The Neighborhood Karen
I'm 50. After my divorce, I had to take a room in a run-down house in the middle of a cul-de-sac full of medium-nice houses. My roommates are all college-age guys, so I'm the oldest in the house. out of necessity, I've had to take responsibility to collect utilities and rent, assign duties (taking out the trash, taking the can to the curb, mowing, sweep/mop of common areas and kitchen, cleaning sink and counters, etc.). I post a rotation of chores, so that everyone can see its fair, and it works okay most of the time.
So, it wasn't a surprise that my roommates and I were something of a neighborhood pariah. We tried to be friendly and responsible with our parking, moving the trashcans each week, and keeping our noise to a minimum. But, try as we might, we were still given the stink-eye and avoided by most.
Enter our neighbor across the street. This entitled neighbor ("EN" from now on) not only glared at us as we came and went, she was always either shouting at us from across the street, or coming over to knock on our door, to tell us how we'd failed to do something or other she thought we should have to do. (One such task was cleaning up the palm leaves that a big wind had left all over the place. She thought we should have cleaned them up earlier than we had, so owed her to come over and clean the leaves off of her lawn and sidewalk - no, she hadn't cleaned hers up.)
I learned that her kids had graduated and moved away a year before I arrived, and her husband worked long hours, leaving her with a LOT of time on her hands, to spend poking her nose into our business. In her early- to mid-40's, EN was doing her best not to completely fall apart but was losing the battle: wrinkles around the eyes, a bit of extra developing under the chin, and a slightly marshmallow waistline. She wore pant-suits to work and sweaters on top of jeans in her free time. All in all, nothing spectacular to look at - medium and average in every way. But it was the "constantly chewing bees" look on her face that put her from a possible 6, down to a 2 (scale of 1-10).
In the beginning, I tried to be nice, accepting her abuse and giving in to her demands (as long as they seemed half-way reasonable), just to shut her up. Then I discovered her husband didn't actually work that late. She'd just pestered and bullied him to the point that he never spent much time at home. After re-assessing my approach, I decided the best strategy was not to comply with her any more.
At first, when I just started shutting her down, she just closed her mouth and walked back into her house. But, after a few weeks, she was back to her relentless levels of bitching at us for every little thing, our fault or not.
One cold morning, I was putting the trash cans out of the curb, when she decided to march across the street and try yelling at me for the "terrible state of our lawn" - my roommates and I had been chipping in on a service that came every two weeks, so it really didn't look as shabby as she claimed.
I tried ignoring her and had almost made it to the open door to the garage at the side of the house, but she kept jumping in my way. (I almost knocked her down more than once.) She'd raced out of her house to confront me, dressed in a long, loose t-shirt and bunny slippers, her rage the only thing to keep her warm, which caused me to notice her nipples pushing out through the fabric - I could have hung my heaviest coat on either one of them and not worried about them falling off! Catching my glance at her chest (only a glance, I swear!), she stopped mid-rant, let out an exasperated grunt, and gave me what we used to call a "titty-twister," when I was a kid.
At that point, I'd had enough. I wasn't going to let this entitled nut-case off without some appropriate payback. In the moment it took to make that decision and utter an "Ouch!," she did it again. So, I did it back. I grabbed her poking nipple and gave it a quick, but firm twist, telling her to stop. She responded by pushing me and pulling her fist back to hit me. I responded by pushing her up against the half-open door and pinning her by the arms, so she couldn't hit me. She squirmed and pushed back, wriggling out (I wasn't holding her very hard), starting the hit and kick me again, murmuring, "Let me go," while grunting with effort.
Now, I have to tell you that I used to be a bouncer for a few years just out of college, so I responded by going in low and wrapping her up, so that she couldn't hurt me. I managed to keep us from going to the ground, but it was NOT easy. She just kept squirming, grunting for me to let her go while peppering me with foul names and slurs. We continued to struggle and ended up just inside my garage. Pinned up against the washing machine and wrapped up as she was, she finally stopped trying to wriggle free and let out a huge sigh. I noticed that her body was very hot against my skin but didn't think anything of it.
So, taking this for possible compliance, I eased up the pressure just a bit, telling her that I'd let her go if she'd stop trying to hit me and go home. She looked up at me, as if to say, "fine." As we locked eyes, however, a completely different look came over her. Her face flushed and her breathing changed. As I released her arms, she suddenly reached up and grabbed my face, pulling me down to her. I was shocked and took a moment before pushing her away.