More of the gift that keeps on giving

Steph was leaving the house today and locked the front door, which was open, as he left.  Our ever-friendly neighbour (the big muscly tattooed psuedo-tough guy mentioned in "Looking at my life through someone else's eyes") was coming back from the store across the street and got very verbally abusive when he realized Steph had a) locked the front door and b) had no intention of opening it for him, forcing him to bang on the door to get let in.  A generous amount of swearing and arm gestures.  Steph snorted when he told me the story.  Wasn't going to reward him for not carrying his keys by opening the door for him.  He needs to understand that the door is supposed to be locked, like the landlord AND the cops told him.

He is jovial about the whole thing.  Me, not so much.

I know that he enjoys dealing with big guys who think when they see him that they have an advantage over him because he's 5'7" in his shoes that he'll be easy to intimidate.  As a fifth-dan black belt in jiu-jitsu with a specialty in edged weapons (both using them, and taking them away from people), he has taught more than a few people that it is a serious mistake to underestimate him physically.

I watched him one night smile at someone giving him the gears at a bar, who outweighed him by probably two hundred pounds and towered over him by more than a foot, who decided it would be fun to teach the little guy a little lesson.  Steph brought him to a choking, coughing, blubbering mess, forehead to the floor on his knees, without breaking a sweat and maintaining an extreme economy of movement.  My wasband is the kind of guy who pulls the "I'm going to break your fingers when I shake your hand" kind of crap, and told me ruefully that he couldn't use his hand for two or three days when they had a handshaking episode.  Steph could literally, easily, kill someone without too much effort on his part.  It gives him a boatload of mostly-justified confidence.  

When I'm with him, I'm not afraid of anything.

It's when I'm home alone that I'm concerned about.

I've already sent an email to the property manager, but it's gone two hours since I sent it and followed it up with a voicemail, and I haven't heard back.  They've been trying to evict these people because they've caused a substantial amount of damage, tenants (including us) have complained about them, and the property manager's office was recently told they were moving back to Hungary.  I think they dropped the whole court procedure, thinking it was unnecessary work.  

I can't seem to make him understand that I don't regard this as a peacock-y thing for territory or position.  He keeps telling me, they're Hungarian, they've grown up in a different culture, where there's no innocent until proven guilty, you're supposed to be intimidated by the police or a show of dominance by someone at the head of another clan, and now that they've seen I'm not, they're trying to figure out another way to dominate me because they regard me as the clan leader.

I feel threatened - not in that I think any of them would try to hurt me, but there's no doubt in my mind that none of them would have any difficulty being verbally abusive, either by yelling at me in Hungarian, or, as this guy did when he was standing behind the cops last Friday, F**K YOU, F**K YOU, F**K YOU BOTH.

I'm not interested in living scared.  That's why my marriage broke up. And right now I can't afford to come up with first and last month's rent all at once in order to move.

Is it red wine o'clock yet?