I have this neighbor — we’ll call him “Tony”, since his name is Anthony, and he acts exactly like Tony Soprano, and actually, I think we randomly started calling him that to his face without realizing that he never pointedly told us we could.

Anyway, I have this neighbor (Tony) who comes across as more and more insane every time I see him, but in the most delightfully satisfying way.  He owns this live-work building for artists next door to us, and I guess he lives elsewhere — of course I want to say Bay Ridge or the Rockaways, just because that conveniently matches up with the vastly dramatized romantic image of him I’ve created — and he’s married and, like, 55.  I’ve met his wife — Gina — and she’s lovely.

Despite living (I guess?) somewhere else, he is often out on the street in a bathrobe, smoking a cigar.  I love him for it; it totally makes my day.  It’s exactly what the neighborhood needs more white people to be doing!  He’s always shouting — goodnaturedly — and any time anything “funny” happens, he’s always the first to step in and set everybody straight, wiseguy-style.

When we were having issues with the uber-bright light shining into our eyes all night from the new building across the street — and when a new club opened on the corner that begins blaring booming bass at midnight and continues through 4am most weeknights — our immediate reaction, before even thinking of calling 311 or our local community board rep, was to “tell Tony.” He’s totally our feudal lord.

This morning — after turning from the construction crew he was palling around with down the block to shout good-morning to me at the top of my stoop — he came over and, cigarette in hand, told me that his wife had said yesterday if he could get through the entire day without drinking, at the end of the day she’d give him one drink. He was able to do so, and at the end of the day, sat for hours savoring his reward.

“What are you still doing?” she asked him, wondering why he hadn’t just snarfed it down. “I’m really enjoying it,” he replied, not even realizing until that moment that he really meant it.

“This morning? My wife was still smiling,” he informed me. “After 33 years?! After 33 years, I still love to see her smile,” he shouted after me on my way to catch the train.

I couldn’t help but, well, smile.

And, actually, I didn’t even realize until typing this very line that maybe Tony was trying to tell me something.

I’d actually been thinking of attempting this song on the banjo for awhile, but the only chords I could find looked really wrong (except that it was just that — shocker — I wasn’t playing them correctly!) and I was a trainwreck with the vocals.  Finally, just now — like, an hour ago — I realized that capo-ing at about the 92nd fret does the trick.

This is actually loosely modeled after Cat Power’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction, which — if you haven’t already — is in your best interest to check out, STAT.

It always cracks me up when I mention the idea of moving, and people are immediately like, “Ah, so Elliott wants to move back to Manhattan, eh?” all knowingly, as though it’s been understood all along that moving in together in Brooklyn entailed dragging the poor boy into domesticity against his will at the absolute height of his blood-pumping urban skirt-chasing, force-tapping a testosterone-throbbing vein and draining it into the Gowanus as I pull him over the threshold of our shared domicile and lock the door behind us, making him change his entire wardrobe to chambray and madras, and promptly sitting down to cross-stitch “Home Sweet Home” samplers to hang over every door.

People react as if it was bound to happen sooner or later, and that he’d be the one crying wee-wee-wee all the way home, which is hilarious, because Elliott — who had been living in his own place in the East Village since, like, Fiorello La Guardia was mayor — has gotten on much, much better than I have in our neighborhood. He’s way, way more of a people person than I am, for starters — he can carry on a conversation with anyone, and he’s also not afraid to tell people off if he has to (and he’s incredibly skilled at it) — and also since he’s not female and blonde, he can come and go as he pleases without wanting to kill anyone, since it’s not required of him to skip down the streets, smiling and scattering flower petals wherever he goes. In other words, it’s less essential for him to constantly convey that he knows he’s privileged to be white. He’s allowed to have a bad day, publicly, and the sky won’t fall because a white blonde girl was seen frowning for .5 seconds.

I know I sound bitter, and I am. I have been for awhile, and it really hasn’t gotten any better. Every morning I leave my apartment, knowing that as soon as I round the corner to the subway, at least one of a continual string of cracked-out hobos is going to leer at me and/or comment on some facet of my appearance. Just in the block to the C station. Which is why I always have my headphones on. And which is why it’s assumed I’m a racist bitch if I then don’t hear and thus don’t reply to someone who’s legitimately being friendly and saying good morning.

It’s way too much drama for even someone like me to have to deal with on a daily basis, and before you all jump out of the woodwork to say I’m generalizing and stereotyping and that I have to treat each person individually, handle it on a case-by-case basis — that I’m just as bad as the leerers and the crack addicts — yes, I’m sure you’re absolutely right, and that is what I would try to do if I cared more. But, sadly? I don’t. I’ve been living in Bed-Stuy for a year and a half, and I’m sick of trying to demonstrate that white people aren’t always assholes. I’m giving up, and I’m ready to move.

And then the other night I was walking down Ninth Ave. through Hell’s Kitchen. It was the first sunbreak after that initial set of forty days and forty nights of rain this season, so everyone’s joy levels had, like, visibly skyrocketed — every third person or so had tears in their eyes — and it was nearing sunset as well, so naturally the tips of all the towers were shining like the top o’ the Chrysler Building. I decided on a whim to pick up some sashimi at Go Sushi, and then I popped in to Amy’s Bread for the weekly loaf of Organic Rustic Italian the boy and I are addicted to. The day was warm; the winds were prosy–

And it wasn’t until I got home to Brooklyn and was sitting at my kitchen table, dipping a piece of Amy’s Bread into the spicy mayo from Go Sushi, that I realized: OMG I LOVE HELL’S KITCHEN AND WANT TO MOVE THERE, STAT!

I know I’ve been fantasizing aloud a lot lately about moving — to places ranging from South Carolina to Paterson, NJ, to Jackson, MS, to Newburgh, NY — and that by now my friends and family have likely tempered themselves to take anything I say with a grain of salt, but I sat with this one for a while — let it percolate, if you will. And here we are, a couple whole weeks later, and I’m still feeling it. The boy agrees it’s a good idea, and guess what? I don’t think it’s solely because he’s still young and virile!

I might have to drain his testosterone into the East River on our way back to the island, anyway, though, just in case. Wouldn’t want it to get out that in addition to not hating black people, I also don’t stomp on G.I. Joe figurines in my spare time or anything.

Marie recently mentioned how much she hates the term “date rape” because it suggests that it’s somehow not quite fully rape rape.  “They don’t say ‘date murder,’ do they?  No,” she mused.  “What about Ted Bundy?  Do we say that he was a date-murderer, a date serial-killer?  No.”

She’s right, and the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off.

And then today, the following:

The most disturbing crime reported this week was a rape outside Applebee’s at 395 Flatbush Extension on Wednesday night. A 30-year-old woman was treated at Woodhull Hospital after being raped and robbed of her cell phone and cash by an acquaintance.

Ohhhhhhh, it was just an acquaintance. Not a stranger committing real rape. She knew the guy a little and therefore it’s not as bad. She might have even been hanging out with him that night — perhaps even having a good time! — which right there means she sorta kinda asked for it. Right? They were on a date, she was totally whoring it up, maybe even — tsk tsk — accepting drinks from him and sporting LipVenom lip plumper! And thusly it shouldn’t have come as quite as much of an utterly devastating life-changing humiliation when he fucked her against her will.

Except that it should have. And I’m sure it did.