I Eat Punk Ass Bitches for Dinner
By. Marian Adewunmi Yesufu
So my downstairs neighbor came up at 9:37pm to tell me to be quiet. Here is the thing, he was even polite about it. Pleasantries aside, he is a man and I am a woman. He specifically said, “there was a lot of noise and it woke my son up.”
He came as a father coming to protect his son. A father who has a wife. I am a woman alone with two children. And this man with a wife chose to come up and tell this woman not once in this month of June 2024, but twice to be quiet.
I told him that we were killing a giant cockroach. I asked if he was experiencing anything like that because it has been hot and this apartment has giant flying scary as cockroaches that seep through doors that don’t quite fit properly. He did not take that information in. Like a soldier/ messenger on a mission he had one thing he wanted registering in my brain. “Do not make noise and do not be the cause of my son waking up.”
Mind you it’s June 26th, 2024. This is important because in a few days it will be the Fourth of July. And people have been shooting fireworks since the beginning of June and they will do this until the beginning of August. People in Orange County, CA love their fireworks like the love their voting choices, red.
I digress because I am heated. Because it’s almost 10pm, I am in my nighty and I want to close the door but this man has one more nice thing to say in the kindest and calmest voice. “Fine,” he says. “I will talk to Patrick tomorrow.”
So I asked, “well why didn’t you do that instead of walking up to me in my house at this time? How would you feel if a man walked up to your home, and you weren’t home and spoke to your wife the way you are speaking to me?”
Silence.
A slight glitch
I’m hoping it registers.
Nah. He was just recouping.
He repeats, “be quiet.”
“I scream don’t come to my home after 7pm ever again.”
He repeats, “be quiet and I will speak with Patrick.”
Patrick is one of the managers.
If someone was an outsider looking in, all you can hear is me screaming.
I write this to say, stop weaponizing the police, places that can make a single mom all of a sudden homeless because you are a tool of what bell hooks would call the patriarchal… capitalist system.
As a human it hurts. We have lived here for over 4 years. We had a tiff when we 1st moved in about leaves. Yeah I said. He mansplained to me how I should sweep my patio. He suggested I hand pick every leaf. 🍁 👀Then he saw that a man lived here as well and he never came back.
For four years he would hear my partner call me the nastiest of names, cuss me out. Same vents. Same thin walls. Where was your offense then? Where was the climbing up to speak of noise and to silence it?
None.
Our children take walks together. Did you ask me then anything? Nope.
No need to assert male dominance there?
As soon as the man leaves the house you want to assert some kind of sick dominance. Some kind of metaphorical peeing ritual to claim this area of land as yours.
Sir respectfully fuck you. Fuck you for scaring me. Fuck you for weaponizing the possibilities of getting kicked out over me. Fuck you.
This world hates single mothers with a unique form of hate. Respectfully I eat punk ass bitches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Your wife could have spoke to me in the daytime and all would have been fine.
Sincerely
Marian
Proud Single Mom
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