THE LOVE THY NEIGHBOR CHRONICLES - PART V

 CHAPTER 5 – THE CONCLUSION

The neighbor girl vanished in the weeks that followed her verbal altercation with my roommate Sara.  We hypothesized potential explanations.  Perhaps she was so embarrassed about her behavior that she made herself scarce, unable to find the right words to apologize.  The other, and more likely scenario, was that she had drowned alone in her room face down in a puddle of vomit.  Either way, we were thankful for the reprieve from her special brand of alcohol-induced fury – although in all fairness, at this point I personally had yet to see anything but the back of her head. 

As weeks turned into months, the neighbor’s absence became more and more suspect.  One afternoon, I noticed that her door was slightly ajar.  I didn’t think much of it until Sara got home and mentioned it as well.  “There seems to be a funny smell coming from her apartment,” she said. “I think we should go make sure she’s okay.”

I told her she was insane.  There were only three things we knew about this woman; 1) that she had a substance abuse problem, 2) that she struggled with the opening and closing of doors, and 3) she didn’t care much for us.  I felt the need to check on her well being as strongly as I did the need to stick my head into a turbine engine.    

“But what if she’s dead?” Sara asked.  

“Well then playing Nancy Drew isn’t going to bring her back to life, is it?” I told her.  When she expressed her displeasure with that comment, I promised her that we would get involved once the smell of human decay became too much to bare – but not a moment sooner.

 “Well, I’m going over there to make sure she’s okay,” she said, “So you can either be a man and come with me, or you can hide in here like a coward.”  I compromised by going with her like a man while hiding in the corner like a coward. 

Sara lightly knocked on the opened door. “Hello?” she projected into open apartment.  We both listened carefully to hear if there was any movement coming from within, but there was none.  She knocked again, this time a little more loudly, and said “Is everything okay in there? Your door is open.”  Again – silence.  Sara looked back at me in my hiding spot and shrugged.  “Should we go in there?” She asked. 

Suddenly we heard a stomping noise coming from within their apartment.   Before we knew it, the neighbor’s door was slammed shut in Sara’s face, her hand still on the knob.   The action was punctuated by the sound of the door being locked, quickly followed by the dead bolt being pushed into place.  

“Well I guess she’s okay then,” Sara said.  

Months passed, and Sara decided to move back into Manhattan to be closer to her job. One morning while I was at work, she stopped by to pick up the last of her belongings.  While packing, she sent me the following text messages;

“Came home to pick up my stuff.  Guess who’s in our apartment…the neighbor.   Also, I want to take the shower curtain, so let me know when you get a replacement and I’ll come get it.”
 

It was classic Sara – known for burying the lead.  I sent her a flurry of texts demanding she explain how our mortal enemy ended up inside the apartment.  She explained that when she opened the front door to the building, she found the neighbor woman sitting on the foyer staircase. “Oh hello,” she said to Sara as she approached. “I live upstairs, and I seemed to have locked myself out.”  Sara was taken aback.  Here she was, face to face with the very same woman who had called her a cunt in this very same spot several months before, and the woman seemed to have absolutely no recollection of it.  Furthermore, she was alarmingly sober, which seemed strangely out of character.  Much to even her own surprise, Sara asked the woman if she’d like to come in while she waited for our landlord’s office to open.  She accepted. 

I made Sara list everything the harpy had done while in my home.  “Well, she sat on the couch while I packed.  I gave her a glass of water, which she drank.  And to go ahead and answer your follow up question, I’ve gone ahead and washed the glass and mixed it in with the others so that you will never know which one she used.“  As Sara finished packing, the neighbor thanked her and said goodbye, saying that she was going to see if the office had opened yet.  “The kicker,” Sara told me, “was that she told me that it was a shame we never got to know each before I moved out.”  Unbeknown to our Doctor Jekyll, we had come to know her drunken alter ego quite well.  

A few days later, I pulled up Facebook on my computer.  It took me a few seconds to realize that it had auto-signed into someone else’s account.  It took just a few more to realize that Sara had conveniently left out the part of her story where she let the neighbor girl use my computer, where she logged into Facebook and forgot to log out.  My immediate thought was to pull up her pictures so that I could finally see the eyes of the woman who had terrorized us from across the hall.   But of her 40-some profile photos, not one of them offered an unobscured view of her face.  I was living next door to Wilson from Home Improvement.   Then I started to realize the plethora of horrible things I could do to her account.  It was as if I was given a gift from Jesus with a card that read, “Punish this wicked woman, my son.” I spent weeks trying to devise the perfect revenge.  My friend Natalie suggested I set all of her settings to private, leaving her to wonder why no one comments on her statuses any more.  My friend Russ suggested that I photoshop each and every one of her profile pictures to make her look fat.  “Make sure to get the arms,” he told me.  “Women hate fat arms.”

And then several nights ago, I realized what I had to do.  I worked late one evening, and as I walked home in the dark night, I noticed the silhouette of familiar figure hunched over the front door of my buidling.  My heart started racing, realizing that I was only moments away from finally meeting the neighbor woman.  Confrontation seemed to be inevitable.  Panic set in as I got closer, and I decided to duck into another door well in the hopes that by some miracle she would just disappear.  I checked after a minute or so, but sadly it had not worked.  Weighing my options of hiding there all night, or manning up, I decided to brace myself for whatever alcohol fueled rage she was about to unleash on me.  

She looked up at me as I approached the door.  Her eyes were big and filled with sadness.  Her bottom lip was shaking.  She had the air of a frightened little girl.  As I pulled my keys out of my backpack, she put her hand on her heart. “Are you my savior?” she asked.  I don’t recall what I said, or if I responded at all.  All I really remember is struggling to unlock the door, the way you only do when someone is watching.  Finally it popped open and she scurried inside.  “Thank you!” she shouted after her.  “Thank you thank you thank you” she said the entire way up the stairs.  She managed to get into her apartment as I trailed behind her, and with one last “THANKS!” – that was that.  

When I got to my room, I went straight to my computer and pulled up her Facebook page.  This woman had called my roommate a cunt, and passed out on my doorstep. She had filled the foyer with garbage, had boyfriends terrorize us in the middle of the night, and left her cat roam hallway.   She had not been a great neighbor – that is a fact.  But the more I reflected on the situation, I had to wonder – have I always been a good neighbor? I mean, I sometimes let my mail pile up in the hallway and I’ve been known to blast country music when I clean the bathroom.  Hell, I just wrote a 7,500+ essay on what a giant bitch the woman across the hall is, and then published it on the internet.  So what – she’s not a good neighbor.  I can’t say that I’m a terribly great one either.  So I opened her Facebook page, and logged out without photoshopping double chins onto her photos or messing with her settings.  Being mean to this woman wasn’t going to make me feel any better.  We’re suppose to love our neighbors, but it unfortunately we have to love them all – not just the good ones – not just the young college grad and the lesbian bicycle enthusiasts.  Sometimes, just sometimes, some drunk bitches are going to move in next door, and dammit, you’re going to have to love them too.

Unfortunately I just came to this realization after publishing chapters I, II, III, and IV of this series, so please disregard everything mean you’ve read up until this point.  

THE PATRIOT SALOON

When I was in college, there was almost nothing I enjoyed more than filling out teacher evaluations.  In real life, I've found that the opportunity to jam my opinions down the public's throat is sadly rare.  Or at least I thought it was until I discovered Yelp.  You can read my reviews here.  My latest is of the Patriot Saloon. 

 

The Patriot Saloon 

Yes, I am giving the Patriot Saloon 1 star.  Why, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you why - without editorializing or exaggeration either.  Here is a play by play of the evening:

5:00PM Wednesday Afternoon: Not very crowded.  I'm waiting for a beer at the bar downstairs.  There are two bartenders - one working up a furry at the opposite end of the bar, and one staring into a mirror, watching herself repeatedly put on and take off a pair of aviator sunglasses.  There's a crowd forming around the busy bartender, so I figure I'll have a better chance waiting in one of the many empty stools at the other end.  I mean, Sunglasses has got to notice me at some point, right?

5:10PM: Sunglasses has not noticed me.

5:15PM: My friends are texting me from the upstairs bar wondering where I am. I tell them that I'm still working on getting a beer.  My first beer.  Finally Sunglasses notices me.  She walks over, and mutters something. I say  "I'm sorry?" She mutters it again and smiles, and then kind of falls over a little bit.  I assume she asked me what I was drinking, so I tell her a Bud Light.  She frowns.  She gets really quiet.  And then she lifts her hand above her head and SLAMS it into the bar, screaming in gibberish.  She then turns around, and crumples up into a ball.  She does not get me a beer.

5:20PM: Sunglasses is still standing motionless in a ball like formation - so I give up and decide to try the upstairs bar.  My friends had warned me it was a shit show - but I can't imagine it's worse than what I just witnessed.  

5:21PM: It is worse.  Much worse.  The bar is more crowded upstairs - all older skeez balls watching the scantily clad bartender bounce up and down around the bar.  She is most likely old enough to be my mother, assuming she had her first child when she was 13 - which is when I'm assuming she had her first of many children.  She is clearly high, and for all of the bouncing she's doing, she's not pouring very many drinks.  In fact, I watch her for 10 minutes and she opens not one bottle.  Instead, she is draped over the bar, licking her lips at an older gentleman.  Everyone seems happy but me.  No one is drinking.

5:45PM: I'm outside, getting a breath of fresh air.  I am contemplating leaving - except for the fact that I haven't even had a chance to say hi to my friends yet.  I instead tweet about my sadness, take a deep breath, and walk in with new determination to get a DAMN BEER!

6:00PM: I have three beers in my hand.  I have ordered three so that I do not have to go through the experience of ordering a drink from this bar ever again.  The busy bartender is apparently busy because she's the only one in this awful place who is concerned with the sale of alcohol (and also not high on quaaludes).  

6:05PM: I have drank my three beers and I'm in a much better mood.  As I stand there, my friend grabs me to warn me about the shirtless waitress carrying a large tray of beers behind me.  The following interaction takes place;

Friend: Chris, watch out - there's a bra coming up behind you.
Waitress Only Wearing a Bar: I AM NOT JUST A BRA! I AM A LADY!

The End. 

Actual picture from the Patriot's Website of Jiggles, the upstairs barkeep. In this photo, she is asking the photographer if he knows what this funny contraption is.

THE LOVE THY NEIGHBOR CHRONICLES - PART IV

 CHAPTER 4 – THE SHOWDOWN

A few weeks had passed since I had witnessed one of the girls across the hall pass out into my front door, and though my roommate Sara and I had never actually met either one of them – we knew all that we needed to know.  They had only lived in our building for a few months, but in that time had already packed our foyer to the brim with garbage, had gentleman callers wake us in the early morning hours, and had a theatrical display of drunkenness at 7AM on a Tuesday.  That being said – it was odd that we had never met face to face, given the amount of time we had lived directly across from one another.  In fact, the closest thing to any sort of interaction between us was a note I left in the foyer gently reminding “all tenants” to be responsible for their own refuse – which they promptly ripped down and tore up.  I knew that it was only a matter of time before we had a showdown.  Luckily for me however, it was Sara who had the pleasure of meeting them first. 

It was around 10:30PM on a Sunday evening, and I was reading in bed.  Sara had a friend visiting from out of town, and I heard the two of them slam the front door and walk straight to my room. “You will never believe what just happened!” Sara said as she threw open my door.  Startled, I informed them both that I was naked under my sheets – but they cared not.  In a mad rush, they proceeded to tell me the following story.

As I mentioned, Sara’s friend Maggie was visiting from out of town.  The two had met while volunteering at an orphanage in Africa, and Maggie decided to visit New York for a few days on her way home to Canada.  They had spent the afternoon sightseeing and had returned home after a late dinner, only to find a shadowy figure huddled on our stoop.  As they approached, Sara could make out that it was a woman, her forehead planted against the front door, blindly stabbing her keys into the air.  Having heard the story of my last encounter many times, she realized that this must be Short Ponytail from across the hall.  Instantly, two things became clear.  One – this woman was extremely intoxicated, and two – there was absolutely no way they could get around her.  Interaction was unavoidable. 

“Excuse me,” Sara said as she approached, “Do you need help?”  Short Ponytail turned around and pursed her thin, leathery lips.  She was much older than Sara had expected.  When we had called our landlord’s office to discuss the man breaking into our foyer, the receptionist had tried to quash our fears by saying “it was probably just a boy trying to get the attention of one of the young ladies that moved in across the hall from you.  You know what it’s like to be young.”  However, this woman was not young – nor was she a lady.  She stared at both Sara and her friend for an awkward amount of time, and then turned back towards the door without saying a thing.

“Okay, well, I’m going to scooch on by if you don’t mind,” Sara said as she reached around to unlock the door.  The woman just stood there as the two entered the foyer.  Sara held the door open and asked if she was going to come in.  The woman remained silent. “Okay, well, I’m going to shut the door now…” Sara said, as she slowly closed the door on the woman’s face.   As they headed up the stairs, Maggie turned around and made a facial expression to express her shock.  That’s when they heard the shouting.

The sound was muffled by the front door, so they paused and listened more closely.  “I believe…” Maggie whispered, “I believe she’s calling us…cunts.”

Now, you should understand that my roommate is easily the least confrontational person I have ever met.  I once saw her eat something she is allergic to rather than tell the waiter he had brought her the wrong order.  “I don’t know what came over me,” Sara said as she retold the story to me, “It was like some one else took over my body.” Without thinking, she marched back to the door and yanked it open.  The woman tried to enter, but Sara put her hand up to block her.  “You know what, I don’t know who you are but I really don’t appreciate you calling me a cunt.”

“Well I really don’t appreciate all the damn signs you leave all over the place!” The woman shouted.  In one swift motion, she kicked the door wide open and push passed Sara and her companion.  “Get out of my way, cunts!” Though her speech was slurred, she made a point to enunciate the hideous word as clearly as possible. 

The two just stood there watching as the intoxicated woman climbed the stairs – repeatedly shouting the c-word as she went.  Every movement and every action was a complete struggle for her, and yet that word flowed from her Marlboro Red smoking lips with such ease.  Maggie simply stood their shell-shocked.  As a young Canadian girl who had spent the last six months volunteering with African orphans diagnosed with AIDS, I can only imagine this was one of the first times anyone had used this word to describe her sweet soul.  Halfway up the stairs, the woman’s skirt slipped down to her ankles, and she barely caught herself as she tumbled over onto her side.  Undeterred and still saying the c-word, she jumped to her feet, pulled her clothes halfway back on, and made her way to her door. 

“Oh, and one more thing,” she turned around and said – her eyes ablaze, her makeup smeared, her underwear exposed, her denim skirt clutched in her hand.  “Nice to fucking meet you!”  She then quickly unlocked her door and disappeared into the darkness, letting the door slam behind her. 

“Dammit!” Sara said to her friend, “What a great exit line.”  She kicked herself for not thinking of it first.

Actual Photo from the incident.

THE LOVE THY NEIGHBOR CHRONICLES - PART III

 CHAPTER 3 – WAKE-UP CALL

I looked down at the gristly man hovering over my left arm, a large apparatus humming away in his hand.  I was finally getting the tattoo I had been talking about forever – the tattoo of da Vinci’s Last Supper as an armband.  My brother had cautioned me against getting it.  He told me that with my little string bean arms, I couldn’t fit more than two or three of them apostles on there.  When Beardy turned around to refill his ink cartridge, I lifted my arm to see the progress.  No, Jesus! – I screamed inside my head.  There was no Jesus!  There was no Last Supper.  In its place was a massive tribal armband encompassing my entire forearm.   I started to tell the artist that he must have made a mistake.  That he must stop.  That he must fix this.  But nothing came when I opened my mouth.  I was paralyzed – unable to speak.  Beardy turned back around.  “Now I’m going to start doing the kanji you wanted.”   No! – I tried to scream.  “Stop fidgeting” he told me as he pinned down my arm, “or else I won’t be able to get more than two or three of them kanji on this little string bean arm.” 

“Chris” I heard whispered from behind me.  My roommate Sara was standing over my shoulder.

“Oh my god Sara, help me!  This man is doing terrible things to me!”

“Chris.” she repeated.   

“Sara!” I said.  “Why are you letting this happen? Stop him!”

“Chris!” she shouted. 

I gasped as I was suddenly thrust into the darkness of my bedroom.  Sara’s silhouette was hovering in my door well.  Sitting up in my bed, my hand clasping my chest, I realized that it had all been a dream.  I was awake now, confused as to why I was awake. 

“Chris” Sara said as she approached my bed, “There’s a man outside.  He’s been ringing our doorbell for the last 20 minutes.”  I grabbed my clock from the nightstand.  It was 3:00AM Tuesday morning.  “What do we do?” she asked, unable to mask the worry in her voice.

“Well, don’t let him,” I said, still half asleep and not fully understanding the urgency that would require waking me.  “Of course I’m not letting him in!” she shouted, “But aren’t you concerned that there’s a stranger trying to get into our apartment?”

“Oh yes,” I said as the fog of sleep started to dissipate. “I guess that is concerning.”  I got out of bed, and together Sara and I went to the intercom to see what was going on downstairs.  I pressed the camera button, forgetting that the quality of the front door camera was basically useless.  We could make out the shape of a man – or at least a human – or at least an object shaped like a human.  Sara asked if I thought we should call the cops.  I told her I didn’t think it was necessary – that it was probably just some confused drunk trying to get into the wrong building.  That’s when we heard the door downstairs open.

“Maybe you should call the cops,” I told her.

Sara told the 9-1-1 operator that a strange man had just entered our building and she was worried he was going to try to break into our apartment.  After hanging up, she told me that the cops would be here any minute.  Downstairs we heard someone knocking over the recycling bins.  “He better not be making a mess down there,” I told Sara.  “I just cleaned that hallway up.”

When the cops arrived, they told us that the downstairs door had been wide open.  That someone had been in the hallway, but that it was empty now.  They said they would stick around for a few minutes to make sure everything was safe, but that we should be fine.  Sara and I looked at each other dumbstruck, wondering where this man could have possibly escaped.  “I wonder…” Sara said, “I wonder if the girls next door let him in?”

Two weeks later, a similar incident shed some light onto the situation.  It was early on a bright Wednesday morning, and I was just coming out of the shower when I heard a right kerfuffle coming from downstairs.  Dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, I pressed myself against the front door to hear what was going on.  The foyer door had slammed, and now there was a man pounding on it from outside.  “Let me in” he shouted repeatedly.  As this was happening, a series of slow and unrhythmic thuds ascended the staircase.  I looked through the peephole just in time to see a shadowy figure emerge from the steps.  It was Short Ponytail from next door.  She was moving extremely slow – carefully trying to steady herself as she trembled up the stairs.  Her entire body was convulsing unlike anything I had ever seen before.  Her hands were shaking violently, her legs wobbling clumsily like that of a newborn fawn.  I have seen a lot of fucked up people in my day – but this one took the cake. 

When she got to her door, she reached into her purse to find her keys.  Every movement she made was in slow motion.  She fumbled around in her bag for an extremely long period of time, only then to drop the keys on the floor the moment she found them.  As she blindly jabbed them into the air, I noticed that from behind she resembled a squattier Lena Dunham.  A squattier Lena Dunham with a ponytail.  At least the back of her anyway - I had yet to see her face. 

Without any warning, the ponytail started rapidly approaching my peephole.  Her entire body had gone limp, and she just tipped over right there, slamming the back of her head into the very peephole I was spying through.  Her skull rang my doorbell as the peephole ricocheted into my face from the other side of the door.  The impact knocked me flat on my ass.  

I was feeling guilty for not offering my assistance, but then again, I was only wearing a towel, and she had a screaming boyfriend pounding on the door downstairs. The scenario did not pan out well in my head.  By the time I got back up on my feet, she was thankfully back on hers and shaking herself off.  The fall had apparently sobered her up enough to get her door unlocked, and right there - door wide open, she started to strip down to her underwear. The entire experience was incredibly awful, and I shut the peephole quickly, deciding that I had truly seen enough.  
Suddenly everything started to make sense. “I get it now” I told myself.  “She’s a drunk!”  

THE LOVE THY NEIGHBOR CHRONICLES - PART II

 CHAPTER 2 – THE BATTLE OVER THE HALLWAY

The first incident with the neighbor girls started with a territory dispute over the foyer.  Now, when I say foyer, I am in no way trying to elicit a feeling of grandeur.  I do so only because it’s easier to say than “dilapidated hallway attached to the front door.”  Long and impossibly narrow, its walls have been painted two shades of dingy yellow and overlaid with a brown hatch mark effect that looks like it was created by a mental patient with a handful of feces.   The floor is covered with a blue and black carpet that is so matted that if they were ever to be clean (emphasis on the if) it would be easier to use a broom than a vacuum.  By the front door, there’s a large pile of mail where two mailboxes should be, and in the very back three large recycle bins to tie in the motif of garbage dump.  Incase I have not brought my point home yet, it’s that the foyer is disgusting.  It needs no help on being disgusting.

The girls across the hall moved in only a week or so after first viewing the apartment.  I was out of town when it happened, but when I returned, there were two large plastic containers lying out in the middle of the hallway, tipping me off as to their arrival.  I’m just going to pause for one moment and explain to you a little something about myself.  I’m a neat person.   Like, very neat.  Like, “borders on obsession” neat.  It’s something I’ve always dealt with.  I remember being a child and alphabetizing my parents pantry.  When I went to college, I became a tyrant –so much so that my roommates took away my dry erase privileges after I left one too many passive aggressive notes.  Since then, I’ve come to realize that it’s unfair of me to demand the same level of cleanliness from other people.  However, seeing those two bins where they shouldn’t be immediately set my brain off into Terminator mode, identifying both as two Sarah Connors that must be destroyed. I took a deep breath though, and reminded myself that they literally just moved in.  They probably just left them down there while they unpacked, and would most likely take them to the curb on the next trash day. 

Three weeks later, and the bins were still there.  They had been rearranged several times, but never thrown away.  My landlord called me one afternoon to discuss something unrelated, and in a very forced attempt to sound breezy, I brought them up.  “They’re totally not a big deal,” I kept saying “but they just take up a lot of room down there so if they don’t need them, maybe they could get rid of them?”  He assured me that he would talk to them. 

Two months went by, and not only did they remain – but now they were joined by several other items as well.  A large cardboard box filled with metal beams sat perched against the wall, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, as well as several deconstructed boxes, which laid behind the recycling bins.  Every day when I’d enter the hallway, my blood pressure would start to rise.  But I decided that perhaps this was a test by our good Lord, who was trying to teach me a little patience.  I would take a deep breath and remind myself that in the grand scheme of things, this was not a big deal.  “They just moved in, Christopher,” I would tell myself.  “Cut them a little slack.” 

Another month went by, and now empty boxes and bins stretched from one end of the hallway to the other, and showed no sign of moving.  All three of the recycling bins were completely filled with torn up boxes and packing peanut – which overflowed onto the floor. I brought the matter up with my landlord again.  He sounded confused.  “But I talked to them about it.  They said they had cleaned everything out.”

Every day, my frustration about the situation would rise.  The hallway, which was ugly before, now resembled the murder scene in a Law & Order intro.  It was common for the narrow pathway they had left to navigate through their junk to be obstructed by falling objects.  I found myself lying in bed at night, unable to sleep knowing that such a mess existed just a floor below me. I imagined what their apartment looked like  - something out of one of those specials on hoarders no doubt. 

And then one day, after a particularly long day of work, I decided the amount of energy I spent fixating on this mess was not equal to the amount of energy it would take to clean it.  And so I did.  I tied up all of the cardboard boxes and took them out to the curb to be recycled.  It took three large trash bags to remove all of the packing peanuts, plastic drop cloths, balls of painters tape, and the other garbage they had left behind.  I didn’t know what the box of metal beams was for, but it was clear they had no use for them – so I carried them out as well.  I saved the two bins for last.  As I looked down on them, I muttered under my breath “Hasta la vista, baby.”  After I swept the carpet, I took a long moment to admire my work.  It was beautiful.  Well – not beautiful, it was still a shit hole – but a clean shit hole with everything right where it should be.

My roommate was appreciative of my hard work, but was concerned as to the aftermath.  “They’ll probably assume now that they can leave anything down there and someone will clean it up for them.”  I reassured her that she was wrong – that they would be so embarrassed when they saw that someone else had cleaned their mess up for them, that they would never do it again.  She stared at me blankly for a moment and then said, “I just don’t understand how your brain works sometimes.”

Of course, she was right.  Two weeks later, a bunch of boxes filled with trash appeared in the hallway again.  The most frustrating part was the girls next door had placed them there on trash day – instead of two yards further on the other side of the door where they would have been picked up by trash men.  “Oh HELL no!” I said, and went back to the apartment to find the dry erase markers that I had sheathed so many years before. 

My note exemplified my best attempt to resist every passive aggressive inclination in my body.  It simply said; “Be aware – tenants are responsible for their own trash. Please refrain from leaving refuse here.” 

And sure enough, the next day the trash was gone, as was my note – which was torn up and left in the recycling bin labeled “paper.”  I thought it was a weird move, ripping the sign down, but I was just glad it was over.  At least, I thought it was over.  What I didn’t know then was that things with our neighbors were about to get worse.  Much worse.

THE LOVE THY NEIGHBOR CHRONICLES - PART I

INTRODUCTION

Before I begin, I would like to first clarify that the following is not meant to be an amusing anecdote that pokes fun at the short comings of another. Nor is it meant to be a cautionary tale about the difficulties of outer borough dwelling. No, I’ve written the following piece for one reason, and one reason alone. I would like the world to know that when my body turns up, bludgeoned to death with a half empty Jameson bottle – it could have only been one person;

The drunk bitch that lives across the hall.

There’s only one other apartment in my building, and in the last six years, I’ve seen a lot of neighbors come and go. They’ve mostly been recent college grads – fresh from NYU – burdened with an illusion that they’re somehow special. On average, it takes them about a year to realize that they are not and that their degree in Media Studies has qualified them to do approximately nothing. I’ve always felt their pain and done my best to foster a pleasant neighborhood atmosphere between our two apartments. But despite my best efforts, they inevitably pack up and head back to wherever they came from as soon as their lease runs up. It was particularly sad to see the last tenants leave – the hippy couple in the master bedroom to pursue their dream of running a guided tour through the Alaskan wilderness, and their roommate, the lesbian bicycle enthusiast, to search for a neighborhood with more lesbian bicycle enthusiasts.

The apartment sat vacant for months – that is until kismet would bring my face to face with a she-devil that would torment me for the rest of my days (or at least until one of us decides to move out).

CHAPTER 1 – THE HOUSE HUNTERS

I remember well the afternoon when I first laid eyes on our new neighbors. It was a particularly lazy Saturday afternoon. I had spent the day in my underwear watching reruns of Tabitha Takes Over. I was about four episodes into a day long marathon, when I heard voices coming from the hallway. It was two female voices– accompanied by a man whose nasally baritone I recognized to be that of my landlord. I ran to the door as quietly as possible, and reached the peephole just in time to see the back of group’s heads as they opened the door.

The landlord gave them a tour of the two bedrooms, making sure to point out the fresh coat of paint and the recently refinished hard wood floors. Ponytail 1 was tall and thin, with beautiful wavy auburn hair and sharply dressed considering the heat. Ponytail 2 was shorter and stouter, with shoulder length brown hair. I never once saw their faces – but imagined them to be two beautiful young ladies– eyes mistakenly full of optimism. I did the same thing I always do when I first spy on new neighbors – I allowed my mind to wander, imagining us becoming best friends, walking arm and arm back from a night on the town. We’d lament about a time before we knew one another, right before we discuss who’s bringing what to our weekly neighbor potluck.

When I returned to reality, I realized how creepy this all was– a grown man in his underwear, breathing slowly as he spied on two young ladies through his peephole. It was terribly One Hour Photos of me. Besides, I told myself, becoming friends with the neighbors had bad news written all over it. I have trouble blowing off the friends I have now. What would I do with friends who lived across the hall – friends who could hear me watching bad reality television when I was suppose to be at their Murder Mystery Party?

When I returned to the living room, I noticed the cable box had frozen, leaving a giant image of Tabatha Coffey’s puggish man-face hovering on my TV. Her glassy devils eyes were staring into me, disgust weighing down the corners of her twiggy mouth mid scowl. I stabbed at the remote to try to make the awful site go away – but it would not. Panic came over me as I envisioned having to admit to my roommate that I had voluntarily watched Tabitha Takes Over. I turned the cable box off and on, but the face remained. I unplugged the TV and plugged it back in, but the face remained. If I were a superstitious man, I would properly identified this as an omen of the ugly things yet to come.

WHY I HATE GOING TO THE DENTIST

Why must you turn my office into a house of LIES?

I hate going to the dentist. Now, I’m fully aware that this is in no way an original sentiment. Writing about how much I hate going to the dentist is just as fresh as say, a Susan Boyle reference, or commenting on how unfunny Carlos Mencia is, or talking about how the National Socialist Party is just the worst! Yes, I understand that everyone hates going to the dentist. But I really hate going. Particularly to my dentist. Because he is a creep.


My earliest memories of going to the dentist were not overly fond ones. My friends loved going to the dentist, and would regale me with tales of state of the art equipment, bubble-gum flavored fluoride, and coloring books with cartoon teeth coexisting happily with smiling toothbrushes. My father had another vision for my brothers and I. A loyal man, he had been going to the same dentist since he was in high school, which, according to my calculations, made him 120 years old. As soon as we reached teeth-cleaning age, my dad began taking us as well – very much against my mother’s wishes. She hated this dentist. Her reasons were many, but the most outstanding was the fact that he was the father of my dad’s high school girlfriend. Her disapproval was not enough to stop my father though. He would drag us far, far away to his office, which was a museum of antiquated dental machinery and outdated techniques. But what his dentist lacked in knowledge of modern dentistry, he more than made up for with his gift for gab. That man could talk – not anything of interest mind you, like say, my dad’s ex girlfriend, or why they broke up, or if she was really in a mental hospital like my mother always told us. Instead I was forced to lay there, his un-gloved hands jammed into my mouth, listening to him talk about San Antonio, or the fluffiest cloud he had seen that week.


When I got to college, my attendance at dentist became more and more sporadic. By the time I was forcibly removed from my parents insurance, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been. I wasn’t overly worried though. I was a senior, and would soon have a job and insurance of my own. My philosophy was – a year or two without going to the dentist never killed anyone – or at least according to a brief google search I did. I was looking forward to finally being able to pick my own dentist – preferably one who washed his hands and had gone to dental school sometime in the last century. Sadly, when I got my first job, my employer’s response to “when does my dental insurance start?” was something along the lines of “when it’s free."


Four or five years without going to the dentist never killed anyone right?


So after two years, I switched to a job that offered dental care. At this point I was convinced that I had no less than 10 cavities. Maybe more. As soon as I was eligible, I began asking for recommendations from my coworkers as to good dentists in the neighborhood. Jeanette, who sat across from me, recommended one that she had recently visited. “He’s a nice guy,” she said. “Older, but everything in his office is very state of the art.” I was worried about the “older” part – but comforted by the “state of the art” part.


So for the first time in five years, I made an appointment to go to the dentist. I entered the office tentatively. It had been so long, and my anxiety was shooting through the roof. His office was in Chelsea, just a couple blocks from where I worked. The place seemed nice enough. It was decorated in a manner in I have come to expect from any establishment in Chelsea – that is to say – super gaily. A big purple couch sat in the middle of a room painted with bold green horizontal stripes. I checked in with the receptionist and as I filled out my paper work, I used the techniques I had learned from watching A&E’s Obsessed to bring my anxiousness down. “Just imagine Dr. Shana here.” I said to myself. “Dr. Shana eases the pain.”


When I was done with my paper work, the dental assistant escorted me into a room to take my x rays. As I waited, she played a video on all the procedures I was going to have done on a TV monitor that was mounted a few inches from my head. Jeanette had been right – this was place state of the art. The x-rays took just a few minutes, and when she was done, all of them immediately appeared on the screen in front of me. Never before had I seen my x rays so up close and personal. I was staring into the inside of the inside of my mouth. And it was jacked.


The young woman excused herself and said that she was going to get Dr. Stan for me. I could hear him in the other room, drilling away at someone else’s mouth. I sat there, trying to avoid eye contact with the crooked insides of my mouth. “Braces for five years,” I muttered to myself “and that’s the best they could do?” The chair I was in was comfortable. Plush and reclined, I quickly found my eyes getting heavy.


“Christopher?” Someone said, shaking my shoulder.  Startled, I sprung up in the chair, nearly hitting my head on the monitor.


“Jesus!” I yelled, as I clasped my chest “I’m so sorry! I must have drifted off to sleep.” I looked up and saw a tall man standing before me. He was somewhere in his fifties, wearing a white lab coat over a brightly printed Hawaiian shirt. His head was covered with a thin coat of wild grey hair, all swept back. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and a smile plastered across his face.


“Hello Christopher” he said, taking my hand into his, “I’m Dr. Stan. Sorry I startled you.” His grasp was firm, although instead of shaking my hand, he was simply holding it in his, unmoving. “Although I’m glad you feel comfortable enough in my office to fall asleep.”


I looked at him funny. It was an odd thing to say, and he was still holding my hand. I laughed awkwardly, and slightly tried to pull my hand from his. It was useless. It belonged to him now.  As he stood there, he began to run his other hand over my arm softly. “I don’t want you to feel nervous. We’re going to take good care of you okay? You seem like a nice person and I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you. So just relax okay?” He held my hand for a second longer, smiled, and left the room.


I was slightly skeeved out. There was something very subtle about Dr. Stan’s creepiness. He was soft spoken, yet masculine. He didn’t blow me a kiss, or wink at me, or try to tweak my nipple. There was just something about the way he looked at me, the way he held my hand too long. It was as if i had just been hit on by Chuck Norris, and it did not feel pretty.


Because it was my first time in the office, Dr. Stan informed me that he would have to perform a series of tests on me so he could evaluate the state of my dental health. One of these tests involved me opening and closing my mouth repeatedly as he placed both of his hand on either said of my face.


“Hmm….yes…. I see” he said as he caressed my face. He sat down in his chair and put his glasses on. “The joint that connects your jaw bone with your skull is called your temporomandibular joint, or TMJ as we call it.”


I laughed to myself and thought,“Yeah, TMJ! More like Too…Much…Jaw….Ja….yeah I got nothing.”


“Your TMJ,” He continued, “Is very small, which can cause problems. You want to avoid opening your mouth for any long period time." He paused awkwardly, and then continued. "You know, if you’re like, eating a big sub or something.” He then opened his mouth up wide and held his hands up near his face as if he was holding an imaginary sandwich. I had seen this gesture before, but it had not been in reference to eating a hoagie.


After a thorough cleaning, Dr. Stan sent me on my merry way with a clean bill of health. Since then, I have been back to see him many times to get my biannual cleaning and a cavity or two filled. Every time is the same. I go in. Dr. Stan will walk into the room and stare at me for an uncomfortable amount of time. He will then look at my chart, and say “Christopher! That’s right. I’m so sorry, I’m terrible with names. I don’t ever forget a face though. Particularly not one as handsome as yours.”


In December, I had a checkup the same day as our office Christmas Party. As Dr. Stan tinkered in my mouth, and noticed my bow tie that I worn for the event. “I knew when I first met you,” he said with both hands in my mouth, “That you were a very elegant and dapper young man.” He then sighed. “Oh my, oh my.”


“I’m pretty sure he wants to rape me.” I later told my cousin Kelly.


Kelly rolled her eyes. “You think everyone wants to have sex with you!” (which is true. I do.) “I’m sure he’s just being nice. He’s probably just a touchy feely guy who compliments everyone like that.”


A couple weeks later, my coworker Jeanette came back from one of her appointments with Dr. Stan with blood shot eyes. “What the hell happened to you?” I asked.


She shook her hand and bit her lip. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She said
“Have you been crying?” I asked.
“YES!” She shouted. “Okay! I was crying. Dr. Stan yelled at me. He yelled at me until I started to cry. And then you know what he said to me? He said that I wasn’t even the first person he had made cry that day!”


The next time I went in, I began to notice another side to Dr. Stan. All of his dental assistants skirted around him anxiously. While he filled a cavity, he paused to address the elderly Indian woman that had been assisting him during the procedure. “Clara,” he said calmly. “Why are there no black glasses in this room? I need a pair of black glasses, and you know that there should always be a pair in every room in this office, right? Because I've told you that I need a black pair of glasses in every room how many times Clara? Maybe 100? Maybe more do you think? Well, I need you to go into the storage closet and find me a pair right now, as I’m sure there are more than enough. NOW CLARA!”


Clara nodded, and ran off to fetch his glasses like a beaten puppy. Dr. Stan sighed. “Sorry  you had to witness that,” He said to me. “It’s so hard to get these girls to do anything around here.” He paused for a moment and then pointed to the monitor above my head. “Now look at the large hole I just drilled into your tooth!” I shuttered in fear, and for once, was glad I was on his good side.


The last time I went was a couple weeks ago. We did our normal routine where he stares at me forever and forgets my name. After a quick cleaning and checkup, I was told that my teeth looked excellent and that I was free to leave. As I left, he shouted after me “Goodbye my beautiful boy!”  A couple days afterwards, I noticing my teeth were hurting. It started as a dull pain in one, and then moved throughout my entire mouth. My teeth still hurt. Every single one of them. I refuse to go back to Dr. Stan though. I don’t know what he did to me, but I’m pretty sure he hurt me on purpose as a ploy to get me back into his office. I’m sure of it. The pain I can live with. Being put molested, murdered, and dismembered with tiny dentist equipment, I cannot.

MY MOTHER THINKS I'M THE DEVIL

I’ve never been one to toot my own horn, but I think it needs to be said – as far as children go, my parents had it pretty damn good. I was by no means a perfect kid, but...no, you know what? I was perfect. I never got in trouble at school. I always got straight A’s. I never defecated into anyone’s mailbox. I mean, seriously, what more could you ask for?

My mother though – let’s just say she was never convinced. My mom was constantly working under the assumption that I was secretly up to no good. Seeing me go straight to my room after school every day, she asked my twin if I was a “chronic masturbator.” I was studying (he told her “yes” anyway). When I lost 15lbs, she swore up and down that I had an eating disorder. The doctors would later inform her that I had Mono (which I’m sure she assumed I got from tonguing truckers at nearby rest stops).

Now, ten years later, I thought that she and I had moved past this – me being a responsible adult with a good job, my own place, and a fine assortment of neckties. I found out this winter break that I was wrong. She still thinks I’m the devil.

It was several days after Christmas. My friend Ryan had just gotten into town, and my brother and I decided to celebrate by taking him out for a couple drinks. We went to a bar down the street from my parents’ house. Feeling pretty toasty and in no shape to drive, the three of us decided to return and spend the night there.

When we got home, my mother was still awake. This is nothing unusual. Now that she’s retired, she stays up all hours of the night – like a high schooler on permanent summer vacation. I decided, being the ever-gracious host, that I should make a snack for everyone to enjoy. I looked into the freezer and found a large box of microwavable taquitos – which I’ll add, looked delicious.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that I was fairly intoxicated at this point in the evening. I quickly glanced at the directions on the side of the box, which instructed me to place five taquitos on a plate, and microwave on high for 15 minutes. “15 minutes,” I thought to myself. “That sounds about right.”

Ten minutes later I returned to check on their progress. My mother, who was sitting in the next room, perked up. “It smells like you’re burning something in there!” As I entered the kitchen, I saw smoke billowing from the microwave. “Uh…nothing’s burning” I said as calmly as possible. I opened the microwave door to 5 charred taquitos – barely recognizable as anything that was once edible. Baffled, I looked again at the box. 15 minutes for cooking in a convection oven – 2 minutes for the microwave.

The smell was rancid. I immediately opened all the windows in the kitchen and turned on the fan. My mother popped her head in to see what was going on, only to find me standing next to the open back door, waving a large newspaper furiously. “Nothing to see here!” I shouted.

She was not pleased. To say the least.

I placed the plate of charred remains out on the deck and aired the kitchen out as much as possible before skirting off to bed. I woke up early the next morning to assess the damage. The entire house reeked like something awful. The stench had permeated all three floors of the house. My hopes that the smell would clear up by morning were dashed. Furthermore, the once white innards of the microwave had now been turned to what Behr paint swabs would label something like "toasted marshmellow." As I scrubbed the inside furiously, my mom and dad came down from their room.

My dad shook his head. “You’re an idiot” he said. My mother looked at me and left the room without saying anything.

“Is she still mad at me?” I asked my dad.

“Yeah, she’s pretty upset,” dad told me. “She thinks you were high and that you have a drug problem.“

“WHAT!?” I screamed. Had I actually been high, that would have been one thing. But I never smoke weed! My opinion on marijuana has always been; why smoke up when beer is so cheap and readily accessible? Only my mother could interpret a simple culinary misunderstanding as a full-blown drug addiction. I just knew by her red eyes that she had been up the entire night, crying softly to herself as she pictured me shooting heroine in a dark alley – selling weed to rich public school kids to make enough money to support my insatiable hunger for drugs. Why had I ever suggested she start watching Intervention? And why did my brother have to buy her The Wire for her birthday?

“Maybe you should apologize to her and tell her you don’t do drugs,” my dad suggested.

“I did apologize!” I screamed. “I apologized like 20 times last night!”

“Did you apologize?” my dad asked, “or did you say ‘mistakes are why God put erasers on pencils.’”

Yes, sure, I had said that. So I didn’t exactly have the strongest case for not being high, but come on!

To make matters worse, when Matt and Ryan woke up, I informed them of the situation. “What, did she find your bong?” Ryan yelled, as my mother sat in earshot. “She didn’t flush your stash did she?” He thought it was funny. My mother did not. She refused to talk to me the rest of the morning.

I stewed all day. Why did she always have to immediately jump to the worst-case scenario? I have always tried to be the perfect son. I call every week. I sent flowers on her birthday. Not once have I ever stole any appliances from the house. Are these things a druggie would do? Sure, I had fucked up. I’ll admit it. It was pretty retarded to put a bunch of tiny burritos in the microwave for 15 minutes. Clearly, I’m an idiot. But a drug problem? Where does she come up with this stuff?

I took a long shower to calm down. As I turned the water off, my dad – the constant mediator - knocked on the door.

“What?!” I screamed. “I’m naked! Go away!”

“I just want to talk to you.”

I put a towel on and opened the door.

“I talked to your mother and explained to her that you weren’t high. She knows you don’t really have a drug problem. She just worries about you. She’s a worrier. It’s how she shows love. It’s hard, with you being so far away. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Fine.” I said begrudgingly.

“Now, can we put all this behind us and enjoy the rest of our holiday?”

“Fine.” I said – still begrudgingly.

“Can I get a hug?” he said – not waiting for a response to wrap his arms around me.

“Dad?” I said trying to pull away. “Can we do this some other time – preferably when I’m wearing pants.”

“Yeah, this is a little weird.”

So with that – it was over. My mom and I kissed and made up, and my parents bought a new microwave. And we never spoke of it again. I know that this will not be the last time my mom dreams up some crazy scenario in her head. I can’t even imagine what the next one will be, and to be honest, I’m scared to even guess. But I know my dad is right. She does it out of love. And you know what they say about a mother’s love – it’s as permanent as the stench of burned taquitos.