By Tom O’Connell

On those nights when I went to bed drunk, The Box didn’t prevent me from drifting off. It did, though, steal a couple hours of beddy-bye from me in the mornings, when I’d awake bleary-eyed to one of a handful of electronic carols. On sober nights I’d be lying there somewhere between half-asleep and wide-awake until five in the morning, staring at the ceiling while the bleats of “Come Ye Merry Gentlemen” and other holy hits drifted across the street on the crisp December wind. The Box had been designed to spread cheer, to celebrate the season, to remind us of our collective humanity. It was not made to enrage. But I doubt its creators had envisioned its being used here. Maybe on a sleepy snow-drifted lane in North Dakota, but not dangling from a tree in direct line with my bedroom window, ding-a-linging 24-fucking-seven.

This was the only time I’d ever had the law called on me in New York. The Box had been destroyed the night before, but quickly replaced. Since I’d previously argued with the super about his contraption, I was a suspect. While I was having more words about the replaced Box with him that day, Pink Lady had called the fuzz, and now there they were investigating a claim of anti-Christmas monkeyshines.

“Well I kinda like it!” said one of the cops. Traffic was backed up. Taxi horns and big-bass hip-hop. “You mean to tell me you can hear it from inside your apartment over all this?”

“Ever been on this block at four in the morning?” I said. “Tell you what, come back here around that time and see how much traffic there is. Then imagine how you’d feel if you couldn’t get a full night’s sleep and it was all because of this fucking little box. Why would I be out here causing a scene for no reason? I’m not some fucking psychopath.”

“You want to watch your mouth? Or do you want to go for a ride?”

There’s no rationalizing when Christmas cheer is at stake and humbuggery is suspected.

I’ve got this thing about sharp, nervous, unnecessary noises. I like the attitude toward chewing gum in Singapore, where it’s outlawed. It wasn’t just the sound of The Box that kept me up. It was—as with gum-cracking, nail-clipping, teeth-sucking, littering, loogy-hocking and all those horrible, unmannered behaviors that are no longer frowned upon in “polite” society—the rage I felt because the person who had placed it there was apparently raised in the proverbial barn and had no sense of the Social Contract, etiquette, decorum, consideration, nothing at all upstairs. One night, in the small hours, I dressed all in black and a ski cap, grabbed a pair of scissors, and crept across the street. I started snipping at the wires in the tree like a deranged MacGuyver dismantling a bomb, pulling down the limbs, snipping every wire I could get my mitts on, vengefully, gleefully pulling, snipping. It was wonderful.

But all I succeeded in doing was killing the lights in the tree that The Box was perched in. It continued to mock me.

“DING d-ding-ding DING ding…”

I went back home, lay down in bed, and stewed to the electronic bleats of traditional Christmas fare.

The next morning I didn’t hear The Box. I looked out and saw that I was not the only one who’d been kept up nights by this foul device. Someone more clever had managed to climb up the tree, get their hands on it, and smash it on the sidewalk. Wires hung low and the demon Box was in black plastic shards on the sidewalk.

By that afternoon, it had returned.

“DING d-ding-ding DING ding.”

A brand-new one had been installed. I again sought out the super.

Although it did not technically fall into the category of a noise complaint because its volume wasn’t high enough, the officer relented and convinced the super to shut the thing off after 11 p.m. each night.

A couple mornings after New Year’s, I was awoken by sirens. I looked out and saw a crowd, fire trucks and cop cars. A bullhorn was telling us to come down the fire escapes. The apartment was filled with smoke. I opened my door to a wall of smoke and slammed it shut. I threw on some clothes, woke up my roommate, and grabbed my cat. We went down the ladder. I managed it with one hand. The other clutched my bugged-out cat.

Later I heard that the fire had started in the ground-floor apartment of an ancient Caribbean tenant who had fallen asleep with a cigarette. I carried his groceries once. He was a tall man of at least 80 years, with a back stooped from decades of manual labor. When I got off the subway after work one day, I saw him laboring down the sidewalk, bent over nearly 90 degrees with two bags in his gnarled claws. I offered to carry them. He looked suspicious, almost frightened. He’d never said much while passing in the hall, always nervously averted his eyes. The bags were filled with newspapers and must have weighed 40 pounds each. He finally let me take them. When we got to his apartment, he stuck one of those gnarled bird-hands into his pocket. When he withdrew it, there were a few coins in his palm, which he poked at and held up to me.

He survived the fire, but we never saw him after that. His charred, ruined apartment was gutted and refurbished. Fresh young white faces were moved in. Us old-timers still wonder what ever happened to him.

The whole neighborhood, even the teachers from the Catholic school next door, were out on the street to have a peek at the action. That big greasy super was in front of my building. I was looking for people I recognized. I wound up standing next to him. We didn’t make eye contact or say anything. He reached out and pet my cat and we were all happy to be alive in this new year.

Quite a Couple

The Hulkster, Jem and low-life love.

By Bret Liebendorfer

I had bright golden locks of hair shining under a red bandana that matched my sweatpants, Oakley rip-offs, a red boa around the shoulders of my mustard colored t-shirt and an enormous WWF championship belt. Michelle had pink hair that matched the stars painted on her face, an equally pink outfit consisting of a sweater, mini-skirt and spray-painted shoes, and white fishnets.

We departed from Hoboken for a post-Critical Mass, pre-Christmas costume party on the LES. In an after-work rush, we declined dinner in favor of cheap wine. But it was the pink bar drinks once we arrived that transformed me into the party asshole.

When Michelle accused me of spilling my drink, I threw the rest of it over my shoulder, drenching Wednesday Adams. When I couldn’t find a bathroom, I punched a wall. One of the guys tried to take me outside to cool off. He got shoved. It’s good it was an activist party—anywhere else I would have gotten my ass beat down.

I didn’t see Michelle, and figured she’d decided to stay at the party. Bitch! I had to make it home or pass out on the sidewalk. It didn’t matter that my coat was inside, and Michelle had my money and keys—Hulk Hogan needs no pockets.

But Jem had left me, and I was no longer the Hulkster. My accessories had been lost in the midst of things and my ripped t-shirt and crimson sweatpants gave me that Ronald McDonald-themed child molester look.

I needed to cross water to make it to Hoboken, and the Williamsburg bridge seemed my best bet. I’d had enough fighting people, so I decided to walk in the car lane. Wasted and shivering, I stumbled on like one of those wind-up teeth with feet. Half way across, a cop car pulled over. An officer got out, patted me down and threw me in the car. He drove me back to the Manhattan side of the bridge and wished me luck.

I wanted to take a cab home and then beat the fare, but I couldn’t get one to pick me up. I walked to a PATH stop where I did a sloppy turnstile jump in front of 20 people. Thankfully my roommate was home and let me in. I pulled a Johnny Depp, trashing my room and making sure the door was barricaded so Michelle couldn’t get in.

A few hours later Michelle was sobbing outside the door. I called her a bitch and fell back asleep.

My next memory was the way-too-bright sun. The blinds were on the floor with the rest of our possessions. The furniture was tipped over and the desk shoved against the door had been pushed back just far enough for someone to slip through. Michelle was asleep beside me. Her bright pink Jem makeup was smeared but she still looked beautiful.

It was one of those mornings-after where you swear off the drink for good, only to say a week later: “What I really meant last weekend was to not drink to excess.”

The hangover was bad, but the guilt was worse. It turns out Michelle had only gone back into the party to get the coats. (Her coat ended up being stolen.) When she came out and I was gone, she made it as far as the 2nd Ave. F stop, where she threw up and passed out with her face inches away from her own vomit.

I felt better about being a low life because I was in love with one.