Davy: The Resident Olfactory Hazard

If you were asked to cross a homeless Santa with a very stubborn pine tree air freshener, you'd get Davy. He’s our very own aging hippie, identifiable from a block away by his constant companions: a faded bandana, a beat-up guitar, and an unforgettable aura.

Davy subscribes to the extreme minimalist school of personal hygiene, which is to say he hasn't had a meaningful encounter with soap, shampoo, or a shower head in, well, years. He runs on a strict biannual clothing rotation, changing his ensemble only when the season absolutely demands it—and we all suspect he just pulls the exact same unwashed outfit from last year out of his crusty trunk. He views clothes as a secondary skin layer, sleeping in them nightly. They are merely a vessel for his unique, powerful scent profile.

The man knows he stinks, too! His counter-offensive involves spraying cologne, which doesn't cover the smell so much as it creates a chemical weapon fusion—a pungent, floral-sweat-and-old-socks cocktail that attacks anyone in the hallway around his room. Since his stinky sanctuary is right next to the second first-floor bathroom, dodging the "Davy Zone" is a high-level resident skill.

Davy sleeps with his radio blaring and his door cracked open. It’s unclear if this is a defensive measure to ward off the monsters that might live inside his crust-cave, or if he's issuing a challenge, daring any poor soul to enter the room that smells like a forgotten gym bag full of expired patchouli oil.

When he walks, he has a pronounced wide-legged, bow-legged swagger. This may be a conscious style choice, or it may be because his shorts are permanently starched by years of unknown crust. Honestly, it’s probably both.

But the moment that truly defines Davy came just a week into my residency. While trying to ignore the Stench of the Ancients from the adjacent bathroom, I overheard his call to a doctor’s office:

Davy: "Yeah, hi... I need an appointment. It's about these... knats in my pants."

Knats. In his pants. WTF! The man lives in filth so profound, entire micro-ecosystems are setting up shop in his clothing. And yet, he's a resident here. Just another day in the house that asks, "What The Fiasco?"

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WTF : MEET THE NEIGHBORS

Sal: The Crooked-Nosed King of the Backyard 

You ask, “Who’s Sal?” Well, Sal is living proof that if you mash a stubborn walnut with a very slow steamroller, you get a 73-year-old resident of this fine establishment. He shuffles along, permanently bent at a 45-degree angle, supported by a cane that’s likely older than his knowledge of modern appliances. He sports the distinguished look of black hair with the gray trying desperately to escape, and a magnificent big, crooked nose that looks like it lost a bar fight in 1982. 

 Sal is supposedly a former pizza-making artisan from an Italian background—a culinary maestro who, he claims, was an "auto mechanic" back in his day. Yet, this alleged wizard of the wrench doesn't possess the mental bandwidth to figure out why the refrigerator door blocks the bathroom. He lacks the common sense to avoid stepping on a crack, yet somehow claims to have rebuilt an engine blindfolded.

  His most treasured possession is a large, white van that achieved permanent retirement years ago. He keeps it registered and insured, not because he plans to drive it to the grocery store, but because it's his ticket to keep it parked in the yard, acting as a rusty, mobile storage unit. He constantly blames its failure on Lenny and his hoodlum bunch of friends with zero evidence. When I suggested that insuring a dead vehicle was a foolish way to spend money he clearly doesn't have, he just gave me a look that said, "You clearly don't understand the sacred duty of vehicular surveillance."

 While the rest of us pathetic normal folk sit in lawn chairs, Sal prefers his fortress of solitude. He sits inside the van, perpetually smoking and drinking beer, using the vehicle’s elevated height to act as a kind of backyard security camera. He monitors the backyard parking area with the same intense, suspicious energy Big Earl applies to the front. Leave anything unattended and consider it lost—either Sal will take possession of it for "safekeeping," or he'll complaint bitterly about its existence, depending on which mood suits his particular brand of daytime misery.

 Now, for his one shining utility: garbage duty. Twice a week, Sal handles the garbage pails like a grizzled veteran completing a highly dangerous mission, and he makes sure every single person in the house knows he's doing it, unbidden and unthanked. He’s desperate to be helpful, to the point of becoming so utterly annoying that you want to pay him to stop. He wants everyone to feel desperately sorry for him while he's busy being an absolute nosey body, injecting his two cents of nonsense into every conversation. 

 The Package Fiasco:  But the true pet peeve, the one that unites the 20 grown men in this house in a collective, daily cry of despair, is his mail service. Sal literally waits for the mailman. He then sorts through the mail, acting as an unauthorized, highly suspicious postal inspector, often pausing to read everyone’s mail before he hand-delivers the mail to the first-floor residents.

 Time after time, I've told him to LEAVE MY MAIL IN THE MAILBOX AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS! —a plea echoed by nineteen other increasingly frayed gentlemen. The climax of this absurdity came when my package went missing. Tracked as "delivered," it had vanished into the ether. After an intense house-wide search, the package turned up the next day, right in Sal's room. I practically blew a gasket. "I've been looking for that! Why do you have it?" He just looked up with a perfectly innocent, crooked-nosed expression and said, "I have your back! I didn't want anything to happen to it." I yelled, "You have my back? You tried to 'have my back' by making it impossible for me to find my own property! 

I don't want your back, Sal! I don't want your front, your sides, or your unsolicited postal services! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY STUFF AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!"

 You’d think a moment like that would stick, but no. He has the exact same fight with everyone. He's been "warned" by the landlord's enforcer (Big Earl, of course), who threatened to toss him out if he didn't stop. Unfortunately, Big Earl is much better at being an intimidator than an actual enforcer—he shuts people up, but the Sal problem persists, ensuring a fresh supply of absurdity for all.

WTF : WHAT THE FIASCO 

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