Doobie at the Marilyn

At thirty, I was living in West Hollywood in an apartment the size of a large pizza box, with walls of the same thickness.  The apartment complex was called “The Marilyn” because Monroe once briefly lived in a much nicer building two miles away.  There were twelve units in the complex, six on either side of a courtyard featuring cracked concrete, broken Mexican pottery, and assorted dying plants.  I was living there because it was one of the few places in the neighborhood I could afford on a teacher’s salary.

One might think that The Marilyn’s structure would lend itself to neighborliness and conviviality, and this was not altogether untrue.  I had a friend a few doors down, a retired set designer named Mac.  Mac was a lanky old gay gent, about six-foot-four with blond hair almost gone white.  We often shared weekend breakfasts at a greasy spoon on the corner of Sweetzer and Santa Monica.

Mac was a good talker with plenty of off-color fifties and sixties movie industry stories.  Five years before we met he’d had a brain tumor excised, and occasionally this set him off on mental adventures.  For instance, sometimes in the middle of a story he would decide it was 1948 and I was his Aunt Elsie hanging clean wash on her clothesline in Olympia, Washington.  This took some getting used to, but I was soon able to adjust.  I even found I enjoyed portraying the various characters Mac’s brain assigned to me.

If Mac’s friendship was the zenith of my social experience at The Marilyn, what happened with Doobie definitely qualified as the nadir.  

Doobie and I shared a cardboard wall.  He was a muscular, brown-skinned man, fifty-ish, with baleful eyes and a permanent frown.  Every morning around three, I would hear him yelling at someone who was not in the room.  His words varied somewhat, but he always came back to the same lilting refrain:  “I’M GONNA BUST YOUR FACE IN, YOU UGLY B**CH!  DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?  WOMAN, YOU CAN’T TALK THAT WAY TO ME!  F**K YOU, YOU MUTHERF**KING C*NT!” 

For extra fun, Doobie was a big George Michael fan, and after yelling at his imaginary friend for an hour or so, he would play Michael’s song “Father Figure” over and over again: I will be your father figure/Put your tiny hand in mine/I will be your preacher, teacher/Anything you have in mind.  Not only did Doobie’s tirades and musical taste make my flesh crawl, they made it hard to get up for work at six.

One evening I came home exhausted, carrying two heavy grocery bags.  Doobie stood in the doorway of his apartment, naked except for a pair of immaculate white boxer shorts a size too big.  This was a new one.  He glared at me as I came up the walkway toward our adjacent doors.

“FU**ING IRAQI B**CH!” he greeted me.  “GODDAMNED MUSLIM C*NT!”

I gathered this was not the best moment to inform Doobie that I am Mexican Catholic mixed with Hungarian Jew.  Shaking, I walked past him, avoiding eye contact.  Opening my door, I rushed inside and turned the bolt while dropping my groceries on the floor.

“EAT SH*T AND DIE, GUATEMALAN WHORE!” Doobie screamed after me.  Confused by his sudden geographical leap and concerned about my future safety, I stepped over the spilled milk, picked up the phone, and called my ex-boyfriend, Hammerhead.

Hammerhead was a police officer who had behaved in a way that ensured my right to call in favors from him for the rest of our lives.  He picked up on the first ring.

“Hammerhead here.”

“Hi, it’s the Botox specialist with the D cups and the hair extensions,” I murmured breathlessly.

“Hi, Hannah.  What can I do for you?” he asked in grim but not impolite tones.

“I would like you to check someone out for me, please,” I said in my regular voice.  “My neighbor.”

I gave him a brief description of Doobie and his antics.  The next day, he called back with the following news:  Doobie had been incarcerated twice for domestic assault, once for burglary.  He had also been institutionalized several times, most recently three years before.  He was a Korean War veteran.

“Let me know if I can help with this,” said Hammerhead, “and look, please don’t tell anyone who gave you the information.  You know it’s illegal for me to give it to you.”

“Oh, give it to me, Hammer!  Give it to me!” I moaned in the Botox specialist’s voice.  Hammer hung up, but not before I heard him start to laugh.

Three days after receiving Doobie’s rap sheet summary, I came home to find him chasing Mac around the courtyard with a large wrench, shouting, “I’LL SHOW YOU, YOU DIRTY WOP BASTARD!”  I was on my way after him when I saw Mac rush into his apartment and slam the door in Doobie’s face.  I ran to my phone and dialed 911.  Soon the police arrived to take Doobie to the county mental hospital.  However, they informed me that because of state budget cuts, he would only be detained for 72 hours and then most likely would be returning to The Marilyn. 

The next morning, Mac and I had a breakfast talk about the situation. 

“I think I’m moving out,” I said.  “I talked to the landlord, and she’s afraid if she evicts him he’ll burn down the building.”

“Ha,” said Mac.  “She’s just afraid no one else would be desperate enough to rent the place.”  He sighed.  “Well, I can’t afford to move.  I’ll miss you,” he said with a grin, and then his eyes glassed over slightly.  He leered a little at whoever he thought I was.  “Wow, Scott, have you been working out?  Those are some good-looking guns you’ve got there.” 

Guessing we were in a bath house in the mid-seventies and hoping I was teen heart-throb Scott Baio, I replied, “Check me out all you want now, Mac honey, but tonight my heart belongs to that man right there.”  I pointed discreetly to our waiter, who was pouring weak coffee at the next booth.  He had acne scars, a medium-sized paunch, and was missing the pinkie on his right hand. 

Mac nodded at me knowingly.  “Oh yeah,” he purred sensually. “Wrap it up, I’ll take it.”

Within the week, I moved to a larger apartment in a seedier neighborhood five miles south.  My new courtyard complex, the Casa Rita (so named because Rita Hayworth once drove through on her way to West Hollywood), was two doors down from a corner featuring Hula Gal Liquor and the Little Joy Bar.  Filth-covered drunks periodically passed out on the front lawn under a welcoming jacaranda tree.  However, its tenants were  generally friendly, and if they were crazy, they were crazy in quiet, inoffensive ways.  The unemployed director/successful dominatrix didn’t see clients at home; the hirsute graphic designer looked great in kilts; and the militant zero-population-growth advocate was only hostile to me until she clarified that I had no children and no immediate plan to breed.   Peace reigned at the Casa Rita.

Mac stayed at The Marilyn, and we continued to meet for breakfast on weekends.  Within three months, Doobie was evicted (after chasing several other residents with tools).  Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw Doobie in a Ralphs market near my new apartment.

Actually, I heard him before I saw him.  As I stood waiting to pay for my box of Fig Newtons, I heard a familiar voice coming from the cleaning supplies aisle:  “OUT OF MY WAY, YOU F**CKING KOREAN TW*T!  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STARING AT, SLANT-EYED B**CH?”  I saw a slender Latina rush out of the aisle and head for a security guard. 

Moments later, the guard led Doobie toward the automatic doors.  I noticed he looked thinner, and that his hair was not as well-groomed as it had been. However, his frayed white shirt and blue jeans were immaculate.

Other shoppers cast their eyes down, but I stared at Doobie as he was escorted out. 

“GODDAMNED TWO-DOLLAR THAI WHORE!” he screamed in my direction as the automatic doors closed. 

Did he recognize me?  I’ll never know for sure.