I lived on 21st street, in a house broken into four apartments with a floor slanted at really odd angles it made me feel drunk when I walked through it. The land lady was this rich slovenly hippie who lived in a huge place with a white grand piano and had a little live-in hippie-chauffer-lover-errand-boy. She'd leave the house once a month on the 3rd, the hippie-chauffer-lover-errand-boy driving and collecting the rent from all her properties while she sat in the backseat looking fat and nervous. The apartment directly above ours was the Apartment of Really Awful Couples. The first awful couple was this younger guy-he was my age-maybe 20-living with this very old woman-she must've been 29, maybe even 30-and they would have these terrible fights in the middle of the week and the middle of the night. First there was yelling followed by screaming followed by plates smashing all over the place followed by the thudding through the floorboards of a pounding fuck, loud groans and then the sun would come up. Towards the end the smashing of plates was followed less frequently by the pounding fucks and groans until eventually the fucking ceased altogether and soon after they moved out sullenly and separately.

My plan was to make sure no fratboys moved in with their Journey records, and whenever someone came to look at the place I would sit scowling on the front steps with my skateboard, Throbbing Gristle or Whitehouse playing at top volume in the background. This strategy to get cool neighbors backfired when Serita's friend Susan moved in with her slave. Most of the time they were fine neighbors, although the slave made me a little nervous because he was pathetic like a whipped dog, all slouched over, staring at the ground, never saying a word. Every so often, Serita would show up. I'd be a block away on my skateboard coming back from work at the Record Exchange and I'd hear these inhuman blood-curdling death-camp screams and know Serita was there and they were torturing Susan's slave and it was gonna be a very long night.

Chris' old girlfriend Robin moved in with Serita who had a very creepy place out on the fringes of East Austin. Serita slept in a coffin. Robin started going out with my buddy Jake 2000 who put out Cretin Bull and was really named Rick. I didn't know too much about that S&M business back then-I just thought it was some new stuff for the Bauhaus fans to play with, a little dress-up thing like those pointy boots with all the Michael Jackson style buckles the goth girls wore. It seemed that Robin was becoming Serita's new apprentice and Rick was starting to get that whipped dog look like Susan's slave upstairs had. One afternoon me and Jean and Rick and Robin were all driving back from some movie-I wanna say it was Ghostbusters-Rick and Robin in the backseat and Robin said with a snake hiss voice "My pussy has teeth, doesn't it Rick?" and Rick kinda gulped and looked at the floor, "Doesn't it Rick?" she hissed louder, and he muttered "yeah".

We didn't see too much of Rick after that.