farting in your own backyard

We used to live in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, which used to be a sleepy beachside town with a pleasant vibe left over from the sixties. But over the course of only a few years it turned into a swishy and pretentious enclave of the dot-come overnight millionaires. The property prices shot through the roof, and because everyone wanted to live in Cardiff and property was such a premium, the houses, in typical San Diego fashion, had been packed in way too close together in order to maximize profits. That meant that from the landing of our stairs we could see very clearly into the downstairs bedrooms of our next door neighbors, who had built their enormous McMansion into a downhill slope so that they could sneak a three-story house past the building codes.

This was okay when Party Dave, an anesthesiologist who was apparently raking in way more bucks than is good for anyone, lived next to us. Party Dave never bothered us at all except for when he would launch one of his notorious parties. I got the impression that Party Dave had been in a fraternity during his college days and considered that the high point of his life, so every two or three months he would nostalgically throw a screechingly loud party in like vein, complete with disco ball and live band. Normally he and his friends would all wear togas in honor of the event and throw up off the edge of his roof-top patio when they were done.

This was annoying, but we figured he'd only throw one of these things maybe three nights a year, so we put up with it. Plus, he usually invited us.

After a while, though, Party Dave met a blond model-type in a bar in Del Mar, married her, and moved away, whereupon the pretentious couple from Chicago moved in. And then the good days were over.

He was an okay guy, an older gentleman, but she was an entitled divorcee working on her second marriage, and proud to death of her expensive (much more expensive by then than when we had moved in!) seaside dwelling. My then-husband and I both found her very tiresome. Nothing was right for her: the height of our trees, the angle of our front-porch light, the crawlspace under our house that she could see from her side yard workspace.

One day my then-husband was out working in the backyard, when he apparently took it upon himself to ease a slight tension in his gut.

So he farted. Audibly.

And from the beyond the fence that separated our yards came the whiny, high-pitched voice of our next-door neighbor.

"Bill! I heard that!"

My ex remarked on that day for years.

"Well, goddammit!" he would say. "Can't a man fart in his own backyard?"