Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Since I moved to Austin in 1990, I’ve had quite a few brushes with near disaster.

First was my possible contact with the Hyde Park Rapist. From 1990-1991 I lived in an apartment just north of the University of Texas, just south of the area known as Hyde Park. The news was rife with reports of the Hyde Park Rapist, who was responsible for a number of rapes in the area. One afternoon a man knocked on my door, soliciting funds for the Save Our Springs Alliance. I told him I wasn’t interested in donating, and he got really agitated and started saying things that didn’t quite click, all the while trying to ease into the apartment. I slammed the door and bolted it, and didn’t give it another thought until the next night I saw on the news that the rapist had struck again, apparently posing as a SOS campaigner.

The next year I was dating a guy who lived on Rio Grande, in the West Campus area. He and a whole bunch of friends lived in an apartment complex called The Sandpiper, which was a total and complete piece of crap. I think I knew people living in four different apartments over there, so I visited quite a bit. Often I’d take the UT shuttle over after school, which required getting off at the stop about half a block away. Walking down the street, I noticed a guy dressed in black leather out in the front yard of his decrepit house, practicing his bullwhip technique. It seemed like he was out there just about every afternoon. This being Austin, I didn’t think too much of it. Freaks – or rather, unusual people – are no rare commodity here. Once again I received a wake-up call after seeing cop cars and a forensic van parked there all day. The news reported that several shoeboxes filled with human bones were found in the closets.

1991 I moved into a West Campus apartment and was berated loudly and publicly by my downstairs neighbor when I asked him to turn down his country music. It was so loud that the vibrations caused a dish to fall off my table. He told me I was just jealous of him and I would never get into a sorority because I was too fat. (Oh boo hoo) His sister was horrified when she found this out and begged me not to call their parents.

1992 I moved (briefly) into a townhouse near West Campus owned by a very prominent antiques dealer in Austin. If you’ve driven near 6th and Lamar, you’ve seen his name. The air conditioner wouldn’t work and at one point the water was broken for 4 days. When I finally sent a registered letter to complain, he told me to move out. That was fine, just a couple of weeks before I had noticed there was someone trying to jimmy open the back door.

So I moved into a townhouse off Enfield, which was haunted. Lights turned themselves off and on and stuff would appear in the drawers that I had never seen before.

Around 1993 I moved to a house on Rowena, which is in North Hyde Park. Not as chi-chi as Hyde Park proper, but reasonable rent and close to the UT shuttle. The house was falling down around me. I had to call the sheriff’s office early on move-in morning to kick out the old woman who was supposed to have been moved out. She was sitting with her back to the front door, her 8 dogs gathered around her, half-empty booze bottle in her hand, hollering that she would never leave, never ever.

There was one air-conditioner unit, rated for around a 10×10 room, in the back bedroom. Roaches infested the house and I have a horrible roach phobia. I used to have to run and get my neighbor from the garage apartment to come over and kill them for me. We were right in the flight path, and my back neighbor used to run outside with his (unloaded) 10 gauge shotgun and pretend to shoot at the planes when they passed over. Across the street lived a mentally disturbed man with two people who took care of him. I never found out the relationship; perhaps they were related. Occasionally the man would slip free and run into the street, ranting and raving, until his caregivers could talk him down and back inside. One day he got hold of a gun and stood outside my house for a good 15 minutes waving it around. Eventually he was coaxed back inside, not having caused harm to anyone.

Note: if you’re taking care of someone who’s that disturbed, don’t leave guns where they can get them. It’s things like this that make people afraid of guns.

Around 1995 I moved into my last apartment, back in North University on Speedway. One night I was pulling into my parking space when I almost ran over a bicyclist who was riding in the bike lane… the wrong way. I tooted my horn at him (really, just a short little toot) to let him know he was lucky not to have treadmarks on his head. He followed me into the parking lot, threw down his bike, and started advancing on me.

“Do you have to honk your horn at me”
“Do you have to ride in the wrong lane?”
“Oh yeah? Well suck my dick!”
“Honey, I don’t think I could find it.”

Oh man. One of the only times in my life I get off a good zinger right then and there, rather than figuring out what I should have said 5 hours after the fact. Unfortunately it was probably the wrong thing to say, since he started charging at me with his fists clenched. My downstairs neighbor heard the commotion and stepped out of his door. My neighbor was a bodybuilder. His shirt was off. The bicyclist abruptly stopped and ran off.

That was also the same complex where homeless people used to sleep in the courtyard occasionally. One icy February morning, hub (boyfriend at the time) left around 6 am. The apartment managing company never bothered to fix the lighting after daylight savings time ended, so it was pitch black. Hub fell down the stairs and broke his ankle.

Apartment life was never boring.

Posted Austin |