Talk About a Pivot
Coming of age with Monica, Ross, Rachel and the gang gave me an idealized version of what my neighbors would be like. My pivot to NYC at 40 got me much closer to that scenario.
I now know why Friends and Seinfeld were such big pop culture hits. Mr. Heckles (in case you lived under a rock for 10 years, he is the creepy hoarder downstairs neighbor) and Soup Nazis actually exist in the flesh when you live in a big city like New York. Truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes. There was one lovely evening with friends in the back garden of my apartment building. We had candles lit and they were twinkling and throwing dancing shadows onto the ivy-covered brick walls that surrounded us on three sides. The fourth wall was of course the back of my building and is covered in windows. Windows into my neighbors’ apartments. You see where this is going, don’t you? As my friends and I discussed important world events (no, not really, I think it was more along the lines of where to get a good pedicure and all the reasons I don’t like coffee) something caught my eye in one of the windows on the bottom floor. Movement. I turned my attention to said movement and realized my neighbor was parading around his apartment with curtains wide open and not a stitch of clothing on his body. I quickly averted my eyes and giggled as I told my present company “Oh my gosh, I am in the middle of a Friend’s episode. There is an “Ugly Naked Guy” in that apartment.” Now to be fair, he may have just gotten out of the shower and because the only light we had was coming from the candles, I don’t think he knew we were there. To be really fair, I couldn’t tell if he was ugly or cute. Either way, I don’t think he was expecting to be putting on a show for four strangers that night, but once he moved out of my line of sight my friend Adele proceeded to give us a play-by-play of his mirror moves so I could be wrong. Maybe he had been waiting for just that opportunity.
Oh, the joys of apartment living.
Before I moved to New York, I lived in a condo for 10 years and only had neighbors on either side of me.
It had been a long time since I was daily confronted with the sights and sounds and smells of other people living their daily lives on all sides. I think I saw the neighbor on one side maybe 5 times in 10 years. There was a lovely, quiet little couple on the other side who would be pleasant enough on the odd occasion we both stepped out onto our stoops to water the plants. Our conversations went a little like this,
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“How are you?”
“Good thanks, and you?”
“Me too.”
“Ok well have a good day.”
“Thanks you too.”
Yeah, not exactly in-depth. The only neighbor I actually got to know was the Hot Neighbor across the courtyard who drove a white Tahoe, and you better believe I made a point of befriending him. And then he went and got a serious girlfriend. That put a monkey wrench in my ultimate plans as the future Mrs. Hot Neighbor.
I remember being so excited when I bought my place, that after years of apartment living and not knowing anyone, I would finally have a place to call my own and I would know all my neighbors and we would have barbecues and dinner parties and all that fun stuff you see on tv. That never seemed to pan out with my neighbors. Now that wasn’t the main reason for my move across the country but I have to say that the little building in the West Village I first called home did give me a sense of community that I was, for a long time in search of. In the first month after I moved in, actually maybe even the first week, I had already met four of my neighbors. They all turned out to be quite lovely and I even had this weird idea in my head that we were all one big family living in one big house. I took to saying “Sorry Bill” every time I dropped something on the floor. He couldn’t hear me but for some reason it made me feel better. I was extremely thankful that in general, I didn’t have any weirdos, crazies, hard partiers, or people who liked to cook horrible-smelling food. Well maybe I did but they seemed to keep it confined to their own apartments and that was fine by me. While the first month I did get the hear my neighbor’s 4-year-old have nightly meltdowns on the other side of my bedroom walls, he eventually grew out of his tantrums. Well, at least the ones at 4 am. I also had the embarrassing incident of hearing my neighbor and his girlfriend above me and the unmistakable sound of squeaking bed springs. That I will never get used to. It made for really awkward hallway interactions when I couldn’t look him in the eye as we made small talk the next time I saw him. He probably thought I was the weird neighbor. But we all seemed to get along and were respectful and even concerned about one another, especially when anyone got a whiff of gas in our over 100-year-old building. Usually, a bunch of us ended up in the hallway trying to decipher where it was coming from like a pack of bloodhounds, and then when it dissipated we just hung out in the stairwell to catch up, kinda like Friends.
