My alcoholic neighbor

The first time I saw my alcoholic neighbor, I thought he was a homeless person. It was when I was still dating Alvin, and one day, he arrived at my building for a date, and rang my buzzer. I went to answer the door, and saw that in addition to Alvin, there was another man standing on the doorstep. This man was dirty, and his clothes were dirty, too. His hair was standing on end as if he'd just gotten out of bed, and he reeked of alcohol, cigarettes, vomit and body odor. So, I was kind of horrified when Alvin stepped aside to let this man into the building ahead of him. "Why did you let that homeless man into my building?" I hissed at him. "I thought he lived here!" he said.

But then a couple of weeks later, I saw the man again, leaving the building one morning, this time looking halfway respectable. Apparently, he actually did live here. But it also became readily apparent that this guy had a serious drinking problem. Once a month or so, I would return home to see him standing outside the front of the building, too drunk to be able to get his key into the lock. When he came home drunk, he wouldn't put his cigarette out when he came in the building, which made the lobby reek of smoke. A couple of times he even left ashes on the carpet outside my door.

I also started to notice that his van was parked illegally in front of the building almost every night. On those nights that it wasn't in front of the building, it was usually in front of the fire hydrant on the next block, but he never seemed to get a parking ticket.

For a long time, I considered Alcoholic Neighbor to be a nuisance, but then, the stakes were raised a few months ago when I saw him drive home, park (illegally) in front of the building, and then stagger up to the front door so drunk he could barely walk. I don't know how he managed to drive at all given his impaired state. He was so rank, I could smell the alcohol on him from 20 feet away. After that, I started keeping an eye out, and saw him driving drunk several more times, sometimes with his wife as a passenger in the van. I asked a couple of attorney friends if there was anything I could do about the situation, and they said they didn't think so. I tried calling the cops anyway, but they told me that there was nothing they could do unless they actually caught him in the act.

My next strategy was a campaign of low-level harassment. I tried to get him busted for all his illegal parking. The problem with that was that half the time I tried calling the Department of Parking and Transportation, they didn't even answer their phone. The one time I did get them to come out (2.5 hours after I'd called them), they told me that although the spot he was parked in was illegal, they couldn't ticket him because he lived in the building. Eventually, I just gave up, although one night, I did see his van being ticketed as I came home. His van was parked crooked, on a crosswalk, and with the rear end of the van smashed into a telephone pole. I thanked the cop who was writing the ticket, and told him that the guy was a habitual illegal parker and drunk driver and that he was most likely drunk when he'd parked like that. The cop thanked me for the tip, but I doubt he ever followed up on it beyond finishing writing the ticket.

Ultimately, I decided that this guy was not worth my time, and sort of gave up on him, although I fumed every time I came home to find cigarette ashes outside my door. Little did I know that soon, he would have an even greater contribution to my misery...

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