The Bay Area Brit

    Foreword:  According to sources, Dom Quinto invented the leaf blower in 1957. Later that year, his mutilated body was found in a leaf-filled dumpster. Not one of his neighbors came forward to say they saw anything suspicious. Most strange.

          I live in a thirty-unit apartment building on the corner of a block containing million-dollar house, after million-dollar house. The view from my room is impressive, but fills me with envy. When I first moved in here, I spent a lot of time looking at these houses trying to imagine what kind of lives the inhabitants of these homes led.

           I mean, I could have actually stopped when walking up the street and had an actual conversation with some of them, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, that is an entirely un-British thing to do. We’d rather peer through the curtains and speculate. Also, as soon as my neighbors might discover that I lived in the 30-unit turd in their Utopia, they might shuffle their kids and pets back into their houses, making sure that the security system lasers are engaged to disintegrate any approaching riffraff.

         The house directly across from my window is probably worth a lot of money, and the fact that the occupants keep their blinds closed is probably because I (mostly) keep mine open. I have assessed that they no longer have any desire to be confronted with my relative squalor. However, every now and again, we will both have our blinds open. Upon discovering this, one, or both of us, without making eye contact with each other, casually leans over to pull the blinds down, as if that’s what we were just about to do anyway.

        I actually know quite a lot about my direct neighbor’s lives, since we are so close in geographical proximity. However, they are probably unaware how much even the quietest of their conversations travels up into my open window as I peer down, ear pressed against the window screen. They seem nice, so they escape with a free pass.

       The couple that live in the impressive gray house across the street are both from foreign lands. He is British–unfortunately, and she is Vietnamese. They have a small Pomeranian dog named Gunther who thinks he’s a Rottweiler. His owner, we’ll call him, Simon, talks to Gunther as if he has a better command of English than his wife, who we will call, May. They have two daughters of undetermined age and linguistic skills.

          As his tiny dog marauds the neighborhood picking fights with dogs seventeen times his size, Simon barks at his diminutive ball of excitable, ginger fur. “Gunther, get in the house!” “Baaaaaad Dogggggg! BAAAD!” Then he’ll randomly throw in something like, “Gunther P. Williams, if you don’t get in the car this instant, you will not be getting any of those venison flavored chewy treats that you like from the Whole Foods market.”

        I mean, come on, Simon. “Baaaaad ownerrrrrr! BAAAD!”

        This miniature Hound of the Baskervilles is probably the most poorly trained dog I have ever seen. I don’t blame Gunther of course, I blame Simon. I don’t like Simon.

          Simon has a leaf blower that he has fired up nearly every weekend morning for the ten years that I have lived here. It’s an old one, probably made before they figured out a way to make them less obnoxious. It probably has three settings: “LOW” “HIGH” “DEAFEN”.
Drowning out the groans of a hundred neighbors, the Dom Quinto ’57 is revved up. With my index fingers penetrating my earholes, I leap across the room to close my window. I have surmised that this leaf blower’s high pitch, when engaged to its fullest throttle, might be heard over a NASA Space Shuttle takeoff. The eardrum exploding scream of a million broken bagpipes would sound more pleasing. It makes me want to go full Van Gogh and cut  off both of my ears. You get the idea.

        Poor Gunther, no wonder he is completely insane.
Simon seems oafishly ignorant that every single one of his neighbors has probably wished death or deportation upon him. Even little Gunther has probably schemed a way out of his nightmare.

        I wondered how it could be that Simon owns a million-dollar home, yet I can only just about afford to rent in his mansion’s impressive shadow. How did Simon make his money? Perhaps his wife is the bread-winner, but if she is, why would she pick this calamity of a human as her mate? I just imagined that he plucked her out of a catalogue of women desperate to escape from war-torn Vietnam.

        When Simon and May loudly argue with each other in their front garden, do they not know that every person (that hasn’t gone full-Van Gogh) for a hundred yards in every direction can hear them? Even with her limited English skills she seems to best him in every dispute, as I silently cheer her on. “Get him, May. Get him!”

       Of course, this is the life that they choose to show to their neighbors. Maybe they are good people. Maybe they give to charities and donate their time working in homeless shelters? I don’t know.

         I was thinking of walking across the street and introducing myself. “Hello, I am The Bay Area Brit, and well, I have been observing you for some time now, Simon. While I have tried in every way possible to be the perfect British ambassador here in America, I feel that you have done everything in your power to endanger all of my good work.”

       Nah, best not do that.

       Instead, I am going to print up these pages, place them in an envelope and walk across the street, and tape it to Simon’s front door. Then, I will saunter back to my apartment, pour a glass of wine and watch the fun.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Brit in the bay area, Dom Quinto, funny blog, humor, Leaf blower, Matty Stone, Matty Stone is The Bay Area Brit, The Bay Area Brit | 10 Comments »