In Case of Death, Please Notify

Published on September 7, 2004 By Phil Osborn In Sex & Romance

For background, see my previous coverage in my article "Life goes ON? You're kidding, right?"

In brief, for about a year, my life was being trashed (literally, much of the time, as in trash left all over the place) by a little local gang which had moved into the industrial office unit next to the two units which I rent for storage and privacy for my major writing work. Finally they annoyed or intimidated so many people and made such a mess everywhere that the property management threw them out, which I think is a first for that complex. Much more typically, management just ignores anything and everything until a crisis happens and then punishes whoever complains.

So, since I complained fairly early on - being one of the most directly affected - I got an ultimatum from property management to keep my two motorcycles off of my two landings or have my lease, which goes back 13 years now, terminated. Note that the bikes were not especailly offensive to look at. One I drove regularly. It was rarely there during working hours when I was at my day job. The other was under a bungeed tarp. But, I had aroused their baleful attention, so I had to be punished, even though I had a verbal OK to put the bikes there from the prior management from when I first moved in.

That meant clearing space to put at least the bike that constituted my sole means of transport inside, where it could destroy the carpet and pollute the air with gasoline and other carcinagenic fumes. And that, in turn, required renting an additional storage unit for $135 per month. So, after the gang finally moved out, two weeks or so past the termination date and with all kinds of threats and provocations and curses and loss of use of my units, I then discovered to my horror that they had now moved into the very storage facility where I had rented. And, they obviously knew I was there, and let me know.

However, they were also so incredibly stupid and/or or wired to the gills on something or other (I'm guessing Meth), that they proceded to try the same games with the storage facility, camping out in their vehicles, stringing power lines and working on vehicles in the wee hours of the night, and depositing trash, especially used non-working computer monitors that the State of California charges $50 to recycle, anywhere they could get away with it.

Directly opposite from where they rented their unit, I had noticed a huge pile of component video monitors, sitting on the pavement, and had mentioned it to management, who said that they belonged to another renter, but that he had been warned to get rid of them or he would be kicked out. However, they also noted that this other person had connections to the gang members.

(Note that this is not exactly a high-class storage facility. When I first moved in, there were three guys living in one of the eight by fifteen units, right next to the most proximate entrance into the hallway where my unit is located, with a little cooking shelf and some kind of kitchen and weight lifting equipment. I'm guessing about two dozen people were living out of storage units or vehicles on the premises. )

So, the tow-truck driver I mentioned earlier, apparently the son of the evil old man who initially rented the unit next to me, got kicked out first, after they caught him working on vehicles after everyone was supposed to be out of the place, and after many warnings, and then the storage management towed away the gang's trailer after the gang decided they could park it permanently in one of the customer parking spaces up front instead of paying for a storage parking space, and, of course, I notified them of my experiences as well, in front of another customer in the office...

I figured that the young blond woman who kept everything functioning in their organization would find some way to go after me. The old man had chosen me as his special target, apparently out of pure malice, and had told the other gang members that I was somehow responsible for them being evicted. Not so. I was still kicking myself for having bothered to complain at all, what with all the hours and dollars it cost me when the management did their predictable retaliation - against me. And that was about eight months ago. No, they screwed themselves out of their place, defeating all the odds and terminal lethargy of management and finally forcing their hand, despite all their bad intentions. But, I was a good scapegoat. So. Whatever.

Anyway, blondie always had five or six guys on a string, who usually made a point of trying to intimidate me at my unit since she had identified ME as the enemy, not for anything I had done to her, but just because I refused to have anything to do with her, and ignored her completely, so far as possible, and she was going to PROVE that no man could get away with THAT! And I presented an opportunity for her men to show how manly they were by trying to intimidate me. So, these little confrontations with lowlife guys were an every other day happening.

Thus, last night I was carrying yet another little load of stuff from my office units to the storage cell about 8PM. It was pretty dark by then, and I noticed that the lights were not on in my area, which was unusual. As I started to unbungee my stuff from the bike seat, I suddenly became aware that a man was standing directly across the bike from me, within punching distance. I had never seen this guy before, but he had the kind of blue collar, in and out of jail, bar fighting, Johnny Cash sort of appearance. Tight jaws, clean shaven, very muscular, dark hair, in his late '40's at least. So he says, "I hear that you've been saying bad things about a friend of mine."

Not good. Anyway, we had a little conversation about what I had said to the storage management, in front of some other customer who of course knew this guy and the gang members, and the why's and what's of had actually been going down, and at the end he appeared to have utterly lost faith in his friend, the blond woman from the gang. After he realized what was going down, I hope, and how he was being used, he mentioned that the old man's son had been fired from his tow truck job as well.

It is HARD to be fired from a tow driving job. They don't pay much of anything, typically not even minimum wage, but $5 or $10 per tow. They will hire ANYBODY. I wonder if it had anything to do with when I called the Santa Ana PD to escort me to my units, when I discovered his tow truck sitting unattended across the street, with the lights all flashing, and no one in sight anywhere at all. The PD said at the time, "Oh, you don't need to worry about him. He's a Police Tow." Yes. Of course. No worries there.

Anyway, for ID purposes, in case it is ever needed, this guy identified himself as the owner of the huge pile of component video monitors still sitting on the pavement. I had been in the complex earlier that day with a previous load of stuff and noticed that the pile had been reduced to rubble, more or less. It looked like someone had had a field day with a sledge hammer. This guy was not at all happy about that, and I assumed that he must think that I must be somehow connected to that vandalism, so I told him, "Not me." But I can think of people who might find a reason to make it look like me.

I figure that blondie will find someone else to try to provoke me into a fight or simply beat me up or kill me, as her ego is now seriously tied up with doing something nasty to me. Her whole little empire has fallen apart, and I'm the person who was always there standing up to them and their threats. So, if you don't see further articles from me for a while, the reader might want to forward this to the Santa Ana Police Dept. However, that may be a problem, as they apparently don't have email (this IS Santa Ana) - at least not indicated on their website, although they do have phone numbers.

This is all so reminiscent of what I used to see all the time in Columbia, South Carolina. There, and reputedly throughout the South, they have this phenomyna called the "Queen Bee Syndrome." This is when some woman with a talent for manipulation realizes that she can have a whole lot of fun and plenty of money, jewelry, clothes, drugs, etc., by playing men off against one another. There is a long tradition in the South, in the low-life bars, of women deliberately flirting in order to cause fights, after which their newly validated man has triumphal sex with them.

The Queen Bee makes a profession of this. In South Carolina, I would see Queen Bees who were old, ugly, fat, chain-smoking, typically bleached blonde and as nasty as they come, who had built up a whole little personal gang, usually equally nasty wizened old men, all devoted to proving to her that they still had it, usually by killing or crippling any guy who annoyed her, or wouldn't defer to whatever outrageous provocation she used to trigger a confrontation. From her accent, I'm guessing that blondie is from that general region.

September 27, 2004. After the last little confrontation, I thought that things might quiet down for a while. I passed by Blondie, whose actual name is Sandra S., diving into the motor compartment innards of some ancient rust bucket of a '60's muscle car, on my way out of the storage complex a few days ago, and she didn't even look up. So, I figured, hey, great, maybe she's given up on her vendetta now, and I don't have to psyche myself up for a fight every time I go to my storage unit. Not.

Sunday night I swung by around 9:15 PM with another little load bungeed onto the Nighthawk, and immediately noticed that the entrance drive was almost completely blocked by a cluster of several vehicles about 3/4's of the way to the far section. There are several people who constantly work on motorcycles or something or other in that area, so I wasn't overly concerned. However, if someone did decide to block that road, there is literally nowhere else to go. With the high electronic gate closed behind and whoever blocking the road ahead, one would be trapped for whatever. So, I decided to go for it. Like, this is the gang's constant, unremitting strategy. Try to force a confrontation, then capitalize on the response. If you ever back down, you're lost.

So, I drove on through. Well before I got to the cluster of vehicles, I recognized Blondie's ancient beat-up Voyager, and then her, with a guy who, in the dark, I'm pretty sure was the same one who confronted me. Both of them were walking in a diagonal path to put them in my way as they crossed, Blondie leading with a grim expression. So, I grinned like a wolf in the flock, and gunned it, and they gave me the usual hateful looks and let me through. What next?

I'm going to be tied up for most of the next ten days to two weeks, so if I don't make it back here, don't panic - yet. But, if I'm not back in two weeks, any concerned readers might want to forward this to the Santa Ana PD.

Thanks in advance...

Comments

No one has commented on this article. Be the first!

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!