Gestapo Redux

08/20/07

So, last night, some bitch taped a sign to my friend’s door that said “we don’t appreciate your late night parties.” I know it was a bitch, and not a prick, due to the overtly feminine turn of the pen. The admonishment, written in fuschia Crayola marker, also informed us that “curfew is at 10pm.”

We were thrilled with the level of communication; who would have thought it’s possible to carry on a dialogue with “The Neighborhood” so easily, so effectively? Yes, the bitch cowardly signed this bold communiqué “The Neighborhood” and, yes, the same stupid bitch also thinks we live in Nazi Germany. I mean, in her defense, we are ruled by a de facto dictator bent on global domination, but last I heard, the citizens of our fair land are not subject to a curfew. Yet.

In all fairness to “The Neighborhood,” the 1933-themed birthday/housewarming party the night before was hella loud--I was pumping a 3400Watt amplifier through some giant Yamaha club speakers--and did run mad late--I finally entered Sleepville (pop.1) around 7:30am--but these facts are also misleading. Around 3:30am, the Napoleonic City Councilman, who lives two houses away, personally supervised an inspection of the premises by three confused police officers expecting a crazy party fraught with “suspicious activities,” as a departing friend later told us he overheard the Councilman shout into his phone when he called the police from his front porch. At this point in the evening, there were about eight people left--7 girls and me.

The cops were sweet as peaches, suggested we turn the music down, close the doors and windows, and carry on. They said they only came over because the vigilant Councilman had been calling their Commander all night long and they finally felt the need to appease. When my friend told the officers that she had spoken to the Councilman that day about the party--and even, infamously, gave him an awkward goodbye hug she’ll never be able to wash off--they silenced her immediately, with the best of intentions, by informing her that he was standing out in the street watching them. And he was. The cops laughed--“usually it’s not just all girls”-- looked tempted to stay, but bade us goodnight. I resisted the urge to inform him that I was not a girl; it wasn't worth it.

The next four hours were spent trying to kick out a 22 year-old actress whom I would classify as a borderline ‘harmless psychopath.’ She tried to steal a friend’s effortfully broken-in Birkenstocks and then wandered around the house looking for non-existent remaining party-animal guests as if the victim of a cruel hide-and-seek practical joke. Although she was certainly more than a handful of crazy, the saddest thing is I don't even think she was drunk. Unable to convince her to leave, my friend and I finally went to bed and just hoped she wouldn't steal anything on her eventual way out. Silly us--she ended up sleeping on the couch and we found her the next morning (well, 3 hours later) covered in blood and mumbling something in Latin.

Kidding. It was even creepier. Sort of. We came upstairs to find her in the kitchen, leaning on the sink, staring out the window, as if in a trance, daydreaming about fairies or something. She claimed to have been cleaning up, “just to help out,” but the place looked exactly as messy as it did when I went to bed. Some friends came over to join the slumber-party crew for an afterparty champagne brunch and, thankfully, one of these friends drove the evil spirit from our midst and down to her car, since she claimed it was too far to walk. Her car was thirty feet from the front door, downhill.

Ten hours later, one of our departing friends found the aforementioned epistle affixed to the front door like so many Theses. Drunk on champagne, scotch, bourbon, vodka, and wine, happily engrossed in Planet Earth on HD-DVD, I was certainly not in the mood to flip through the phone book looking for ‘Neighborhood, The,’ so we could place a thank-you call for the constructive wrist-slapping. Or offer up a communal bitch-slap, more like.

Instead, we just gaped incredulously, laughed, took a couple chill pills, and decorated the downstairs fridge with the lovely letter--a badge of honor for a couple of Silver Lake’s most notorious, and sexiest, rebels.