Remember how good I was feeling about myself in my last post, for having rescued a damsel in distress from a soggy nightmare spent shivering on the mean streets of downtown Sodom? Well, everything sailed pretty smoothly for the first week-and-a-half: she slept in the living room while I kept mostly to myself in my bedroom, sometimes stepping outside to chat with her when I was puttering domestically or feeling social. I was aglow with the joy of having at last found someone worth rescuing: I tried something similar before with a wretched hobgoblin named Mouse, who disrespected me and my place by being a filthy and destructive alcoholic street junkie. Not so Anastasia, as the girl called herself: she was clean, sober, honest, quiet, and respectful — we even got along pretty well, in spite of our glaring differences (I'm an atheist Anarchist and she's a very old-testament deviant Christian).
Unfortunately, she's also batshit crazy. I had to kick her out last Wednesday morning because she'd graffiti-ed the thermostat on my living room heater because its brand name is Williams ... and she earnestly believes Prince William of England spurned their childhood betrothal to go whore-mongering! I didn't want to throw her out into the elements and among the wolves, but what if she did that to my wall, or something even worse? I signed a lease agreement, and part of that stipulates that I don't trash my apartment; I see no virtue in being pulled into the quicksand I'm trying to pull someone else out of. Just as I was about to chalk it up to another lesson in how to judge people’s characters or when and how to give of oneself, or whatever, when the phone harassment began, and the merely unfortunate degraded into downright scandalous and evil.
Put succinctly, there's at least three boxcar rejects smearing me all over downtown and Northwest Portland, telling everyone who would care to listen that I'm a sexual predator who picks up street chicks to drug and rape, preying specifically on the mentally ill ones! WTF? At first I thought that little troglodyte Mouse was playing head games with me, using the Dangler's phone ... but it didn't stop, and finally I ran into the Dangler himself Monday morning, whereupon the crazy hateful look in his eyes woke me up to the stark reality of the situation: this guy, who is one of the last of the unhinged Vietnam Vet bushwhackers, sincerely believes this obvious-to-the-discerning-mind slander! Related to him by a flamboyantly delusional nutter (Anastasia) and corroborated by a pathological liar (Mouse) whose reputation as one has been established for years! A guy who also packs heat.
Which again has me at a place in my life where I'm constantly looking over my shoulder. I live downtown, I use the wifi at the Central Library nearby that is for all intents and purposes a day shelter for the homeless, I still pick up bottles and cans in Northwest, and I'll occasionally be needing to stand in food pantry and meal lines when work slows down; which means I'm still vulnerable as a target for street vigilantism (though thankfully both my place of work and of residence are secure). People get killed over such allegations — even among more residential and genteel circles! Furthermore, Portland has gotten to be a rougher town to live in than it had been up until about ten years ago: it's getting crowded and expensive, bellicosity normal to benighted places like California and the South has infiltrated the placid Pacific Northwest psyche, which the political landscape has whipped into a smoldering anger, not helped the least by a tsunami surge in cheap drugs that are so laced with adulterants that users are exhibiting psychotic symptoms less than a year into their habits.
So, what do I do? Officer Miller suggested, in a fit of “protect and serve”, that I simply block the number. No thanks! I like to know who my enemies are and to be able to track and predict their movements and capabilities; not to mention the fact that the more this Dangler putz continues to harass me, the better are my chances to successfully seek some sort of recourse. No more bumfeeds, to be sure, but I'm not giving up food boxes and canning — unlike these rotten bottom-feeders I'm no longer eligible to receive food stamps (and groceries have doubled in cost in the last fifteen years). Nor will I give up using the library, at least not until I can access the Internet at home. To be sure, it will blow over, because if there's any constant law of bitter vagrant psychohistory its that of the need for targets of opportunity to project their self-loathing onto. After enough time of me not being available to intimidate and pummel, someone else will piss them off, and Whatshisface will take my place on the local shitheads' shitlist. Until then, though, I'll have to be careful.
Which ultimately leads me to one conclusion, namely that these street-trash dingos need to start killing themselves off faster! Maybe the real lesson I should have been paying heed to all along was that I AM better than these vermin, that indeed there is wisdom in the biblical injunction not to look back when leaving a life behind. And that it's time to push back, lest the barbarians spill over the walls and tear apart all that keeps people like me from embracing the despicable chimptree cannibal-tribalism of theirs that we filthy primates have been all about up until appallingly recently. Frankly, It's gotten WAY BEYOND compassion fatigue.
The Dangler's name is Dan, and is said to be a retired Seventies porn star who is one of a handful of survivors from the Hamburger Hill massacre in the Vietnam War. We used to be acquaintances, but now I have no idea what's gotten into him. He's not the person I thought he was: level-headed, reasonably together, and someone who liked and respected me. He not only introduced me to Anastasia, but it was his idea that she stay at my place. Maybe he misses raping Vietnamese village girls?
Mouse is a rotten little hobgoblin with a can-opener nose and a hunched back, that looks like a cross between Baba Yaga and that irksome little blond on the Partridge Family. She drinks, drips dope, and goes around using people for money (even though she receives a monthly check) and instigating trouble with her bilious gossip. She hates herself, because she's stupid, ugly, and has a loathesome personality. So she punishes the world around her, for being a candidate for eugenics cleansing.
