Moodswing - Boobs and wiener

My brother-in-law Eddy, the land baron, is under siege by two crusty drug addicts who aren't even his tenants, which I find alarming given the contingent of dubious suspects who actually do occupy his rental properties. Granted, though, most of them are only trouble if they don't take their drugs.

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Take Octavia, who moved in last April and respectfully paid her rent on time for the first month, then promptly refused to fork over another penny seeing as how, she claimed, the house was filled with poisonous gas and all, which really put her out health-wise, so the very least she could expect in return was rent-free living for, like, ever. And by the way, she was happy to do him the favor of destroying the interior, too, by leaving the carpet looking and smelling like it was used to transport a constant stream of rotting corpses to their shallow graves.

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It turns out Octavia wasn't very regimented with her medication. Now, thankfully, she is gone. It took four months, a marshal and a magistrate (who scoffed at Eddy's late fees) to close the book on that fiasco. But the drama doesn't end there. At another property, Eddy has two other tenants he's in the process of evicting — a lesbian couple whose ex-husbands live down the street from them in another house. The one girl is a Denny's waitress and fairly bearable, the other is a sluggish, drug-addled walrus who parties with the exes while her girlfriend is at work.

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You'd think Eddy wouldn't involve himself but Eddy always involves himself. He's a big walking bundle of open arms, I tell you, and I'd worry about him if I hadn't personally seen him get dragged behind a ton of horses and come up smiling. Seriously, the beatings, kicks and scars — both emotional and physical — he's absorbed in his life would have hardened others into a small ball of bitterness, but Eddy always emerges bigger of heart and more open of arms. I marvel at him. I really do.

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Right now he is currently confronting the ex-husbands of his errant tenants, trying to run their petty drug-dealing asses out of the neighborhood. The two are known, believe or not, as "Boobs" and "Wiener," the former nicknamed for his shirtless sagging man-tits, and the latter for his simple mental disposition. You might believe that two miscreants who go by Boobs and Wiener wouldn't pose such a threat, but they do. For example, since it's now established that the lesbian couple is moving, Eddy is showing the property to other possible tenants, which at first he had to do while Retard and Tit Man hung around out front, spitting on anyone ambling up the walk.

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Now, after an encounter that afforded Eddy an opportunity to brandish his industrial stun gun and chase them through the neighborhood, they stay on their porch a few yards away and simply scream from there. This does not seem to bother Eddy in the least. Me? If I faced this, I'd want to tunnel my way underground to get away from them. Those two terrify me simply for what they represent, which is constant confrontation, and I HATE confrontation. It produces an anxiety in me that is so severe I actually, on occasion, foam at the mouth. That's about the closest I can do to feigning an epileptic attack, which is how I've seen Lary successfully deflect oncoming panhandlers.

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In fact, I have had people lie to me, all big-eyed and earnest, right to my face ("I swear, the panties in the glove compartment belong to my sister"), and normally I'm so mortified for them that I'll blather forth all kinds of opportunities for them to save themselves rather than witness their shame at being busted. I sincerely hate that about myself. I wish I could be more like my little sister Kim, Eddy's wife, who has a gaze as level as a laser, and who is impervious to the squirming of those who have been confronted with their own idiocy.

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I know this because I have been on the other end of that gaze. "I swear," I told her when I was a cocaine-addled college student and we were roommates on campus, "he was just sleeping there in bed with me, that's all. Nothing happened. He has a girlfriend, for chrissakes." Kim did not have to say a word, she just leveled her look on me and kept it there. I squirmed like a caterpillar under a pin but never came clean. Still, though, I remember how it felt to be confronted with my own idiocy, thank God, because by now I've learned that if we're not strong enough to confront the idiocy in others we're less likely to face it in ourselves.

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So Boobs and Wiener continue to scream at Eddy, but at least they do it from their own porch now, as opposed to the sidewalk in front of Eddy's property. Kept at that distance, those two do seem a lot less sinister, powerless even, seeing as how their only power lies in their ability to put people at unease. Boobs braves a few steps forward, but Eddy keeps him at bay with a simple wave of his stun gun, an effective reminder that he, for one, is not afraid of confrontation.

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Hollis Gillespie is the author of Confessions of a Recovering Slut and Other Love Stories and Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood. Her commentaries can be heard on NPR's "All Things Considered."