My then-boyfriend, now-husband Phil and I spent nearly five years in the small one-bedroom apartment that served as our first home together sans roommates. In that time, I learned much about the trials of living in close proximity to my neighbors. And oh, what neighbors. The rotating cast of misfits at the Broken Rudder (not its real name) convinced us once and for all that we needed our own place.
We settled into the Rudder as it was transitioning from an easy-on-the-pocket, Section 8- and disabled-friendly apartment leasing complex into ready-to-own condominiums. Several of the original residents staked a claim, and the rest of the units were snatched up posthaste. Our own was purchased sight unseen by an Italian couple from New York; an official letter informed us of where to begin mailing our rent check and also served as the announcement that we had a new landlord.
The community didn't change much except for a new breed of neighbor: the owner-residents, who carried around boulder-size chips of entitlement on their shoulders and a passionate desire to rid the complex of its rent-paying vermin. The nonresident owners tended to lease theirs out to said vermin and weren't influenced by the feelings of those who actually lived in the complex, so the owner-resident board members held meetings and upped the condo fees for "improvements" that were performed at a snail's pace and or not at all.
The parking lot, however, was routinely manned by a mysterious, Nazi-like presence known for leaving glaring orange warning stickers on car windshields for any sort of minute vehicular transgressions. The hateful stickers — which usually came with a terse note citing the issue — left behind a smear of tackiness and produced deep and overwhelming feelings of rage.
Parking Lot Stress was #1 on my checklist titled: "Reasons To Stop Torturing Myself at This Sometimes Entertaining but Still Hellhole Sort of Place, and Hightail It to Greener Pastures."
Reason #2: The Passive Complainer. We'd been in the complex several months when our hot water heater blew. Only we didn't know until we discovered a note on our door from our downstairs neighbor that read "I have been knocking and knocking" — (he really hadn't) — "Water is leaking through my roof. Please do something." The man — who was developmentally disabled and shared his one-bedroom apartment with two other men — left the same sort of passive missives on our door about the noise we made when slamming our toilet seat, walking too heavily and banging on the walls (which was actually the people next to us having sex).
Reason #3: The Whistler. Another bottom-floor neighbor, this one equipped with the most piercing whistle I've ever heard, a shrill song that accompanied him wherever he went and wormed its way into our quiet apartment on innumerable occasions.
Reasons #4 and #5: The Witch and Her Alien. She lived directly across from me, a single mom who wore her unhappiness on her exceptionally unattractive face and spent much of her downtime cleaning and vacuuming her apartment with the door wide open and only a screen to separate her domestic noise and awful taste in music from the rest of us. When she wasn't cleaning, she was yelling at her bratty daughter, or flinging insults at her illegal alien boyfriend, who cemented his status as her whipping post when he got her knocked up. Her verbal assaults intensified after the baby was born and their domestic disturbances spilled onto our shared porch, where he sometimes spent the night.
Phil learned the Alien was illegal when he knocked on our door one night, sloppy drunk and with his own shredded wife-beater wrapped around both his neck and the porch railing, a pathetic (and not very logical) suicide attempt. The Alien vented in broken English about his sorry situation and his powerlessness to do anything about it and Phil made the mistake of listening and being supportive. Later, the Witch — taking advantage of this kindness — knocked on our door to tell us that the Alien had locked himself in his bathroom with a knife. Normal people would've called the cops; Phil went in and spent more than an hour talking him down.
Reason #6: Crazy Hair and His Brood. Downstairs, in the apartment below the Witch, a wild-haired single dad lived alone with his two youngish sons. Enter new girlfriend, who grew a baby bump in no time at all, delivered a bouncing baby boy, then mysteriously disappeared for a while. An unexpected knock was, at this point, never good; in this case, I found one of his sons on my stoop. He handed me an envelope — another blasted note! The barely legible scrawl asked for money. I was so shocked and felt so bad for the kid, who was obviously embarrassed, that I gave him $10, assuming his family probably needed it more than mine. But he came back again a week later and after I sent the envelope back empty, Crazy Hair himself dropped by with the new baby in tow, asking for money for diapers. We sent him politely away. Later, when the girlfriend mysteriously re-appeared, he paid us back the $10.
But by then we'd already had enough.
We were done following rules and paying fees that were passed down to us in rent increases, done dealing with the watchdog bullshit, done sharing walls and a floor with our neighbors and stressing over their problems, done trying to fit more stuff in our box-size apartment, done throwing our money away on someone else's investment.
We were ready to own our own place. We wanted a house with a yard and plenty of space between us and the outside world.
Preferably with a big fence.
Leilani Polk is the events editor at Creative Loafing. She and her husband did (eventually) find the house of their dreams; read what she learned about becoming a first-time homeowner here.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2008.