Describe your street:

Noisy. Packed to the gills with people. It’s feels anomalous, perhaps like most urban residential blocks feel. The mix of people and the intentions of these people.

My house is a landmark. Built in the last few years of the 1800’s. A senator was born here. He was progressive, even for our times. Now it is divided up into crumbling units always bursting or breaking, occupied by graduate students, most visiting from the other side of the world. All of them lonely and sweet. Too brilliant to be imagined.

Each night, sometimes several times, I see a mother and son walk down our street. They are inseparable. Dressed averagely. Clothes clean. They discuss things secretively and sometimes go through the trashcans. When the son doesn’t have a cigarette, he asks if I’ll give him one. I don’t like them. At first I said hello. But they are scavengers. Who knows how they became this way, but their passive interest in free garbage somehow puts me off. If you need garbage, then you need garbage. They are their own cult. They have their own rules.

The lady next door hates us. She owns the house on the other side of us and rents it to the most despicable undergraduates. They break bottles and shoot fake guns. She has her man over there everyday cleaning up their mess. Most of the kids drive black or white luxury SUV’s. On game day they pull out a rickety table, set it up on the lawn. They fill red plastic cups with beer to play beer pong. The guys take off their shirts and scream. The girls simulate sex. “You should come over.” They say when I come out on the stoop. “Maybe some other time.” I usually say.