The winter dragged on. Our fifth and final cord of wood was delivered. The house was freezing and, perhaps spurred by guilt, Mr. Flashback suddenly took it upon himself to come into our house during the day when we were not there and start the stoves. Nice touch, but we were very uncomfortable with that. We felt violated, like we had no privacy with this guy working here. What really pissed us off was that his portion of the house — the workshop — was heated by propane, and we were paying pretty steep rent and freezing our butts off.

When February rolled around, it got even colder. The deep freeze made it impossible for us to have any kind of intimate relationship in the house, and we were still like little lovebunnies. We took to the Camry. I had a great 1992 Toyota Camry that became our lovenest away from our original lovenest. We’d sneak out to the car late at night, turn on the heat, crack the windows, turn on the stereo and lay the seat back. The car was parked in the driveway way back from the road, and Beth’s Honda Accord was always parked behind it. Plenty of privacy. We actually had a lot of laughs and made it a pretty good time. That car went 341,000 miles and lasted until 2003 before it died. We’ve never had another car like it.

Then, mercifully, the weather started to moderate. March and April passed with Mr. Flashback still coming in to start the wood stoves. I finally had to ask him to stop. I told him that it was a real invasion of privacy and it needed to stop immediately. He did. The warm weather brought a new set of problems. We had spiders you could saddle and ride. I mean, these things were huge. Here was Beth’s technique for killing them: She’d stand on a chair, drop a piece of cardboard on top of it, and then jump on it. Then, she’d leave it there for me to pick up when I got home. These things were so big that the cats and dog were afraid of them. They were all over the basement.  It was like visiting Aragog and his clan. I can’t believe that this guy allowed his son to sleep down there among the arachnids.

Then, Muffy (I didn’t name her) developed an odd habit. She’d jump up on the kitchen table and sit there, looking up at the ceiling for long periods of time. I used to laugh at her, and tease Beth about the cat losing her mind. Then, one day I opened the pantry door and saw that the cereal boxes had been eaten through. That was a bit unnerving. It was then that I realized that Muffy wasn’t crazy at all. She could hear the squirrels in the walls. We also had something that looked like a prairie dog running around the back yard. Regardless of whatever it was — to us it was part of the rat family. For all we knew, they could be in the house too. We began to see that the house had holes in it and that nothing really fit together structurally. That’s because Mr. Flashback must have had several flashbacks while he was building this place. No wonder these things were getting in the house.

One day, I got a frantic call at work from Beth. She was taking Simone and getting out of the house and going to the beach because Mr. Flashback was out in the backyard picking off squirrels with a handgun. She wasn’t worried about the cats because they were laying low. I called the Gloucester Police Department, told them who I was, and reported what Mr. Flashback was doing. The policeman I spoke to said that he couldn’t do that even if he had a permit. They said they were heading over and would take care of it. By the time I got home from work, Beth was back and things had settled down. And Mr. Flashback had gone home, probably pissed at us for turning him in.

Things continue to deteriorate

I have to say the summer in that house was wonderful. There were no temperature issues like there had been during the winter. We were dreading the summer because none of the windows, except for the attic room, could take an air conditioner. But we really didn’t need one that summer. We had other issues, however.  For example, Mr. Flashback was told to fix the wood stoves. He had no intention of doing that. There was still no permit hanging by the front door either. Our downstairs bathroom was a problem as well. It was made of plywood, including inside the bath tub. It was nasty and unhealthy. When we brought our first-last-security payment by, he promised he’d have the bathroom done before we moved in. It was now June or July and it was growing nastier by the day. We were at the point where we stopped using it and closed it off.

In spite of the multiple issues, we were never late with the rent. We paid as expected on August 1. Throughout the month of August, we called him about several things. He wasn’t even returning calls, and he certainly wasn’t showing up at his workshop where we could catch him face to face. I finally decided to give it up and called an attorney. He came out and met with us and we told him what had been going on. He told us not to pay the September rent, and to tell Mr. Flashback that we were not paying any more rent. In addition, the attorney was filing against the landlord so that a portion of our rent would have to be repaid.

In the meantime, the lease was up in October anyway. We had been looking around for a while. We really wanted to stay in Gloucester, but we were having a difficult time finding anything that we really liked.  The only place we found that we liked was in Beverly. We really wanted out of there badly, so we ended up taking it for October 1. The case against the landlord was still moving through the courts, and living there was not easy. One day we were putting some stuff in the car to bring to Beverly, and Beth was really aggravated at Mr. Flashback for refusing to talk to us. She began to walk towards his workshop as it was the first time he’d shown up in a couple of weeks. I yelled at her to leave it alone, but she insisted. Then it was us who got into a huge fight. What happened next was like something you see in a movie.

Somehow, the woman across the street decided to become involved in our fight. If there’s one thing you never do, it’s come in between two fighting (Italian) lesbians. She made some kind of comment about our fighting as she came up the driveway, and Beth and I turned toward her at the same time and yelled, “Shut the fuck up.” The woman immediately turned tail and left, while Beth and I burst out laughing. That was the best thing that could ever have happened because it took Beth’s mind off Mr. Flashback and re-focused her on moving.

The final day

We had help from my niece and her husband on the final day. By then, we had some kind of weird jumping fleas in the living room. We’re sure they came in with the wildlife because none of our pets were outdoor pets. The cats never went outside and the only time Simone went out was when she was walked. We never took her into the woods because we were worried about ticks. Because of the fleas, we had to leave all the carpets we bought behind because we didn’t want to bring them to Beverly with us.

We had been enjoying some party material in the back of the U-Haul truck when I remembered there was one more box of books upstairs. We ran in to get it. We ran up the first landing and turned the corner. There on the landing was a squirrel. He didn’t look any too friendly. In fact, he looked as though he was standing guard. You know, he wasn’t going to let us go upstairs. My niece’s husband turned to me and started laughing. “Screw the books. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” We laughed all the way back down the stairs. We blew out of there and never looked back.

Beth and I still talk about going back to Gloucester someday, but it probably won’t ever happen. Unless it has changed drastically, the school system sucks. Beth was living in a second-floor duplex that looked right out over Gloucester harbor. It was an  unbelievable view every morning. We should have just stayed there. But things like that usually happen for a reason. I guess.

About a month or so after we moved into the condo in Beverly, Mr. Flashback settled out of court. We got about $6,000 back.

Love makes you do stupid things. It’s as simple as that. I met Beth not long after my mom passed away. She was living in Gloucester and I was living in Melrose when we met.  Every self-respecting lesbian has heard this joke (written in the 80s by Lea DeLaria):

Q: What does a lesbian bring on a second date?

A: A U-Haul

There’s a reason for this joke. It’s pretty much true, at least that’s been my experience. Lesbians couple up quickly. I knew right away after I met Beth that we were going to move in together. However, after my experience with Miss Headcase, I was bound and determined to fight this urge for as long as I could. So, for a while we split our time between locations, four days a week in Melrose and three in Gloucester. We met in mid-July and I held out until October 1.

Because we both loved the ocean and because we wanted to try to rent a house, we decided that Gloucester was where we wanted to live. It was going to be a long commute for both of us: At the time, Beth was working in Quincy, Massachusetts and I was working in Bedford, Massachusetts. Beth’s commute was much more grueling because she actually had to go through Boston and further south. It was a great area, though, and we felt it was worth it. We found what we thought was the perfect place right near the Wingaersheek Beach salt marshes, on Concord Street. It was a contemporary, with lots of glass and heated with solar and house-burning — oops, I mean wood-burning — stoves.

Our bedroom was awesome. It was big and had a balcony that overlooked the back yard, which had a clearing where we used to play frisbee. Behind that were some beautiful bushes and trees, and directly behind the bushes was an impressive rock wall. It was just beautiful when it snowed.

Our landlord was a unique kind of guy, definitely lost in the 60s. We’re going to call him Mr. Flashback. He and his family had been living here, but now he was moving them above his retail shop, which was in Essex. So, he was renting this place. The only rub was that his actual workshop was attached to the house we were renting. He seemed like a nice enough guy, so we decided to take the place anyway. This was the beginning of the Nightmare on Concord Street.

An idyllic beginning turns sour

It was still relatively warm when we moved in. The first couple of months were a blast, really. The upstairs level became our little lovenest. We’d buy champagne on Friday nights and hang out up there — like all day on Saturday and Sunday. We had no children, just two cats and a dog,  and no other commitments. We were both working 9-5 jobs. We had the whole weekend to ourselves every weekend.

The Flashback family displayed some odd behavior. First, they hadn’t been able to catch their cat to take it with them. It was hanging around the house and was nasty. They actually set a trap for it on the back patio with a can of tuna fish and, when they finally caught it, the thing nearly ripped one of the kids’ arms to shreds. Lovely animal. I was glad to see it go since we had two peace-loving kitties (Muffy and Leni) and one very mellow Miniature Schnauzer (Simone) and didn’t want the thing accidentally getting into the house.

That wasn’t all. One morning we opened the shades covering the sliders in the kitchen. The sliders looked out on the back yard. We were eating breakfast one morning and had our backs to the sliders. We were talking, but then I stopped dead with a feeling that someone was looking at us. When I turned around, his children (the ones that were mobile) were plastered against the sliders looking in at us. I turned back to Beth and simply asked, “What would happen if I suddenly decided to throw you on the table and make love to you right now?” She burst out laughing. I made a mental note to talk to Mr. Flashback about this little oddity.

Then, the winter set in and it was freakin’ cold. Mr. Flashback said it would only take one cord of wood to heat the entire place for the winter. Mr. Flashback was either hallucinating or full of shit. We blew through that first cord in no time, and we ordered another and blew through that. In the meantime, we couldn’t seem to get the wood stoves to much affect the temperature in the house — we couldn’t seem to get the thermostat out of the fifties. And seriously, on the nights we’d meet in town and go out to Club Cafe, we’d get home late and we couldn’t get the house up out of the forties.

We bought -20 degree sleeping bags and space heaters, and camped out in the living room for the winter in front of Beth’s huge projection television. This room was largely glass and it was freezing in the winter. The bags and space heaters made it tolerable. On the other end of the spectrum we had the room where our stereo was. There was another wood stove in there, but the room was completely closed in except for the entry way. The room got so fucking hot that nobody could sit in there. In fact, the furniture got so dried out from the heat that we had to get rid of it because it splintered. In between we had the kitchen. If Mr. Flashback had thought to put a window in between the kitchen and the stereo room, the problem of extreme hot and extreme cold would have been solved.

We also had our third cord of wood delivered and this time the idiot who delivered it forgot to pull the tarp on top of it, and it got soaked in an ice storm while we were at work. One day Beth came home to find me atop the wood pile chipping away at it with her ice climbing pick and muttering more swears per minute than she could count. I had been at it for days and drying it out. The thing is, it never burns right after that no matter how much you allow it to dry, and this fact brought about the night I lost it.

“We’re having a chimney fire at 274 Concord Street”

One night we got home from work late after a day-long snow storm. The house was freezing. I went to the basement and got the stove going down there. It took forever because the wood was still damp, but I finally got it going. I left the basement door open in the hopes that some of the heat would rise. Then, I headed for the teeny room. There was no amount of paper or kindling I could burn that was going to get this wood going. It was just smoking and smoldering, generating no heat whatsoever. It was at this point that I lost it.

I immediately stood up and took the photos off the wall. I took out the photos and began burning the wooden frames. Beth came in and saw me and really tried hard not to laugh, but that was impossible. She decided that the best bet would be for her to get the hell away from the area, get under the sleeping bag and watch some Monty Python. I continued to burn decorative wooden items. Then, it happened. I remember Mr. Flashback’s words exactly:

“You’ll know you’re having a chimney fire because it will suddenly sound like a freight train is running through chimney.”

That’s exactly what I heard, but I was hoping that wasn’t what was actually going on. I turned to look out the window and the entire back yard was lit up orange. Beth came running in wondering just what the hell was going on. “Oh, I said, it was a chimney fire, but it looks like it’s stopped already.” Then the back yard lit up again and the sound resumed. I grabbed the phone and dialed the fire department. I simply told them there was a chimney fire at 274 Concord Street. They told me they were on the way.

Then I called Mr. Flashback, who had a unique response. When I told him what was going on he said, “Oh, well, we’re going to dinner. If anything bad really happens call us at this number.” Then, he proceeded to give us a telephone number to call in case we needed him. After he hung up, I looked at the phone in total disbelief. No real concern. No worry. It wouldn’t be the way I’d react if it were my house. The arrival of the fire trucks snapped me out of my stupor. Some of the firemen went up on the roof. About five or six filed into the house, tracking mud and snow everywhere. Two headed for the wood stoves. Bringing up the rear was the Fire Marshall.

He walked around the house for a while looking things over, then he walked up to Beth who, of course, rerouted him to me. He asked who I was and I gave him my name and told him we moved in October first. It was now January. Then he said, “I take it you’re not the owner.” I explained that we were renting and I gave him the owner’s name. He began to write it down and as he was writing a light apparently came on inside his head. He repeated Mr. Flashback’s real last name again. “Oh, yeah, I know this guy.” He shook his head. Then, he proceed to tell me that the wood stoves were installed improperly and that he’d have to fix them. They should be 36″ from the wall, not 12″ from the wall. He also told me that there was supposed to be a rental permit posted on the front of the house. Then he proceeded to ask me about the back-up heating system. I told him there wasn’t one. His response? “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I wasn’t. He told me that he was going to be contacting Mr. Flashback. After a three-hour visit, the firemen went on their way and I proceeded to clean the house. We both called in sick the next day, and I had a cord of dry wood delivered.

Things were getting curiouser and curiouser, and the situation would soon come to a head.

The other night we had a friend from my old corporate servitude days over for dinner. I’ve already confessed to having a Facebook account and I just randomly began typing names in one day. Bella’s name popped up and I was equally as excited to find that she lives one town over in Newburyport. To put it mildly, we had a blast. We shared stories about where we worked together that neither of us told each other about in the past.

The other aspect that was great is that our career paths since our corporate days aren’t that different. I was almost embarrassed to tell her I’ve been shucking coffee to the entitled masses for the last four years until I found out she was a cashier at Whole Foods for six years. Life is great, isn’t it? Where else but in America can you be the absolute best at what you do and end up kissing retail butt? It’s the new American dream…sort of like a reverse mortgage in drag.  Today she’s designing  jewelry and taking her stuff on the road to shows, and I’m trying to make money writing.

Anyway, we had a person in common when we worked together that I can best call certifiable. In the corporate battle of the wills between Bella and someone I’ll call Mr. Anal, Bella got the short end of the stick.  He was the problem. Not her. However, even I didn’t know how whacked he was until I had gotten fired and started using him as a freelance designer for my business.

To call this guy anal retentive would be mild. We’d miss every freakin’ deadline because he would bounce around between ideas for so long. Then, when you got the material from him, there were the inherent errors. Typos. Bad line breaks. Missing punctuation. You name it. Things that should never have happened. Sloppy. He was just plain sloppy and it drove me fucking crazy because it invariably created more delays in delivering the product. It was then that I began to realize what Bella had been up against.

The long and short of it is that this guy was obsessed with colonics and his internal piping. He was (and I hear he still is) a whack job. His wife, however, Mrs. Shrew, really wore the pants in his family. She pushed this guy around like he was a pile of trash and she was a broom. Since my Beth always calls me Freud, let me exercise my pathetically appointed psychological knowledge: Mr. Anal was obsessed with his internal piping because he felt like a pile of shit most of the time. I mean, you could almost feel like he was the worst person on the planet…until you spent more than an hour with he and Mrs. Shrew together. There would be no taming of this shrew.

Anyway, it came to the point where my business was falling apart and, believe me, I owed a lot of money. He was one of the people I owed. I mean, when I say I lost everything, I’m talking a homeless type of everything. I’m not ready to talk about that today, so don’t hold your breath. The long and short of it is, in spite of this fact, he dogged me to the point where he paid to have me arrested. You know, aside from torturing someone who did something unintentionally, there was no purpose to that. But then again, I annoyed the crazy person.

Standard coward’s disclaimer: With the exception of Beth (my wife) and myself, none of the names here are real. I’m not going to do that unless people feel comfortable enough to be named. And, as you will be able to deduce, some given names mean something while others do not. There’s no real reason for using the name Bella. It was just top of mind. There is, however, a reason for using Mr. Anal and Mrs. Shrew.