- Malcolm Smith
In this week’s Stranger, Christopher Frizzelle investigates a neighbor’s suicide, the science on pot-induced psychosis, and the sometimes terrifying anomie of urban living:
Six months ago, my boyfriend and I were watching a movie in our apartment when he looked up and said, “Something’s wrong.” A moment later, he was pressed up against the front door, listening and whispering, “Something crazy’s happening. Don’t open the door. Something crazy’s happening.”
I listened through the door, and he was not wrong: Something crazy was happening. It sounded like a lovers’ quarrel—shrieking woman, some man’s voice, sudden crashes, doors slamming—and then it became clear that more than one man was involved. The male voices were calm, but the woman’s screams smeared into the air, punctuated by adamant, half-heard declarations. Junkies wailing in distress in the hallway wouldn’t be entirely unheard of, considering we live at the intersection of two busy streets on Capitol Hill, where junkies wail about their problems all the livelong night, but we’re on the sixth floor, and anyway it sounded less like junkies wailing and more like a kindergarten being slaughtered. My boyfriend was worried about us stepping out into the middle of something we didn’t want to be in the middle of, but whatever it was, it sounded like at least one woman was being tortured, and are you going to be the guy who stayed in your apartment while your neighbor was being tortured?
Of course not.
So I vetoed my boyfriend and opened the door.
