How is This Ok? by M

So the neighbors are having another one of their fucking parties. It's not ok that the volume level of the speakers causes my windows to rattle or my doors to reverberate. It's not. It's really fucking rude. And I fucking hate them. Or rather anything I might do to them by my own hand outside of some miraculous occurance would be justifiable but not exactly right. This makes me sad. And God and I are talking this out.

But clearly complaining about my neighbors isn't anything new. What I'm really here to complain about is my friend who has the drug problem, dropped rehab, hopefully, mostly clean? I don't know. I haven't seen her since. But she called me the other night, hadn't gotten around to calling her back. And then around 11:20pm last night I get a call from her on the house phone, and all I hear as I hit the play back button is "This is a dire emergency." And then my cellphone is ringing.

She says, "The fire jumped I think. It's close. We don't have anywhere to go. My mom got evicted from her studio (news to me, and this means absolutely no income and nowhere to work, is what that means). We think we might sleep in the parking lot of the studio, but maybe we can come over to use the restroom or something? There's no room is there? There's 4 of us." No I say, but... Come over? When are you coming, over? Of course I say. You can go to an evacuation center? What are you going to do." "I don't know, I don't know." "Just call me," I say, "Let me know." "I have to go, I see an ember, I think our house is on fire. There's a policeman at the door. I have to go." CLICK.

So I turn on the news and sure enough I'm looking at a fire blazing and I think that DOES look like her house, her actual house on fire. I hope its not her house. It really looks like her house. And Chuck from channel 4 is giving approximate locations of houses lighting up and blazing, and i think, that's her street. I'm pretty sure he just said her street.

I text her 20minutes later: Are you ok? Is your house? Where are you? NO ANSWER.
I wait up till 130AM waiting, watching the news, and generally pretty concerned.

I wake up at 730AM. I tell my mom, I think her house burned down. They said they might come by. I haven't heard from them...I go back to bed and lay there pointlessly for another hour.

I call her again at 11AM. No answer. "HI, I'm concerned about you guys. Where are you? Are you Ok? Let me know what I can do to help? Call me."

I mean hello, I know I'm a narcissist but how is it ok that I haven't heard from her since her 2nd frantic call. Her phone might be dead, her mom might not have even told her I called. But she knows both my numbers by heart. Their studio/work place where they were going to sleep is 2 miles from my house. And I'm completely pissed off that I haven't heard one-single-word.

It's possibly the voyuer in me. Maybe.
its possibly the storyteller in me. But mostly, it's genuine concern, I think, for a human being I actually know, whose house may or maynot no longer exist. Sure I thought the house was a den of toxic awful energy, and would it surprise me, given that the entire backyard was filled with dead literally drybrown things, that would make it easier for a fire to start and rapidly disintigrate the house- no. But even in this she should've called right? Like maybe let me know if she needs the microwave I have stashed in the crawlspace, or the Tv sitting in a box that's too big for my room right now... or clothes or food or something. Maybe let me know if she's homeless, or alive or crying or hurt, or safe or warm or fed... But maybe it's just me.

That explains the cupcake I had after dinner, and maybe those 3 slices of pepperoni pizza. I'm totally going to bed now, the fucking polka music is at a murmor. How considerate really, turning it down around 1am in the fucking morning!