Hide The Mess

welcome to the building loud-door-slammer-stomper-up-stairs-chick

I have this new neighbor and she (at least I think it's a she) slams her door so fucking hard the pictures on my wall actually rattle. And it's not that she slammed the door one time - I've done that by accident before. No. This is Every.Single.Time. SLAM! BAM! SLAM!
Man. I miss my old neighbors already. They were nice. They were quiet. They shut their door like NORMAL PEOPLE and not like someone running (up the stairs!) from a serial killer. Or from Donald Trump.
Apartment etiquette,  people! APARTMENT ETIQUETTE!
The nice lady who used to live next door would sometimes leave Avon books for me and this one time she was on her balcony and ran out of her apartment and down the stairs to help me carry the two twelve packs of Ozarka water that I’d lost my grip on and were falling out of the package all over the place. See? Nice. Oh, and also, The BFF had a little crush on her. So she was nice AND sexy in that Latina sort of way.  Then she had to go and get all knocked up (by her husband – I assume) and they moved away. Now I have Loud-Door-Slammer-Stomper-Up-Stairs-Chick and it’s only a matter of time before I say something to her. I can be ballsy like that sometimes. Plus, from what I could ascertain using my ultra keen spying equipment - The Peephole - I could totally take her.

This Falls Into The Inappropriate Sharing Category

I laughed so hard last night that I almost, almost peed on myself.  Sitting around with The BFF wearing these CRACKS ME THE FUCK UP.

After The BFF left I somehow got trapped outside my apartment by my downstairs neighbor. We’ve always been polite with the “hellos” in the morning or the “how are you” 's in the evening but we’ve never exchanged names or stopped to chat because I’m just not generally chummy with strangers. Especially strange men. Who approach me at night outside my apartment door. Sort of freaks me out. Maybe I’ve lived alone too long or watched too many Law & Order shows, but I’m fairly guarded about strange men coming up to me to chat in odd places. But for some inexplicable reason my neighbor picked last night to introduce himself and I’m thrown off for a second because normally it’s “hi, how are you? Fine and you?” end of conversation type deal but I try and roll with it and give him my name and try to get things back on track with the whole “I’m fine, how are you?” thing in the polite neighborly way one does when really it’s just a courtesy and I don’t really want to know how you are, so the appropriate response is “fine” or “pretty good” or “tired” or whatever, but nooooo …  this guy proceeded to SPILL HIS GUTS all over my front doorstep.  He was compelled to tell me about the ending of his 19 month relationship with Deb (wha..?), and that he’s moving through the grieving process (those are his actual words) and he thinks the reason the break up has hit him so hard is because his father died this summer. (ooh, sorry dude) I swear, he is almost crying as he tells ME, a perfect stranger, all of these intimate details of his life. And for a moment I feel myself soften a little because I feel bad for him, but then he  goes on to tell me about how he recently had to apologize to his daughters (who are friggin’ CUTE, CUTE, CUTE by the way) for exploding at them  (and then apologized to me for the noise if I happened to hear him, which I did not but I’ll be listening for him to rage at his daughters now thankyouverymuch) and said he realized that he treated them just like his dad use to treat him and he really wanted to work on that. (oookaaayyy) He paused and said ‘So tell me about you’ and I’m like ‘Um … there’s not much to tell really … ’ and I think this is my chance to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM but he continues with the comment "Yeah,  you seem to have a pretty simple life, I admire that." (excuse me?!) And then without missing a beat he goes on to tell me about his job, his church (insert eye rolling here because I am afraid at this point that I'm about to be witnessed to and that is ... No ... just ... NO. But he doesn't and he's VERY LUCKY he took a different road right there), he talks about the serendipity of meeting a woman at church recently who said something profound to him about … something … I don’t even know because I’m not really listening I’m just trying to figure out how to GET AWAY … and he then randomly says he doesn’t think he’s on the rebound (again … what?)  and  gives me even more details on the newly ended relationship with Deb and he’s emotionally vomiting all over me, which is perfectly acceptable if we’re friends, but we’re like … NOT. So it's just weird. I think he might have been on something. He blamed the coffee for his chattiness, and … okaaayyy … I guess. The whole thing was  fragmented and trying to follow along was like that time in college with the Korean college algebra professor who had the thickest accent and I could never understand a damn thing he said and it just added fuel to my hate for all things math related. Annyyyway... this went on for like 15 min, which is a VERY LONG TIME! Finally I  just started inching toward my door, putting my hand on the door knob,  trying to give off the "I'm going inside now whether you continue to talk or not because I am WEIRDED OUT BY YOU" vibe and he eventually finds a clue and sees that I’m going inside and says goodnight. But now I’m going to be all paranoid (ok, more paranoid than usual) every time I leave my apartment that I'm going to run into him and then I'll be forced to walk around with my cell phone to my ear all pretending  I'm in the middle of a VERY IMPORTANT conversation just so I don't get cornered and have him emotionally EXPOSE HIMSELF to me. Or maybe I'll just move. Yeah. That might be easier.