FriendBurst Blog

I’ve gotten the upstairs neighbors into a legal mess of their own now, and I can’t help but wonder if it really was appropriate for me to the call “The Man” given the circumstances I was witnessing.

To the truth, my morass of woe and lack of freedom over the last 20 months were NOT brought on by the courts.  The courts have been merely imposing the consequences upon me caused by my own actions, failures and addictions from my old life.  I did it to myself.

The woman upstairs has done it to herself too.

Last night, I was sitting at the computer, watching TV, just a normal. The upstairs couple started arguing, fighting.  They fight a lot.  Screaming.  The woman up there in particular, gets into this hysterical state where she screams at her husband in this banshee-like, crying wail that is very dramatic, to say the least.

Last night, it was very audible.

“THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO ME?!?  THIS IS WHAT YOU THINK OF ME??!”

I dunno what the guy had done, but this sounded a lot more serious than complaining about him not taking out the trash.

Then the physical stuff started.  Thump thump thump, I hear pounding footsteps.  There are “aaaarghs” and sounds of conflict.  Then the husband starts yelling back.

‘STOP IT!! STOP IT!! YOU’RE HURTING ME!’

Not that it really matters, but it should be noted that the husband is an atheltic 6’1” or so, maybe 175 pounds.  The wife is maybe 5’8”, 135.

He continued to loudly plead for her to stop whatever physical beat down she was giving him.  This just kept going.  He also added something interesting in his efforts to get her to stop.

“I’M RECORDING ALL THIS!! YOU KNOW THAT RIGHT?  ALL OF THIS IS BEING RECORDED!”

He wasn’t the only one recording it.  Perhaps it was because I’m a bit of a voyeur; not in a nasty way, but in a I-record-everything way, but I was recording the audio of this confrontation descending quite clearly from the steps leading into the sub-basement.  I have it all on camera.

No, I am not posting it on YouTube… Eventhough I could.

I kept the camera rolling and called 911.  While describing what was going on to the dispatcher, things quieted down.  I later learned it was because the wife had stormed off and drove away.

Half an hour later (WTF?!?), the police show up.  I dunno what the conversation they had with the husband entailed, but I know they wouldn’t have gotten involved at all if I had not poked my nose in their lives.  The cop determined there was enough there to cite the wife (via the mail) for domestic violence.  Washington State has some of the toughest domestic violence laws in the country, and she is facing actual jail time if convicted.

I woke up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water.  Peeking out the back window, I saw that the wife’s car was back.  I guess the cops noticed this too, because at about 4 AM, they started pounding on their front door.  No response.  Then they started pounding on the back door. Still, no one upstairs stirred, and they couldn’t help but hear it. Then more pounding on the front door and shouts of “King County Sheriff’s Department!  I don’t want to have to pound on this door knowing there are kids in there.”

See, the deputy had shared this sentiment with me during our obligatory “you called this in?” interview that night.

“I don’t care if they beat each other up till their black and blue,” the deputy told me, “but there are two young children in that home, and that changes everything.”

That struck me as sensible, but in an objective sense, sort of odd.  The laws that are on the books about spouse-on-spouse violence do not come with harsher penalties if there are kids in the home, nor should their absence ameliorate the crime.

Maybe if this woman hadn’t been the mother of his children, he would have stopped her from beating on him with a stiff right cross to the chin.  Kudos to him for not doing so.

Look, I agree with everyone who posted comments in my poll that the gender of the victim shouldn’t matter when it comes to domestic violence.  It’s just as bad, whoever’s doing it.  There is a difference though in that when the victim is the wife, she is almost always at a physical disadvantage which prevents her from stopping it, whereas when the victim is the man, he almost always could stop it through violence of his own.

So, anyways, by the fact that they never did open their door to the police when they came back that night, my doubts about the appropriateness of my report are deepened.  I haven’t talked to the husband about this yet, but I can imagine him saying something like, “Dude!  What the fuck?!?  You’ve got my family caught up in the legal system now!  My wife, whom I love very much,  is facing jail time, and even though I was telling her to stop it, stop it, I was in complete control of the situation!  I wasn’t in any danger!  Thanks a lot for screwing up my family!!”