Tag Archives: strange neighbours

What's He Building in There?

It’s laundry day. Unfortunate. I need something cute and adorable to wear to the beach party tonight, and right now “cute and adorable” is filthy.
But my terrorist neighbour — which is just a term of affection conjured by GayBoy and I — beat me to the washing machine and now it’ll be a challenge to get my cuteness cleaned in time for being cute.
My “terrorist neighbour” is just the exotic-looking Eastern guy on the first floor who has the most spartan of furnishings and is always building something strange in his living room, very high-tech weird stuff that has the rest of us a little curious. Word on the street is that he’s inventing a new kind of weaving machine. Weaving? Really?
This is the guy that Tom Waits wrote his awesome track “What’s He Building in There?” about. But he’s a nice guy… apart from being an alcholic who staggers quizzically up empty alleys at midnight for seemingly no reason. And building strange things that confuse us all.
But, after nine years of living in the same building, we’ve never really chatted. Now that I’m 50 pounds lighter, dude’s giving me the eye as we almost collide in the halls.
Maybe I should. Then I could see what he’s building in there. You know, be all Mata Hari and seduce it out. I could get in touch with my inner Encyclopedia Brown fan and solve the mystery.
But it’d mean hanging out with a drunk who has a hairy back and serious anti-social tendencies. Hmm.
Or I could just listen to Tom Waits. And stop reading so much fiction.