In My Hood

Seamus O'Mulligan is the semi-retired painter who owns the duplex next door to mine.  Like me, Seamus lives in the top and rents out the bottom, which makes living just outside of downtown Cleveland super affordable and convenient.  Seamus, I tell people, unlike me, “STAYS drunk.”

            For the most part he drinks 211 Steel Reserve out of a large, plastic, Burger King cup with a straw on the rocks.  There are several details to substantiate this fact.

A.    Seamus drinks 211 Steel Reserve: I know this because the day my then-girlfriend/current domestic partner’s¹ dog, Calvin, bit Seamus in the hand, he said at high volume a number of things, repeating many of them:

    1.  That dog is gonna die.

   2.    Tape it tight.

   3.    Rite Aide

   4.    211 Steel Reserve² 

B.  Seamus drinks out of a large, plastic Burger King cup: some times, I find this cup on my porch.  As it turns out, Seamus is a pretty early riser.  For this I have no scientific explanation.  Hypothesis: In the summer, I imagine, it is because he has no air conditioning.  However, it has become routine that Seamus and/or others of his friends will have a rip-roaring barbecue and bonfire with music in full effect by 9am. My dogs hate this. 

     I can only imagine that on mornings when Seamus can't get anyone to cook out with him, he just walks around the block, chilling on stoops of random houses seeing what passes by.  It stands to good reason that if one is going to creep around the neighborhood and drink on other people's porch steps, one would at least want a Burger King cup to obfuscate the beer.  It's also easier to fill with ice.

C. Seamus drinks from a straw.  Well you see, Seamus has almost no teeth.  This is the part of the story where you have to quickly decide whether to start feeling sorry for poor, old, toothless, alcoholic Seamus or bask in the pure marvel of this guy's existence.  Trust me for a second.

     1.  First off, Seamus is getting false teeth right now, so quit yer mopin'.  In fact, yesterday we discussed what he would eat first after getting his "uppers." Smiling carefully, he said "I've been thinking about a corn-beef sandwich with thousand island, an' all that shit."  We reminisced about the time Calvin bit him and he insisted that he loved dogs, he used to have one.³  

    2. Seamus actually has another rental property.  He used to have a boat.  Now the boat is in one of his back yards, his buddies keep threatening to burn it.
        Seamus lives a life of certain intention.  He has told me candidly that he's living the dream.  He keeps his expenses low, has the two rentals, goes to church and wakes up almost every day eager to see how many beers he can finish before passing out.  Some times he mows my lawn.  He totally mows over parts of the garden, but I never asked him to do it.  

    3.  Seamus has not one but two super shady vans.  He named them "Black Betty" and 
"Sloppy Sue."  Reportedly he got Black Betty for $500.  You can hear him coming down the street.
      It's like Uncle Buck, except it's your ornery, alcoholic neighbor.

    4.  Seamus has an incredible mullet and his sideburn hairs are at least five inches long.
    5.  Seamus never wears underpants.

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¹Love's really crazy, ya know?  One day you're buying a house together, the next she's moving to New York City to make it on Broadway...OH GOD! WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS TO MYSELF? I'M SUCH A GODDAMN IDIOT!!! But we really do love each other, right? And now we're just like two independent, free spirits drifting through space and maybe one day we'll meet up again... ...ok, now I'm just sick of hearing the sound of my voice in my head.

² Though I do feel that in this post-9/11, post-Osama's-Death, post-Kardashian world I can be the kind of badass that just posts on the Internet, "my dog bit my neighbor" and not feel the need to further explain a thing, but it's a damn good story and this is the best way to explain it.  So, what actually happened was that Seamus was drunkenly reaching over the fence to pet Calvin, a feisty, australian-shepherd/dingo mix who had been abused/neglected.  Despite Calvin's growling and barking, and my shouting, "Don't pet that dog," Seamus reaches over-- Calvin gives him one good bite about half an inch deep in the fleshy part of his right hand near the pinky knuckle-- I tape up Seamus's hand and buy almost $9 worth of Steel Reserve up at the Rite Aide, and Seamus and I become friends.  Turns out Seamus had been abused as a kid and sympathized with Calvin.

³ Seamus mentioned that he and his dog were best friends for six years.  And I believe he meant it.  Apparently a few years back, "when the Rite Aide was a Save-a-Lot," as Seamus put it, he left his house a few days after Thanksgiving and asked his "girlfriend" (now, Seamus has a variety of women over his place, usually it's really early in the morning. Sometimes he pulls one of his vans into the drive really late at night and it sounds full of women and classic rock.  Conventional wisdom suggests: prostitutes. I can also provide a first-hand account of Seamus struggling to multitask pulling up his pants--no underwear--and chase after one such woman while calling her a "ten-dollar whore") to look after the dog.  Trembling with rage and raw emotion, Seamus explained that he left the Thanksgiving-turkey carcass in the fridge and "the bitch fed it to the dog."  I'd be lying to say he didn't weep a little.