The War of the Grill

[REPOST FROM OLD SITE]
PART 1
We're basically good people, my fiancee and I. We have our flashes of bigotry, stubbornness and the occasional laugh at another's expense, but basically we're nice people. We wouldn't ever deliberately cause harm or inconvenience to anyone, and though we might spitefully dream of revenge on those who would do so to us, we roll with the punches and try to keep moving forward. We're basically good people.
We came out here with all these myths and horror stories in mind about what it would be like to live in the big city, and were pleasantly surprised to find that everyone who lives in our apartment complex was very welcoming and neighborly. Everyone says “Hi” whenever they pass, something which neither of us had ever enjoyed any place we had previously lived. We have an apartment situated right next to the stairs which lead to the parking lot, so we get a good sampling of the comings and goings around here.
The first acquaintance of substance was our accross-the-way neighbor who I will call GQ. She had a little 3 year old, M who was immediately fascinated with me, as I was with her. We whiled away many of those first afternoons sitting on opposite sides of the courtyard, I playing with M in my detached but benevolent manner, and my fiancee bandying titherings with GQ. In this time, we became aware of some of our other neighbors, but chiefly of M's friend from down the way and his family, most of whom seem to live in this building.
They were obviously of southeastern European or northeastern African descent, not that it mattered to us, but it seemed to form the basis of a divide between them and ourselves right from the start. Which was fine, we were new and hadn't had much substantial interaction with anyone except GQ.
Now, at that time, my fiancee and I ate a low-carb diet (for reasons of weight loss, as well as general preference) and became grill aficionados in the process. In our previous dwelling we had a generous backyard and we would grill some kind of meat or vegetables almost every day, sometimes twice a day. It's just the way we preferred to eat. So naturally, we had brought our grill with us to California, even though it wasn't immediately clear whether or not we'd be able to use it.
The apartment complex provided 2 rather worn out grills over by the pool area. We attempted to use one of them once to grill a split chicken, and the results were severely disappointing. I really can't adequately describe how poorly designed these grills were, but I'll try to highlight their primary flaws. The grate that holds your food above the flame was comprised of 2 sections, each of which have been bent down towards the flame through age and careless misuse. The sections themselves are stamped out of some cheap metal and have wide, slightly convex ribs instead of the normal thin cylindrical heavy wire ones that you find on any normal grill. This makes for horribly uneven distribution of the fire, and their being bent serves to roll all your food to the middle where it gets burnt to a crisp on the outside while remaining raw inside. In short, they are totally unusable.
When we were first investigating the place, we had made some inquiry into whether we might bring our own grill. The manager gave me a tentative yes, without really thinking it through, provided that we kept it in the grill area. So after the disaster with the community grills, we wheeled ours out there, chained it to the fence with a bike lock and had our way with it.
Now, this is where the story gets interesting. The grill area is really just the outside edge of the fence which surrounds the pool, in the center of the courtyard. It can't be much more than 20 feet of fence, if it's even that much, and its cramped right next to a staircase which leads up to the second floor. We noticed that our aloof neighbors of southeastern European or northeastern African descent had their apartment situated right next to this small area. The area is littered with potted plants and at the time when all this was going on, there were also several bicycles standing on the fence. One of the community grills was right next to their front door, on the corner of the building, and another was at the corner of the fence, as I said, some 15-20 feet away. The area between them was completely occupied by our neighbor's stuff. As a result, we had to move some things to squeeze our grill in. We moved one or two of the potted plants a few inches to one side and moved one of the bikes a few inches to sit behind them. All in all, we hardly moved their stuff at all, and it was all still there and perfectly intact, and we were satisfied with the arrangement.
For the sake of brevity, I'll call the head of their household (a grave and unhappy looking man, perhaps in his early 60's) EF. The next night after we had put our grill out we were sitting outside the laundry room having a smoke, when through the pool fence we saw EF and one of his friends exit their apartment and begin speaking loudly in a language I'm not familiar with. Their tone, however, made it clear that they were complaining, possibly with the intent of being overheard. Even if the tone hadn't been clear, they began roughly shoving the plants and bikes around, as if in protest to their having been moved. At one point EF even shoved our grill around, and seemed infuriated to find that it was chained to the spot we had chosen. This is a communal area, mind you. If we had put our grill in some dude's back yard without asking, I would find that reaction totally justified, but as it was, I was dumbfounded.
That evening passed and the very next day we received a call from the manager, who told us we couldn't put our grill there. I protested that she had originally said we could, and in response she told me that the people who lived next to the grill area (EF and family) had complained that “the smoke from 3 grills would be too much” and would stink up their corner of the building. As if there could ever be a situation where all 3 were operating simultaneously. Most people don't grill like we do. For most it's an event to fire up the grill, especially in California (or so it seems to me). The complaint was obviously contrived out of pure spite. They simply wanted control of the area. They think of it as being theirs. I couldn't say as much to the manager, of course, who was simply doing her duty and taking all tenant complaints seriously. So we complied for the time being and moved our grill indoors, wheeling it out to the grill area when we wanted to use it (a good 60 yards or more).
This persisted for a few days, and during those days our conversations with GQ inevitably involved our cold war with EF. GQ actually knew the family quite well, as their children played together regularly. GQ seemed to take our side, complaining of how EF and family took over that area and how they weren't even supposed to keep their bikes there in the first place. We absorbed all her trash-talk and quietly formed an opinion about the man.
PART 2
After a few days we were sick of wheeling the grill in and out of our apartment, sick of the smell of it when it was indoors, and worried about the spots it would inevitably leave on the carpet (we had a damage deposit to think of, after all). We decided that we weren't particularly attached to the grill itself, it's a cheap model for a propane grill and we were bound to upgrade once we moved again. So we decided to ask the manager if we could officially donate it to the apartment complex and replace one of their worn out grills, thereby allowing us to continue to use it during our stay. She seemed very excited about the prospect, as did many of our other neighbors, who shared our low opinion of the community grills. And so it was; our grill replaced one of the old ones.
In addition to that, the whole arrangement brought to the manager's attention that EF was keeping the bikes along that fence - which was against the rules of the building. Apparently he had been close with the previous manager, who had allowed it, and our current manager had let the situation persist out of social inertia. So, after we had our grill situated, she talked to EF and told him he had to move his bikes down under the staircase in front of our apartment, where all other tenants kept theirs. There is still talk of a bike rack going out front, but GQ and others have noted that such talk has been ongoing for several years now without any action. At any rate, EF had to move the bikes and we had our grill.
I'd like to point out at this moment that my fiancee and I never breathed a word to the manager about the bikes. They didn't interfere with our goals in the least, they didn't take up much space and we would have been perfectly content to have them remain there. EF, however, had no way of knowing this, and from his point of view it surely seemed obvious that we had lodged a counter complaint against him in order to get our way with the grill. No such thing was true of course, but try explaining that to an angry, territorial man who thinks he is master of all he sees.
Naturally, we don't really care how he feels. He lodged a complaint against us in pure spite, even when we would have been content to share the space with all his belongings. We happened to get our way at his expense, and for that we have now become great demons in the eyes of EF and his family. We first picked up subtle signs when we noticed that M's friend (A, we'll call him), no longer came close to our side of the building. There would be times when they would be playing and M would run up to me to share some tidbit and A would hang back nervously, beckoning her to come back. On Halloween, A refused to take candy from us, and acted as though he had broken the rules by even speaking to us. We've also noted that neither EF of any of his extended family (who occupy some 3-4 apartments in this building) will so much as look at us, let alone respond to our greetings as they pass. We see them regularly. As I said, the staircase in front of our apartment leads to the parking lot, so whenever anyone wants to drive anywhere, they have a fair chance of bumping into us, as we sit out front and smoke quite often. When EF and family pass, their faces are downcast, their lips silent, their eyes aflame with anger. This has persisted for over a year now.
Furthermore, the situation seemed to have damaged our friendship with GQ, strangely enough. She no longer sits outside with us, I never see M anymore, except through the window, and though we still greet one another, we never talk anymore. GQ stands for Gossip Queen, which is definitely the title due her, and the best explanation we can come up with for this sudden change of attitude is that through all her side-taking and trash-talking, she somehow has projected her words onto us. Our best guess is that in her mind, we were active participants in, nay, the instigators of those conversations where she complained about how EF had taken the grill area over. Her child is playmates with the family's children, so there is some bond there. So once she had decided it was my fiancee and I who were doing the trash talking, she switched sides. I don't know if this is true, but as I said, it's our best guess. She doesn't associate with us anymore.
But... we grill almost every day. Even if we have to do it under the discontented glare of EF. Even without the pleasantly chatty company of GQ. It's a necessity to us.
Several things impress me about this situation. First is the obvious force of social inertia. EF staked his claim long ago, and though it was explicitly against the rules, his arrangement persisted, even in the absence of friendly management. Second is how easily we've been made into enemies of someone we know not at all. Perception truly is reality, and I doubt if any peace gesture or any amount of explanation could cure his attitude towards us. Third, is how deftly gossip infects a social situation. Merely expressing opinions on someone cause those opinions to become self-fulfilling prophecies. The damage it can do to even the most casual of relationships is profound.
Like I said, we're basically good people. We aren't going to weep over every person who has a malignant misapprehension of us, but we don't very well enjoy being disliked, even quietly. Especially when we sought nothing but to provide something good for everyone to use, namely a working grill. Several other tenants use it regularly, and all of them have eschewed the use of the remaining old grill. EF, however, refuses to use our grill, even though he is clearly welcome to it, and he cooks regularly on the old busted up grill which remains near to his door. I expect that behavior to endure, even after we relocate to a bigger place some time from now. We will leave our grill behind (that's the deal we made) but I would bet my milk money that he never touches it, and his family won't either.
People are funny.
PART 3
Some time after the first War of the Grill, the community grills were replaced, ours being one of them. They were either donated or thrown out, and no one thought to ask us if we wanted ours back. I'm not sure we would have, but the fact that nobody asked peeved us a little. We did donate it, so it was no longer our property, but it seems to me that if they were going to dispose of it anyway, they might as well extend the offer to return it to us. Even so, the new grills work fine and are a drastic improvement over the ones that were here when we moved in.
Funnily enough, we now have a second War of the Grill in quiet progress. Just upstairs and across the hall from the infamous EF lives a man we'll call J. J is an aging hippe/beach bum and spends the majority of his time sitting in his truck singing along to classic rock hits. He has illusions of becoming a famous singer, and I, as an avid music listener, can tell you that you won't be hearing from him any time soon.
We first met J when he came out from his apartment and jokingly said we were “smoking him out.” Now grills do tend to let off a bit of smoke from time to time, but there's nothing to be done about that, really. We apologized and explained that we grill every day because of a dietary preference for things that are delicious. He seemed to accept this and we went on to develop a passing acquaintance.
J is your typical middle-aged single guy, always has some new project on the horizon that's sure to be his big break. He is also of a type I have dealt with before who gives random things away in an effort to create an unspoken contract of bartering. He once gave us a DVD of some crappy b-movie (we did not ask if we could have it, he offered it to us) and then one time when I was headed out to pick up some food, he asked me to return the favor by stopping by Burger King for him. When I told him no, he acted as if I had acted unfairly to him.
This is typical of a type of hippie who gives unwanted garbage to un-solicitous recipients and then expects costly or necessary items to be given in return, as if all things are of equal value and the mere act of giving demands another in return. I subscribe to a different point of view, where my money is reserved to sustain my life and happiness and I give it to whom I choose, when I choose. That is my right for having earned it. When someone offers me the gift of something novel but useless I am predisposed to accept it, as it would likely end up in the trash if I didn't. If I find the item in question to be of no use or novelty to myself, it often still does end up in the trash.
After a series of these interactions, J returned an item I gave to him freely by leaving it next to our front door along with a note of thanks. It was a cup, one that we have many copies of, and I made it quite clear that it was his to keep. He thanked me at the time, but still returned it some time in the night. Since then, J has not spoken to us, and he casts begrudging glances in our direction whenever we are using the grill. Every time we get started, we hear him cough loudly (in the manner of someone protesting cigarette smoke in a public place) and violently shut his windows.
So again, we have become the enemies of someone we hardly know, and all because of another social force: unspoken agreements. The function of currency in human culture is to provide an objective basis of consensual reality to all exchanges of goods or services. The purpose is so that each party in a given exchange can measure the value of a product or service and assure that he is given something of precisely equal value, thus preventing either party from feeling as though they were treated unfairly. Hippies and beach bums often feel that money is the root of all evil, however I subscribe to the viewpoint of Ayn Rand when she states that money is the root of all GOOD. For more on that subject, one need merely page through Atlas Shrugged.
At any rate, we now are fighting a 2-front cold war with our neighbors, all centered on our obsessive use of the grill to produce delicious food.
And boy, I can't wait to have my own back yard again!
PART 4
One final player that I forgot to mention in the War of the Grill.
Living right next to the grill area is a woman we'll call CB. She's a bit of a shut-in, but for a time there we talked to her on a regular basis. You could tell she didn't spend a lot of time talking to people because whenever she did she literally couldn't shut up. You could probably put a piece of duct tape over her mouth and she'd still be sitting there going, "Mmmph-hmmph, mmm hmm phmph. Hmm-m-ph, mm-ph-hm-ph..."
She was an old New Yorker, and If you've ever met any New Yorkers, you know they all love to tell you what a privilege it is to be a New Yorker from New York, New York. New York! Suffice it to say, the woman was full of stories. You could say anything, and it would start her on a story. I came very close to testing this out one time. I figured I'd just start saying random words and see what came out of her mouth in response:
"Rocket Balls."
"Oh yeah, this one time back in New York there was a rocket..."
"Bean Friskies."
"In New York I used to feed my cat friskies..."
"Human Leavings."
"Yeah, when I left New York..."
You know the type, I'm sure.
But thankfully, my fiancee was with me, and when I'm around a lady I try to hold myself to a higher standard of behavior. (that's a little sarcasm, for you slower folks) So I held my tongue and listened to CB's insane ranting for weeks.
At this time, we had been using the grill regularly for months, and we had become accustomed to running out of propane at the worst possible times. Being enterprising folk, we decided to buy our own tank to supplement the one provided. That way, I wouldn't have to drive the 10 blocks to Ralph's while Stephanie waited by the cold grill.
On one particular evening, another of the locals informed us that the apartment complex was going to stop refilling the propane whenever it was empty. Instead, they decided that one tank per grill every three months should be plenty.
Naturally, my fiancee & I were enraged. It seemed unfair to us that we should be provided with a grill but not propane enough to use it as we please. If they didn't want to pay for upkeep, why not just get a charcoal grill?
So we continued with our regular pattern until the tank ran out, and then we began bringing our own down there every time. This was around the same time CB was still talking to us, and she took notice that we had supplied our own propane.
Let me pause to say that, for some reason, CB has it in her addled mind that a propane tank is an extremely dangerous, fragile & volatile object. If we ever forgot to close the valve on the tank, she would rush out of her house and remind us (implying that she had been watching us the whole time, which is creepy). When she talked to us and we were smoking she would ask if it's safe to smoke around "those things".
Now, I'm no idiot, I know propane is a highly flammable gas and that the tank is under extreme pressure. HOWEVER, I am also aware of the great efforts that have gone into the design of the safety features on even the cheapest of propane tanks. I saw the Mythbusters fire at one with a 50-caliber machine gun, and they got about the strength of reaction as one does when one blows up a balloon and releases it into the air without tying the end. There was a release of pressure, the tank moved about a bit (it's a lot heavier than a balloon, so no, it didn't fly around breaking stuff) but once the pressure equalized, the threat was gone. All that was left was a slight stench. Therefore, I do not have any reason to fear them. They can be dangerous, yes, under the right circumstances. But the chance of those circumstances arising accidentally is slim at best.
To return to the story...
After CB had noticed us bringing our own propane, we didn't hear from her for a while. Then one particular night, after we had finished dinner, a knock comes on the door.
CB is standing there, in her nightgown (the only thing I have ever seen her wear), and she asks if she can borrow the tank, as the communal one has run out.
Now, I don't like loaning things to people who I don't know very well. A wise man once said "Don't ever loan anything you care to see again." But I'm not uncharitable, and as CB and us shared a mutual frustration, I reluctantly agreed. AT THAT POINT, CB had the audacity to tell me that "the word around the apartment" was that we were "using up" all the propane and then bringing our own, and that "some people" thought this was unfair. F)(&# YOU, WOMAN! I already agreed to let you use MY PROPERTY, but you just had to stick in your two cents about why I SHOULD let you use my property. Like it would be unfair of me to refuse. Like I somehow owe the community for using public property.
This is not a communist country. We don't give and take from one another according to need. We earn what we have and use it as we see fit here in America. So, In my opinion, her "justification" of why I should loan her my propane tank was not only unnecessary, it was totally illogical.
Take this analogy:
Say there is a bench in the park. It is a public bench, and any who wish to sit on it may do so, unless it is occupied. My fiancee & I liked to sit in the park, and we used the bench when it was available. If the bench was occupied, we would still like to sit in the park, so we would bring our own chairs. CB has just told me that the bench is occupied, but she wants to sit in the park, and since I have my own chairs, it's only fair that I should loan them to her.
You see the flaw in the logic there? How is it my problem that the public amenity, controlled by public office, is not available to her? I am aware that the amenity's availability is limited, so I took measures on my own to ensure that I still had access to it. If she desires access to the amenity when it is unavailable, she should take similar measures. If she ASKS ME to loan her something out of the kindness of my heart, I will do so without a second thought. But don't TELL ME that I ought to, because that is clearly false.
Am I getting across how angry this made me?
I am, as I said, not an uncharitable person. I give gifts & favors freely, so long as they are solicited in good faith, and solicited AS GIFTS AND FAVORS. But don't ask for something of mine and tell me that I owe it to you because of the feelings of the community. If I ever owe ANYONE ANYTHING it is because I made an agreement to engage in an equitable exchange. No one will tell me that I SHOULD share what is mine because others desire it. That's called Communism.
So...
I loaned her the propane tank & sat around being angry about it. She returned it as promised, and she didn't use too much. No harm done.
But she hasn't really spoken to us since, except in passing. I'm sure this is because she was aware of my anger over the issue, and decided not to confront it, for which I am thankful. In the long run, it's just not a battle worth fighting.
After that, we started bringing out own propane all the time so that "some people" wouldn't think we were being unfair. Again, not worth it.
So we grill on, providing for ourselves. And hopefully, one day soon, we'll have a spacious back yard and a big nice grill of our own, and all the Grill Wars will be over.
I just want some meat, people!