Ridding Ourselves of a Killjoy
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Finally, in my junior year of college -- having fulfilled the annoying two-year obligation of residing in a dormitory -- I was able to move off-campus, into a building famous for the funloving disposition of its inhabitants. Nor did it hurt that the superintendent was an attractive thirtyish woman who enjoyed availing herself of the willingness of male students to show her a good time, and gratefully turned a blind eye to student shennanigans. There always seems to be a killjoy in the mix, however, and my new building was no exception.

Three doors down from me resided a short, prematurely balding, already pot-bellied, thick-spectacled lout who disliked just about everyone on sight, and ceaselessly complained and threatened, and occasionally summoned the police. He walked in a hunched over monkey like manner and was incapable of passing anyone in the hall without darting them a hostile glance. One afternoon a girl -- sweet-tempered, in the second semester of her freshman year -- was playing music in her apartment, and the lout stormed into the hall, screamed, "I've had it!," and began pounding on her door with a hammer. Her next door neighbors -- two Brazilians on the soccer team -- came into the hall, sarcastically asked him if picking on a girl made him feel like a man, and offered themselves as someone to pick on instead. The lout had yelled, "You're all sick!," stomped back to his apartment, and slammed the door. On another occasion he barged straight into the apartment of the two girls who lived above him just as they were leaving for class, and raced to their bathroom. When they caught up with him he was on his hands and knees examining the base of their bathtub, shouting that he was fed up with the fact they never used a shower curtain, and were constantly flooding his apartment. When they truthfully stated they never failed to use the shower curtain (which, after all, was there in full view), he called them irresponsible lying sluts and said he wasn't fooled by the fact they'd mopped up their floor to conceal the evidence (another "fact" that was a concoction of his imagination). Only when they threatened to call the police did he finally leave, albeit while yelling additional insults.

By the second semester our patience was exhausted: we were students, after all -- for the most part barely emerged from our teens -- and we were going to play music at all hours as loud as we pleased; and we were going to use the whole building as the boundary in endless games of tag and water-balloon and firecracker wars; and we were going to have weekend parties in which the doors of several apartments were left open in welcome with kegs in each; and we were going to ride the mini-bike up and down the halls and play soccer in the halls; and we were going to purchase cheap electric guitars, play them badly at volumes loud enough to make the whole building shake; yes, we were going to do all of these things despite this clown who stubbornly refused to move to a building more suited to his preferences.

One Friday the lout heatedly announced to a couple people in the hall that he was going away until Sunday night to take a break from us "animals," and stormed out the front door with a pack strapped to his back. Later that night three of us were joking about doing something unpleasant to his apartment; before long, we decided it would be disgraceful not to replace joking with action. The unpleasant something we decided upon was the following: Saturday morning we obtained a bucket of blood and mashed entrails from a butcher across town, lined a large cereal box with a plastic bag, and poured a portion of the bucket's contents into the box. Then we pressed the sides of the top of the cereal box together so that it could be pushed under the open space at the bottom of his door. Once the top of the cereal box was worked under his door, we jumped on it, thereby propelling its contents into the interior of his apartment. We repeated this process until the bucket of blood and entrails was empty, taking care to angle the box in a different direction each time and splash as much of his apartment as possible.

By Sunday afternoon, it being warm spring weather, the lout's apartment was reeking of rotten meat. That evening, we placed a few strips of yellow Police Line: Do Not Cross tape over his door and also attached a sign that read, Homicide Scene: Keep Out and awaited his return in my apartment. Naturally, the lout didn't believe the tape and sign were real and instantly tore them down. But when he opened his door and perceived the bloody mess within, as well as whiffed the stench, he became utterly unglued. Nonsensical wailings, verging on out-and-out terror, were heard. He exited the building, but wasn't gone for long. When he returned he was screaming -- always to an empty hall, with no one venturing outside their apartments -- that he'd called the police and they'd disclaimed all knowledge of the matter and had not put up the tape; that he knew he was the victim of vandalism; that the police were on their way to make a report. Nothing, of course, was ever proved.

Suffice to say the killjoy finally realized he was unsuited for life in our building, and that we were rid of him by the following Wednesday. A celebration was held on Friday -- our first and only toga party, billed as The Balls Out Bacchanalia of the Century, replete with flowers and cuttings of ivy taped up and down the hallway walls, chariot races (dollies with girls astride, towed by guys with ropes wrapped about their waists), wild animal hunts (baggies of water-soluble red dye flung at guys in gorilla suits), a Miss Rome pageant (the catwalk a row of tables placed side by side), champagne in place of beer, Orgy Here! signs above the entryway of every room, a hacking-to-pieces in effigy of a reproduction of the departed lout (a large sheet stuffed with straw savagely beaten with pool cues), and -- lastly -- Roman candles discharged up and down the hallways.

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