The Bozo is back in town – and our never-ending Halloween freak show is back with him. We are a little neighborhood niche of half-a-dozen homes served by a common driveway. He lives on the other side of a fence built like a border wall behind three of the neighbors’ houses.
He’d been gone for three weeks – ever since the cops knocked on his door with yet another summons from a terrorized neighbor suing to keep him at bay. And he does bay when drunk – from his second-story balcony at the top of his lungs; he once sang about how two of my niche neighbors are lesbians. They aren’t, but…
And Bozo fishes. A few weeks ago he poked the tip of his fishing rod over the wall and dropped a pink dildo in front of an elderly neighbor’s son. It had a little bell on the tip that tinkled. “I didn’t take the bait,” he told me. He called the cops. Again. He’s called the cops many times on this psycho. Everybody has. I was the first to call 10 years ago when he knocked on my door and jumped through it, grabbing my throat. I barely got him out and called the cops. They took him to Santa Rita jail, but he came back a few days later and punched my 80-year-old neighbor in the face when he looked over the wall.
”Grow Some Balls”
A restraining order didn’t stop the threats, the psychotic emails, the constant visit of cops day and night who threw up their hands. It’s in your hands, they told me, so I called a judge pal of mine. Little woman tougher than a pit bull. After hearing my story and my plea for advice, she gave it: “Grow some balls!”
Then she told me to buy a killer dog, put a sawed-off shotgun by the door and invite the Bozo in.
“Sic the fucking dog on him, and while he’s getting chewed pick up the gun and shoot him dead. Have the dog pull him inside the house. Then call the cops.”
What did I expect from a judge who decorated her bathroom like a Mexican whorehouse (she’s Mexican). I took karate lessons instead and learned three guaranteed-to-kill moves. Practiced them for months, until the inevitable opportunity arose…
He Owns Everything
My wife and I were walking by his house one afternoon when suddenly he and his wife came boiling down his driveway toward us, screaming that my wife illegally kayaked under his dock – as if he owned the ocean. This was familiar territory. Our feud had begun when he knocked on my door to demand that I never park in front of his house. “You don’t own the curb,” I said, whereupon he grabbed my throat, etc.
I wasn’t waiting for him to grab my wife, so – promptly forgetting the three killer karate moves – I punched him in the left eye as hard as I could. My wife couldn’t believe it. Hell, I couldn’t believe I had thrown the first punch in 50 years. I was 60, the Bozo 30, and a barroom brawler. He shrugged, took aim and head-butted me.
I woke up in a neighbor’s rose bushes, pinned by its thorns as the Bozo slapped and punched and the two wives screamed and pulled. Finally we went our separate ways. After that, he turned to emailing the widow of the 80-year-old man (who died a few years later). Craziest, incoherent crap I’ve ever read. Worse than Trump’s.
Another Fight
The widow’s son then began an over-the-fence duel of words. The Bozo built the fence taller – and wrote weird, threatening words all over it. Nazi swastikas started appearing on the neighbors’ cars and windows. Windows were smashed. Rocks flew over the house regularly. He started chasing other people down the street after they parked in front of his house. One neighbor had enough and went over to confront the Bozo. They got into a fight. The Bozo won again but the neighbor was happy – he had photo evidence all over his bloodied face.
Two more restraining orders against him were issued. He violated them all, but the cops (who came constantly, sometimes multiple times a day) said they had to see him in action.
A month ago I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought was automatic gun fire. POP-POP-POP-POP. I saw the Bozo’s legs moving rapidly back and forth through a hole in the fence he had kicked. I called the cops. But they were already there – watching the spectacle.
Curses, Not Bullets
“It wasn’t gunfire, it was him banging the fence,” an officer told me. They stayed all night to keep the terrified widow secure. But what could they do? they said. All he did was curse from his side of the fence. At the cops.
Finally, a court order was issued – but the Bozo had vanished. Spring broke out in our little niche of the world. We neighbors gathered every day on our shared driveway to talk about how nice it was. So nice. We laughed. Told stories. Basked in the sun. Weeks went by.
The light suddenly snapped on in his second story window this week. And of course, the next day, a cop was here listening to more stories of nutty fence stuff. Shrugged his shoulders. Didn’t see anything. Left. Left us neighbors wondering when, not if, he’s going to follow up on some of his threats and get a gun.
So what’s a neighborhood to do when growing balls didn’t work, the cops are powerless, the courts can’t seem to intervene, and a crazy guy keeps getting crazier? A few weeks ago he told my son that big ideas were going on inside his head and that his neighbors are Nazis. His pupils were spinning like the little kaleidoscopic pinwheels on your computer when it can’t connect.
Stay tuned.