The Boys Upstairs

So, the boys who have been living in the house upstairs (i'm in a basement apt...you know, "garden" minus...the garden) are finally moving out. And of course, they managed to cut of the gas without transferring it back to the landlord's account, so I am sans hot water and the clothes dryer has no heat. Fortunately for me I have an electric stove...you know, with all the gourmet stove cooking I do in the apartment and all...Well, actually, I just heated a frozen pizza, so that counts, right? Yes, it's pizza and ice cold showers today in the basement.

Will I miss my neighbors? Doubt it. I knew from the moment they moved in that they'd be noisy. Why? Well, one of the guys immediately struck up a conversation in a very..shall we say...Eddie Hascal kind of way. I knew he was trying to schmooze me, but I wasn't sure why until he got to the part in the conversation that was something to the effect of: "I'm so glad we will have a cool neighbor like you who won't be complaining about the noise."

"Why? Are you noisy?" I asked, eyebrow raised thinking BINGO...here's that catch.
"Oh, no. We're not noisy,. it's just that our last neighbors complained a lot about us. They were these old folks and didn't like us."

This was the beginning of many noisy-til-the-wee morning nights filled with heart-thumping-high-decibal hip-hop/dance mixes and a severely musically-challenged band of a bass guitar and drums. Well, if there was a melodic instrument in the house, it was completely drowned out by the others. And just when I thought the last neighbor was bad.

The last couple were boyfriend and girlfriend and they fought like cats and dogs. Wait. I take that back. The guy, Mike, was always screaming and the girl, Liz, was cowering around him, catering to his temperment. They had a dog, a girl Rottweiler, who took to humping my male dog whenever the opportunity presented itself. Eventually, Liz dumped Mike and moved out- taking the dog (so I came to assume given her apparent vacancy)- and Mike went through a series of random overnight hook-ups with young loud girls who were likely drug addicts. One even woke me up by screaming at him and stomping all over the place around 8 am on a Sunday and within the hour the house was surrounded by four armed police officers. They kept ringing the doorbell and no one would answer. So I emerged from my warm bed, dressed in my robe, and went out to ask them what the heck was going on. They thought I was the 'girl' who made the call. Apparently, Mike's screaming one-night-stand had called the police and said Mike threatened to kill her. The two of them had left in his big black, SUV, leaving me to deal with the officers. Within minutes, the officers received the number of Mike's cell phone over their radios and called him. The girl answered his phone and said she was with him and nevermind, everything is okay, they worked it out. The police were pissed that it was a complete waste of time. They called off their 'backup' and left. It was after that day that I started to wonder about Liz. I mean, I never did see her move out; I just never saw her again and asked Mike about it. He said she and the dog no longer lived there. And he never said anything about the psychotic, screaming girl either. He just interacted with me like all was well..occassionally knocking on my door asking to borrow sugar. He cooked all the time and always wore a chefs outfit. I thought he was a chef, seeing him dressed that way and always smelling the amazing aromas of dishes I probably cut the recipe for out of Simple Life and stuck in my kitchen drawer but never cooked. Liz, however, had corrected me saying he was not a chef just loved to cook. She said he traded stocks. God, I hope she and her dog Zoey aren't buried in the backyard. Or worse...made into gourmet meatpies.

I shouldn't complain, however. Even these neighbors cannot trump the one I had serious problems with in my last residence: THE STALKER. He literally stalked me on foot or in his car- he'd chase me, hide behind nearby objects/buildings and watch me, or walk at me and try to press his body up against me, was always looking in my windows, going through my mail, writing me notes, drawing me pictures. My dog caught him trying to sneak into my back door once and also, at the same time, 'someone' mysteriously tapped my phone line from the outside of the building, causing me to have problems dialing out- (which is how this was even discovered). I even had my own detective assigned to the 'case' and a police file on all this. It was a time in my life that I was most on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I'm not even a scared/skiddish person by nature. Yep, compared to this freak, noisy neighbors ain't so bad.