I know there’s not much to say about it. Many before me have duly noted the quasi-tragi-comedy of the plight of the enlightened suburbanite; well, one chooses one’s own poison, as they say. There is really no point in discussing the neighbor’s choices, for when the eye is turned inward, there is much to note there, as well. But looking out my opened second-floor bathroom window and seeing ‘Hallowe’en lights’ (whatever that means, and whatever purpose they may serve) on the neighbor’s roof in the third week of September, and hearing the hunt-and-peck piano approximation of the theme from ‘Titanic’ drifting in on the Saturday afternoon breeze, I clench up. I get tense, and I feel like drinking. I feel like I need a drink, and it’s only the afternoon. I know, I suppose, that the neighbor is at least taking some pride in the outward appearance of his home, and in turn, his neighborhood. I know that, rather than deride the musical tastes of said neighbor’s children, I should instead applaud their efforts at learning a new language, that of music. I do, don’t get me wrong. But I do so with great reluctance and much reservation. What I myself am doing may not be the best way for one to live, but it has been my experience thus far that you are either all the way out of the shit, or all the way in it. There is no in-between. So, in the true spirit of ‘live and let live’, I wish my neighbor all the luck in the world with his choosen direction, and hope that when he’s stumbling around on his roof in mid-October, exchanging orange lightbulbs for red-and-green, he accidentally peers in my bathroom window of an evening and sees me standing before my mirror and pleasuring myself with great relish in all my naked glory. Just like what happened last year.
Merry Christmas, (name witheld)!