Rant: My Last 10 Days Make Me Want To Hurt Someone

[tlombard]

Nothing really bad actually happened to me personally but I still really, really want to hurt someone.

First:
On the night of NLCS Game 5 there was what was supposed to be a bachelor party. Poorly planned at the last minute of course and planned by someone that I've never met before but not my choice since it isn't my wedding. The wedding isn't even until just after Christmas so there was no need to throw it together in under a week during October. The guy insisted that it be based around Game 5 though. So when nobody would pay over $100 for a ticket to the game from Stubhub the planner decided we should go to 360 at the top of the Hilton. We found out about this Wednesday and didn't get the details until Thursday... the day before.

In order to get enough people to reserve space, the guy planning it brought his wife, another guy brought his wife and then the fiance was there and so was the bachelor's sister who is married to one of the guys. No longer a bachelor party no matter what he says. Then he collected $85 each from everyone and told us that we were covered from 7pm to 9pm and to order whatever we wanted to eat and drink. Him and another guy (I had never met either of them and actually never even met the other that night) proceed to drink Maker's Mark the entire time. The women were ordering $60 bottles of wine and had a steady stream of appetizers flowing through in front of them (at a minimum of $14 each). Meanwhile I was hanging with another two guys and we were drinking 16oz beers that cost a whopping $5.75. What the guy planning it failed to tell anyone is that it wasn't all you can eat or drink. It was $1000 minimum tab to reserve space. So he collected a grand from us and then started the tab. Everyone else was under the impression that if we all ordered $200 worth of food and drinks then we got a deal. Nope. For every dollar someone ordered over the $85 they put in, that is one less dollar someone else can spend of their $85. So basically I spent $50 of my $85 at the most. I wasn't too upset at the time because normally I buy drinks for friends anyway but then I realized that the two guys I was hanging with the entire time spent even less than me. They spent maybe $40 of their $85. So the three of us spent $255 and only ordered $130 worth of stuff at the most. We subsidized about $125 of the others drinking and eating. If I get taken then that is one thing but doing that to my friends really sends me over the edge. So that is the first person I want to punch.

Second:
A good friend of mine moved here about four or five years ago. She lives in an apartment in Lake St. Louis and there are four units in her building. She is divorced with two young girls and lives on the second floor. Across from her lives a truck driver who is gone four weeks at a time and only home about 75% of the time. So a little over a month ago someone moved in the apartment under her and right after he did she got a call from a friend of hers who works at the Lake St. Louis PD. He was fresh out of jail for raping a woman and on parole. Well, she had been sexually assaulted before moving here so immediately her PTSD kicks in and she can't sleep, etc. The leasing office said there was nothing they could do and there were no other apartments she could move into and it would be $3000 to break her lease.

A week or two later her dog wanted out at 3am and when she opened her door she found Mr. Rapey sitting at the top of the steps just a foot from her door. He said something about being clausterphobic, looked around her into her apartment and then left. She put the dog on the balcony with a training pad and didn't sleep the rest of the night. She then brought that up to the leasing office and they did nothing.

At this point I am pretty sure something bad is going to happen and was worried. Since May she has been randomly beaten up by a guy on Wash Ave who mistook her for the guy that just beat him up. Sucker punched her as she was walking down the street and smashed her head into the wall. Then a month or two later she got hit by a car while out for a jog on a road with no sidewalk. If something bad is going to happen, it is going to happen to her.

So another week or so goes by and the night of NLDS Game 5 (yes, I remember things by what sporting event was happening) I was out drinking and I got a text from her saying that Mr. Rapey was having a party and they were all loud and drunk. She was scared and thought she should call in a noise complaint. I suggested that she not make him mad and she just took the girls and stayed at another friend's house for the rest of the weekend. Of course someone else complained and Mr. Rapey confronted her convinced that she called in the complaint on him.

Fast forward to last Tuesday and I'm minding my own business at work when she shows up behind me and starts telling me the story of what happened the night before. The truck driver had just gotten back in town a couple of days before. At 1am he called her on the phone and told her to get the girls and lock themselves in her room until she heard from him again and there was no time to explain. When he gave her the all clear she stepped out front and Mr. Rapey was in the back of a cop car. Thankfully he had heard something outside and when he looked through his peep hole, Mr. Rapey was trying to break into her apartment by picking her lock so he called her and then called the police and then stopped him. Mr. Rapey was drunk and told the cops that she has been flirting with him since he moved in (she has avoided him) and that it was OK because wouldn't mind what he was doing. I am extremely thankful that Mark (the truck driver) was in town and heard something because if not there is no telling what would have happened to her and the girls. It makes me sick to think about it.

So of course I want to do worse than hurt Mr. Rapey but won't have that chance. He will be serving the final few years of his sentence for the rape and who knows what for trying to break into her apartment that night. He would probably not be alive right now if he had gotten out. Her father is an ex-Navy SEAL and as soon as he heard he was in the car on the way to town to take her to gun safety classes and buy her a gun. If the guy hadn't been denied bail, I'm pretty sure her father might have settled things himself had he been able to find him.

And because it is time for me to leave work and I'm tired of typing, I'm going to leave it at just these two for now. The other two situations aren't nearly as bad. They are just relationship/family problems of friends that I got dragged into talking about... a lot. It was something else every freaking night. I thought I had it past me Friday night when I went out for a few with a happily married friend who has a young daughter. Well, even that didn't work out when I called him out for chatting up another girl we work with an aweful lot and being a bit flirtatious when he showed me his hand and wasn't wearing his wedding ring and said things haven't been going well on the home front. Not what I wanted to hear and I'll probably end up in the middle of that one too.

Anyway, that has been my last 10 days or so.

[jim]

That sucks. Number 1 would piss me off to No end. Despite money burning a hole in my pocket I hate to be taken advantage of.

[slide_into_first]

I am surprised the police believed the truck driver and arrested the sex offender. His criminal record must have been well known to them, which means the apartment manager is an a hole for not helping her.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

This might be a different topic, but can sex offenders really ever be cured? Isn't that like trying to cure 'the gay'

[heyzeus]

I'm glad Mr. Rapey is going to jail, but she should move. If the apartment manager gives her static, she needs to have a lawyer call them.

[tlombard]

This guy clearlyl can't be 'cured' of whatever ails him. She will be moved before he gets out in a few years. There is absolutely no way he is getting out before finishing his original sentence which had two or three years left thankfully. If by some chance he might get out before she moves, she is moving immediately. There is no way she is going to be where he knows where to find her. I still think she has the grounds to force the management company to let her out of her lease (she complained that she was in danger multiple times and they refused to help her before he actually tried something) and she should move anyway but the girls don't know what actually happened and she doesn't want to uproot them from their school and friends and everything if she doesn't have to.

If something bad is going to happen, it will happen to her though. She would probably move in next to a serial killer at the next place. Just this summer she was beat up by a guy on Wash Ave and hit by a car while jogging.

She was walking to her car after leaving a place on Wash Ave and some guy sucker punched her in the face and smashed her head into a wall while nobody stopped him. Apparently he was drunk and had just got his butt kicked by another guy and when he got up he mistook her for the guy that put the beating on him and attacked her.

The car was actually her fault but still a freak thing. She was jogging on a road with no sidewalk which has very, very little traffic one night. A rabbit darted out right in front of her and it startled her. She veered just a couple of feet to the left and got hit but a 16 year old boy who was on his way to a friend's house to play video games. Thankfully it was a male because no male can drive past a female jogger without checking her out. He was able to slam on his brakes and knocked her down but she was OK other than some brusing. Then she had to calm him down so he could give her a ride home. He was freaking out thinking that he was going to jail so she had to convince him he wasn't. Then he was freaking out because he had never hit anyone and didn't know what to do. She had to convince him that it was a good thing that he had never hit anyone. Then he was freaking out about his mom killing him so she made him call his mom so she could talk to her... and she had to calm the mother down and convince her that the kid didn't do anything wrong. He wasn't speeding. He slammed on the brakes. He didn't flee the scene. There was no way the kid could have avoided her. The mom still wanted her to go to the hospital and offered to pay any medical bills but that wasn't necessary thankfully. She kept the kid calm long enough to give her a ride home and that was that other than being sore the next day.

There are more stories but I can't even remember them all. I wouldn't even believe half of them if someone I didn't know told me the story but I have witnessed enough to know that she isn't lying. Crazy stuff happens to her constantly. I don't even know how she is alive still.

[Popeye_Card]

She was walking to her car after leaving a place on Wash Ave and some guy sucker punched her in the face and smashed her head into a wall while nobody stopped him.

Is she a ticket broker?

[tlombard]

Thankfully she isn't. If she was then she would end up getting beat up and robbed every game with the way things work for her.

And if she were a ticket broker then I wouldn't be able to be friends with her anyway so I would have never known the rest of this stuff.

[Gashouse]

Aren't there laws requiring notification everyone within a certain radius of a registered sex offender moving into the neighborhood? There is in MN, so I guess it could be different in MO. Lucky the friend clued her in to at least be wary and extra lucky for help from the truck driver.

[tlombard]

I have no clue what the laws are in Missouri regarding notifying the neighborhood. I don't think there is a requirement to do so but I could be wrong. I think it is up to people to check periodically if they really want to know.

I spent some time trying to find information on the laws regarding where he could or could not live and was really disappointed to find out that all of the laws only pertain to places where children gather like schools and playgrounds. There is nothing in Missouri to limit him from living next door to families. Of course this guy's crime wasn't comitted against a child, he needs to be kept away from all women which means you might as well let him rot in prison.

I still think she should have had a lawyer get involved and argue the case that as an apartment complex with children living in it, all common areas were spaces where children congregate in her attempt to get out of her lease. I figure that was her best shot initially at getting them to cave but who knows how much that would have cost compared to the $3000 to break the lease and if it failed then she would have really been out of options. $3000 is not a small sum of money to a single mother of two who doesn't get a ton of child support and makes maybe $30k/year at the most. I just wish I had the $3000 laying around so that I could have given it to her (without needing it back) and avoided the rest of the stress and mess.