please don’t be my neighbor

July 29, 2008 12:35 PM  (go back to main view)

please dont be my neighbor

A year ago I lived in a place I was pretty sure was hell. My apartment in the Five Cities was a bit of a for lack of a better word a half way house for lunatics. There were several people that had been there so long that I’m pretty sure they had built the walls around them, and 90% of them were unpleasent. Like the butch ladies down the way who looked like truck drivers and constantly sexually harrassed my roommate and I and one night dumped our laundry onto the floor of the wash room because they said we “stomped” past their house. Bitch please, when these heffers would walk by our place, shit would fall off the walls. Don’t be cute.

There was a random assortment of weirdos. The crazy old bat next door who called the cops on us one night for watching the news and reading. (really) The deaf old lady on the other side of us that watched her television until 4 in the morning just as loud as it would go. The pedophile looking guy I called the Rocket Man because he kept talking to me about model rockets one day at the pool. He was later arrested for God only knows what one night but it had something to do with his army of dead cars. There was the various crackhead families with far too many children that would move in for a few months and then move out under the cover of darkness. I remember one named Melissa the most because she had a Pitsburg Steelers tattoo and would annoy me at the pool. There was the anti social 30 year old guy that I finally made talk to us because he seemed “normal.” He wasn’t. He tried to run me down with his Hyundai after I told him that he’d gotten screwed on buying said car.

Not to mention my landlords were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Which no offense, but when you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness you don’t want to be Witnessed to. Please stop inviting me to church or whatever it is you guys go to.

So when I met my boyfriend last year and we decided to move in together I was glad. I’d been living in that nuthouse for a year by myself after Jen Wa moved back East. I honestly don’t think many happy things happened in that place and I was honestly glad to be rid of it. Especially when found what we thought was our DREAM HOUSING SITUATION.

We now live in a cluster of about 7 beach cottages. It’s pet friendly. The landlord is largely indifferent to what you do there as long as she gets the rent on time. Paint, garden, build shit, do whatever, because she honestly doesn’t really care and its making her property look better. When we moved in we knew everyone except for two houses. One of our favorite couples we were friends with lived two doors down. Our neighbor next door is an old Hippie and is a ton of fun. The couple across the driveway are fun and quiet and mostly keep to theirselves. And we thought the lady in the middle house liked us, since she’d had us over many times.

Sure the place is the size of a matchbox. The bathroom sink leaks. We have zero cabinet space. The carpet is ugly. My bathroom is small enough to qualify for a registered torture chamber. But we have a huge yard. A fire pit. And we had our friends living around us which is what made it great. When one of your closest friends and wine drinking buddies is two doors down, the fact that your drive way is a dirt hole infested with raccoons doesn’t seem that bad.

But things change and here we are seven months later. My wine drinking friend and her long time boyfriend up and flew the coop to their new house they bought. And while I’m happy for them, its odd how that could upset the balance of the community. But when they moved out another aquaintence moved in to their house. D is a friend of The Boyfriend’s old roommate. He moved in and really subscribes to the “open door” policy of our area. As in if your door is open, he’ll just come over.

He refuses to get cable so on a semi regular basis he stops by our house to watch ours. Seemingly during SportsCenter. Or whenever I fire up a dvd of Weeds or whatever. He always shows up with a bag of beers for himself and just sort of makes himself at home.

My boyfriend and I are both pretty much pushovers so we don’t really say much but it is annoying. One night he stopped by on the way down to the post office. He watched an episode of Weeds with us and then walked to the post office and God knows where. Then at 9:30 he shows back up because our screen door was open and we were still watching TV. He stayed for at least a six pack before heading home.

I think the time I came closest to just chasing him with a hatchet was a couple of weeks ago. It was Sunday morning and we were going to be leaving town but I didn’t have to get up early. So at 7:30 I was still snoozin. My boyfriend got up to smoke a cigarette and boom there’s D.

“Hey are you guys watching golf in there?”

WHAT? ITS SEVEN THIRTY IN THE MORNING ON SUNDAY. IM ASLEEP IN MY BED. NAKED!

My boyfriend explains no we weren’t watching golf and that I was still asleep. D asks if he can watch a little golf before he heads into work at his main job because he didn’t want to go down to the local bar to watch it because he was afraid of being put to work (he works there like once a week). My boyfriend tells him we’re leaving town as soon as I get out of bed and shoos him off.

I mean this guy has walked in on us having arguments with no regard to the fact that we’re YELLING AT EACH OTHER. Its like he’s oblivious.

I also recently found out my neighbor that lives between D and K the Hippie doesn’t like us. And that she’s got a raging drinking problem. I had no idea that she didn’t like us as we’ve always been social and have invited her to many many of our parties and she always invites us to hers. I just recently found out those glasses of water she’s drinking aren’t water at all, but vitamin V, so I don’t know. Retirement does weird things to people.

I realize that you don’t have to like or be friends with your neighbors but it was a lot more fun when we were…