Los Angeles, CA
5:55am. It's always 5:55am. My neighbor, a 20-something hipster with a purse dog, opens up her back door to a small enclosed backyard (walled off from the alley) and lets out her tiny yapping mutt to take a leak in the corner. The dog barks like crazy and she tries to shush the dog (unsuccessfully) before closing the door. She goes back to sleep and the dog remains outside. Sometimes thirty minutes. Sometimes an hour. When she wakes back up, she lets the dog back inside. Meanwhile, her dog paces back and forth barking twice every three seconds. The dog does this within the vicinity of our bedroom.
5:55am. Every fucking morning. What a fucking cunt. The Slums of Beverly Hills has no shortage of inconsiderate neighbors. Does she set an alarm or something? Or does her dog wake up at the same time every morning and pesters her until she lets him out? Dogs are gonna be dogs. They pee. They shit. They bark. Sometimes they bark when they pee. Dogs need constant attention. I hate people who are like dogs. Everyone has those types of incessantly needy people in their lives. Nicky and I both get along very well because we both have cat-like personalities. We're nocturnal and want to be left alone. Dogs are gonna be dogs. Instead of dealing with her dog, she makes her neighbors suffer.
5:55am. Nonstop barking. The tinier the dog, the louder the bark. Three straight minutes. It was so loud that she went back outside to tell her dog to be quiet. Why not bring the fucking dog inside? I had not slept well. Rampant insomnia. I feel asleep around 5am. That's why I lost it. Grumpy. Cranky. Sleep deprived. Sore back. Deadlines looming. The brain finally powered down. In a rare calm head space. I drifted off to sleep. Finally getting some ZZZs.... until... I was awoken in the middle of a dream.... about a fucking dog! In my dream, I walked down a street (it looked like Vancouver... like a lot of TV shows, my dreams are shot on location in Vancouver and they try to pass those streets off as a non-specific American city). I came upon a car with a barking dog in the back seat. Going berserk. It was trying to tell me to change the radio station. The dog hated country music or talk radio or whatever was on. It wanted something else. Anything else. Classic rock. Top 40. Anything but country. The dream dog kept barking and barking. I opened the car door and.... woke up from the dream. The barking was real. Penetrating through the thin walls of our dingbat.
5:55am. I tried to go back to sleep. That fucking dog would not shut the fuck up. I put on my iPod and even Coltrane could not drown it out. I lost it. I crawled out of bed, achy back and all. I walked into the bathroom and opened up the window.
"Shut the fuck up!"
Those four words echoed throughout the alley. I startled the dog. It stopped barking. I'm surprised I didn't wake up Nicky. About 10-15 seconds after I screamed, the door opened and the dog resumed barking. My neighbor scolded her dog and took it back inside. Of course, she did not think she did anything wrong. She passive-aggressively blamed her dog. However, I got my point across. Effective communication. So blunt that even a fucking vapid skank with a purse dog could figure it out.
"Thank you!" I screamed.
Those two words of gratitude echoed down the alley. Silence ensued. Back to sleep.
Decon burger :-)
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