess one could say it was our own fault for playing with fire with the garbage thing.  A properly scared neighbour would have just put it back so as not to get their ass kicked but we’re just sick and tired of this lowlife.

The company that owns his apartment has been trying to get him out for years, which unfortunately (or fortunately in his case) takes ages and is very difficult.  They can’t just evict him and tell him to get his ass out, it’s a very long and drawn out process… one I’m very glad to say is coming to an end soon as we learned from him when he was screaming down the stairs… he’s out in a week!! YAAAAY!!!!

I still called the cops though.  He’s a hoodrat with hoodrat friends, and we won’t take his threats TOO lightly.  If our car is damaged or something else happens around here, we want a record of it.

Needless to say, we’ll BOTH be walking the dog tonight because neither of us particularly feels like going out alone.

I don’t know what the moral of this story could be… put out your own trash?  Don’t piss off your crazy neighbour? … or maybe in Xander’s case, use a keychain so you don’t end up looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack?