They Follow Me

They follow me. Everywhere I go, interesting and hilarious neighbors precede and proceed me like followers of some bizarre carnival. In the house where I lived most of my life there was the guy with more animals than Old McDonald (I'm pretty sure Old McDonald didn't have tic-infested hounds) and in my freshman dorm there was the dude across the hall with a penchant for obese prostitutes (now now, we all have our vices). In my sophomore dorm there was a hodgepodge of characters in my suite. There was the 40-something going back to school who was totally cool with standing around in his tighty whiteys and shooting the breeze -- I wasn't. There was also the the black guy next door who always gave me free clothes from "back when he was fat." I'm not complaining either - I still wear that black guy's clothes like it's the fashion edition of immunity from Survivor.

But this time it's different, somehow. This time I'm half convinced my neighbor is just a different flavor of the same bizarre neighbors I've always been blessed with, and I'm half convinced he's trying to kill me. Case in point: the Friday night of the last set of blocks (March 5th) I received a pretty good offer. He came over and asked if I wanted an "Authentic Black Man's Fajita™".

Friday night of blocks with zero food in the fridge? Hot damn, I'll take four.

So I went over and watched him heap steak, onions, garlic, lettuce, tomatoes, hot sauce, peppers, more hot sauce and sour cream onto a tiny tortilla. Fast forward 20 minutes and I'm face down in said fajita (disregard how sexual that sounds) when he knocks on my door with, I shit you not, more free food. It's almost as if this guy owes me twenty dollars or something (he does). So I take the finely marbled steak into my apartment where I notice something wrong -- it expired last month. After a frantic glance over to the empty plate that looked as if someone desecrated a fajita on it, I did the only thing I could do.


Awesome: