I was trying to get some work done on Lugnuts for Brains, my long-neglected novel and a work I consider the perfect literary foil to Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, when I heard what I thought were female cats in heat fighting with an oxygen tank and a whoopee cushion.

But it was only a lone troubadour dressed in black tights and a krazy-quilt patterned smock. A black beret covered his eyebrows, while his eyes were hidden by a pair of very dark horn-rimmed spectacles. He was thoughtfully strumming a small plastic children's guitar that seemed to be missing three of its six nylon strings.

As I continued to work, he ran through some off-key approximation of "Faithfully" by Journey, as well as "Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow.

Until he gave himself away by launching into "Chevy Van" by Sammy Johns, I was loath to admit that the awful wailing whose existence I hadn't been able to let my mind believe was "singing" actually happened to be coming from Citizen Jim.

As he got started on "You and Me Against the World" by Helen Reddy, my next door neighbors, who thought nothing of playing a song like "Bungle in the Jungle" 50 times in a row on their car stereos at two in the morning, began cursing at Citizen Jim, ordering him to "Shut the fuck up or you'll get the dogs started!"

Too late: every canine in the neighborhood had begun moaning and howling. Then Mister Meme let loose with the low, tortured yowl of a cat under a dumpster during a hurricane.

Citizen Jim could not be swayed from his serenading, however, and continued to "sing":

Remember when the circus came to town
How you were frightened by the clown,
Wasn't it nice to be around someone that you knew,
Someone who was big and strong and looking out for you?

Even as gunshots rang out from the windows of the apartment building next door and strings of firecrackers thrown at his feet by the neighborhood children started exploding, Citizen Jim kept his eyes squeezed shut and his chin tilted toward my open window:

You and me against the world,
Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world
And for all the times we've cried I always felt that God—

Just then, my phone rang, and Jim stopped in mid-verse.

"Goddamnit, Stimpy!" Citizen Jim yelled. "I'm down here trying to sing my heart out to you and—"

"Hush!" I said, and slammed the window shut.

Within fifteen seconds, Jim was scrambling up the stairs to my apartment. He burst through the door and snatched the phone out of my hand. "Good-bye!" he shouted into the mouthpiece, and punched the "talk" button.

"You make it very damned hard to show you my love," he told me, and smashed his little guitar over my head.

As I lay on the floor holding the top of my skull, weeping, I whispered, "I'm sorry."

"Good! You should be!"

"Are you hungry?" I asked. "Thirsty?"

"Well, I guess I am a little hungry and thirsty and who wouldn't be with those hillbillies out there shooting and cussing like the Hatfields and McCoys. They don't know anything about love, I guess! And neither do you!"

"I'm sorry I broke your guitar," I said, and got to my feet. I was a little unsteady, but I tried to hug Citizen Jim.

He pulled away violently, smacking blindly at my arms and face. "Enough with the love! And I don't need that damned guitar, anyway," he said, and grabbed the pencil I had stuck through my ponytail at the back of my head. "But now I gotta start all over! Shit!"

Holding the pencil like a microphone, Citizen Jim began singing.

You and me against the world,
Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world,
When all the others turn their backs and walked away,
You can count on me to stay. . .