#1
The first time I heard screaming man, I was shit-faced at a party in Boise, Idaho.
‘What?!’ I screamed through the phone.
‘There’s a guy outside screaming, and I can hear him through my bedroom window.’
The thought of someone so crazy they couldn’t stop the urge to scream at themselves, was a little beyond my comprehension—especially while drunk at a cafe in Boise, Idaho.
The police don’t show,
not when you call them so stoned all you can say is,
‘Hello, um what?’
when asked ‘What’s your emergency?’
My brain and I get confused easily these days.
I’m now living where screaming man lives—in an apartment above a small neighborhood park, where somehow it’s legal and laughable when a crazy person decides to do what I call ‘live and scream.’
It makes you fear for your life. And I’m not saying that in a ‘ohmygod,you’resodramatic’ kind of way; rather, I would like for someone to understand my plight with a more flippant, ‘holy fuck’-like attitude. I don’t think it’s earth shattering to have some weird story about a crazy person, I just want to talk about it a little.
Screaming man screams the screams that scream into your dreams. I sometimes have these malicious nights full of fighting wolves and waking up to realize it was only him that was yelping,
him that was shouting and crying out.
It’s 3:00 a.m. All I can think about is seafood and how much I’ll make in tips in less than six hours.
I wish today was a day when I could smoke weed about my problems, and still get away with living a normal life. But things have changed now, and, well, we all carry our vices.
Instead, I roll over onto my side and shove a pillow against my ear. There used to be a time when I could shut out noise from the outside world. But even with the pillowcase half-suffocatingly close to my face, I can still hear a faint whimpering that goes on until it’s time for me to go to work. I hope to god I don’t see him while he lurks on the sidewalk. I saw his dead eyes looking back at me once, and it would scar me to have to see them again.
