The girl next door

Perhaps it's just my sweet disposition, but I have always taken a general interest in getting to know my neighbors. Growing up, if I ever had neighbors, they were always family members, so there was never any sense in having to get used to strangers living next door to me. In some ways, I was jealous of my friends who lived on streets filled with houses that were practically in their yards, because there was never a shortage of other kids to play with.

This fantasy of non-stop entertainment has quickly been replaced with disappointment as I've reached my adult years and found that neighbors are definitely not what I had them cracked up to be. With each new addition to my living space, I have a new irritation and a new respect for the luxury that privacy grants you.

The new guy who moved into Four has already made an impression. His friends drive brightly colored cars and tend to take up more than their share of allowed parking spaces and they like to play their music loud. He's a small guy, very thin and doesn't have a clue how to dress himself. His door, which faces mine, is always open, and every time I am coming and going he finds an excuse to come out and make conversation with me. The best way to describe him, I suppose, is redneck. His drawl is thick and his taste seems to be on the verge of white trash.

"Shew, let me help you with that," he said about a week or so ago when he saw me coming out of my door carrying two large bags of trash. As usual his door was open, so any slight movement from my direction startled him.

"I've got it, thanks." I actually did have it under control, but I suppose his need to be gentleman-like was more of a concern than letting me take out my own garbage.

"I insist," he grabbed one of the bags from my hand and gave it a tug. I had a firm grip on the sack so I pulled back and for a minute the two of us engaged in trash bag tug-of-war until I finally decided to admit defeat and let him grab one of the bags and throw it into the dumpster. We walked back towards our apartments and after I thanked him he said, "Well you do owe me one now, ya know?".

"What the hell would I owe you?" I asked.

"You like to party?"

"Sometimes."

"You like vodka?"

"Ugh, no. I've got to go inside."

"Shoot girl. We're always partying over here. Come drink with us."

I slammed my door in his face.

I suppose my response to his invite could be viewed as cold by some, but I really feel no need to be receptive to a guy who is just inviting me to drink vodka with a bunch of his boys in hopes of maybe scoring. I've gotten involved with neighbors before, and it's not really something I'd want to dive into again. Especially with King Redneck.

At the apartment I lived in with my old roommates, there were four boys that moved into the duplex next to us. All four of the guys were attractive and cool, and despite being warned by my roommate Brandon to "not get involved" I managed to fool around with three of the four before I had a chance to even remember his words of advice.

"It's convenient," I told myself and convinced myself that they were all unaware that the others were fooling around with me too. I believe it was at a party they threw one night when one of the boys, the one I wasn't fooling around with, got really drunk and was cracking jokes.

He turned towards me at one point. "What I wanna know is," he slurred, "what do you have against me?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, you are putting out to every one of my roommates but me. What am I doing wrong?" I was mortified. What I had pictured as a well kept secret was actually an inside joke between roommates. I imagined them all laughing and high-fiving each other; comparing notes and taking jabs. Yeah, fooling around with a neighbor might not be a good idea, but fooling around with multiple neighbors is an even worse one.

Currently, the couple who lives below me has visitors that like to bang on their door loudly even when its obvious that no one is home. The female is a chain smoker, who makes trips outside to smoke on her porch so that she doesn't bother her boyfriend. Their yard is littered with cigarette butts and once I caught a glimpse of the inside of their apartment and despite her numerous trips outside to smoke, it closely resembled an ash tray as well. The lady also has humongous breasts that she often lets swing free of any bra and depending on what shirt she wears, the risk of seeing some of the sagging boob flesh peeking out from the bottom runs very high. She's also quite nosy. I ran into her the other day on my way out to eat dinner with Christin.

"Are you the girl who lives upstairs?" she asked between puffs of her cigarette.

"That's me."

"Are you single?" I laughed.

"Why?" I asked.

"The guy in four asked us to find out for him. He wants you to come party with him."

"Right, okay."

"He drinks vodka."

"Tell him I'm single, bitchy and a handful. He doesn't want me." I sprinted away quickly before she had the chance to raise her arms and show me her breasts.

A few years ago, I lived next to a burly man who went by the name of "Hogg" and his wife Joyce. Hogg and Joyce had the potential to be nice neighbors because they weren't loud, didn't party and spent most of the time in their garden. Unfortunately, Hogg was incredibly racist and disrespectful to women. He picked a fight with my sister's boyfriend every time he came to visit her and while he would claim it was because he thought he was rude, it was obvious he didn't like my sister's boyfriend because he was black. Once he called our landlord to express concern about the people we allowed to come to our apartment because he felt "we were too nice of girls to mess with people of color."

Another time when my roommate Jamie had taken his parking space briefly, so that she could unload her groceries into our apartment, Hogg laid on the horn of his truck and obnoxiously demanded her to move. When Jamie tried to apologize, Hogg cussed her out, ordering her to "Shut her cocksucker." I was relieved when their place caught on fire.

I hear that the guy who lives in the neighboring complex, Dougie, has been living there for 15 years. He is an old, squat man with hardly any hair, and what is left of it is white. He wears wife-beaters and sweatpants and is rumored to let prostitutes live with him in exchange for sex. I can't confirm any of these rumors for sure, but there have been some questionable women leaving his apartment at many different times. Sometimes they choose to scream at him from the parking lot, begging him to let them in so they can get their birth certificate.

I frequently wonder what my neighbors think about me. Am I the girl who avoids eye contact and is kind of stuck up to them? Or maybe they focus more on the fact that I usually have a different guy hanging out at my place every other day. They could be noticing how I shoo my cat away from my door every time I open it, and take note of this because we aren't allowed pets. Perhaps I'm the nosy neighbor, because I do seem to know a lot about them. I can pinpoint the time of day that the guy who works at the Mexican joint across the street will come knock on a neighbor's door. I can predict who will be sitting out on their balcony depending on the hour. I know who the cute Asian girl is dating this month and I always think something is wrong when I don't see the man who lives at the end of the building out on his porch jamming shirtless to Billy Squire.

My friend Christin has a different take on neighbors. The house she currently lives in is divided up into three different apartments. In the apartment downstairs, there are three guys who rent; next to her, one guy. While she finds neighbors to be just as annoying as I do, she does not indulge in her voyeuristic side. She wants nothing to do with knowing them or what they are about. Her landlord doesn't make this easy on her as he is constantly telling her things about her neighbors.

"The guy next door has an interesting story," she was telling me. "My landlord tells me that he has no furniture whatsoever, except for a mattress on the floor. Apparently he is from New Jersey. Says he won a bunch of money in Atlantic City and caught the first bus out of town to go somewhere where he'd know no one and decided to stay here in WV. What do you think about that?"

"I wanna know more!"

"Not me!" she screamed. "I bet he is running from something. What if he really robbed a bank? No way, dude, I'm not touching that."

If it were me, I'd be asking as many questions as possible. I can see me and her landlord now, sitting down while smoking cigarettes, throwing out possible theories we have about this guy, and remarking upon his comings and goings. I'd have to get to the bottom of it.

Yeah, neighbors can be a pain in the ass, but when it comes down to it, I guess they can make for decent entertainment. Sure, my neighbors are sleazy, annoying and downright gross, but what would I do if they weren't around? They're probably the best reality show that I watch. I could probably even cancel my cable.

Okay, that's just crazy talk. And honestly, I can't wait until I can afford my own home with a big fucking privacy fence.

Won't you be Tashina Savage's neighbor? If you are quirky enough to fit the bill, email her at sundaysgirl@gmail.com