As you may have noticed from the last blogpost, my neighbourhood was a pretty sexually oriented one. We had several prostitutes living there, but we also had two reintegrating paedophiles. You can imagine all parent’s eyes were on them, all the time. I never knew their history, I just knew I was supposed to keep A LOT of distance. If I look back on it, I think the guys (they were brothers) had a mental disability. They never really knew how to respond when they had a shitload of swearwords coming at them from the angry parents of the neighbourhood. I never really saw them outside that much. I don’t think they felt safe enough to go. For as far as I know, they never did anything to anyone in the neighbourhood. I don’t even really know if they ever did anything to anyone. But they were hated. And that is a huge understatement.
On the square I lived on and on the street next to it were two bars. Both real alcoholics bars. Everyone that went there, was there all day, every day. As we’ve established earlier, I didn’t really have close friends. I had people I hung out with who I considered friends. There was this girl I hung out with, who had two alcoholic parents. In weekends and during holidays this girl was always spending her days walking around the streets or accompanying her parents in one of the two bars.
There were periods we went outside to play daily, but there were also periods we didn’t see each other at all for months. Anyway, at some point we decided we were gonna clean the staircase in her flat for money every Saturday. We collected money from the neighbours afterwards and sneaked off a few blocks away to go to a McDonalds. Her parents didn’t care, my parents didn’t know. I wasn’t even supposed to cross the “big street” at that age. So imagine how rebellious I felt.
One Saturday after our rebellious bike ride, I went to play some more at this friend’s house. At some point her dad came home, wasted as fuck. We were playing in the living room when he came in, took off all his clothes. ALL OF THEM. And he laid down on the couch and put some porn on. It was like he didn’t even see us. I was shocked and afraid and I wanted to leave immediately. So I got up and walked towards the door when my friend ran to the kitchen to get a knife. When I was already walking down the stairs, she ran after me crying and said I couldn’t leave. I was terrified. And I really can’t remember what happened, but eventually I got away and we stopped talking and hanging out for a LONG time.
On the square I lived on was also a snack bar. A lot of fights happened there. And not even just fights. A lot happened there in general. Next to the snack bar, was a shoe repair shop. I don’t know why exactly, but both owners (snack bar and shoe repair shop) got into a huge fight at some point. In the middle of the night somebody threw a Molotov cocktail in the shoe repair shop and after a loud bang the shoe repair shop was no more. The remains were there for weeks, maybe months. I can’t remember that well. But I do know that everybody knew it was done by the owner of the snack bar.
In that same snack bar, my parents were once arrested. The police was there to keep an eye on everything (I can hear you think: Why would they feel the need to do that, in this lovely neighbourhood?). My parents were at the snack bar, drinking coffee. My mom didn’t look that well, but we’ll get there later. At some point my dad was sliding a dime or a sugar cube or whatever to my mom and the police officer thought they were dealing drugs. So they both got handcuffed and were taken to the police station where they got searched. After an hour or two they were released. A lot of people were wondering what happened and were wondering what my parents did. It was quite a thing.
I think I’ve told enough about the neighbourhood I grew up in for now. Maybe I’ll talk about it some more later. Maybe not. There is still stuff to tell. There once was a high school student who murdered one of his teachers with a gun, our New Year’s Eves were never complete without the riot police and I’ve seen some pretty violent physical fights during my childhood. Anyway, I think I’ve painted a pretty accurate and clear picture. If not, feel free to ask.
