My Philly neighbors were the best. The first apartment I rented after college was in Queen Anne Village, a pleasant little neighborhood by the river that was almost completely gentrified. Still, I got regular visits from the down on his luck guy who had moved in with his brother's family next door. I never really bothered to get into his business. Every few days, he would hit me up for a few dollars, claiming he needed it for milk. I usually said yes and we got along just fine. He was kind of sketchy, but never toward my female roommate or me.
I had no business living anywhere that nice, so I moved further west after a year. I shared my new place with three, sometimes four, friends. We had the second and third stories of a row house. A chef named John lived downstairs from us. He kept weird hours and blasted video games through a subwoofer, which meant he never once complained about all the noise we made over him. The place next door had a balcony right outside my bedroom window, which meant I had a weird, unspoken bond with the guy who lived in that upstairs unit. He was almost always out there with two or three other people, no matter what time it was. We were all up in each other's personal space, but we all got used to it, or at least I think we did. He never made any effort to disguise the fact that he was selling weed or coke or something.
My next stop was South Philly. This time I was in a perfectly respectable house with a huge living room, a charming kitchen and a basement that other people's bands could practice in. Then there was Gene and Charlene next door. Gene was a bald, grouchy white dude who could've been anywhere between 40 and 60. Charlene was a slightly younger African American lady who had that thing going where she looked like she started to put herself together every morning and then fell completely apart. They fought constantly at the top of their lungs and split up every few days or so (it was impossible to not stay updated). They also had a steady stream of cars stopping in front of their door and then cutting out five minutes later, which made it hilarious when the cops would stop by on account of a noise complaint or possible assault. I suppose I could've been annoyed or scared by Gene and Charlene. They were a disaster, maybe even two or three, just waiting to happen. But living by them also meant that nothing fazed them. I'm not even sure they realized we were there.
If it sounds like I'm preoccupied with living by drug dealers who won't bother me, it's because I soon found out what a drag it was to have morally superior neighbors. Austin was fine, since all anyone did there was drink. When I moved to Houston to be around my partner full-time, though, I found myself in a small apartment complex owned by an overbearing, semi-retired Colombian mathematician named Frank Posada. Frank was 6'4, built like a giant trashcan and completely in over his head. He stopped by every few days and kept a running tally of all of our infractions. There was the time we left a cooler in the common area for a couple days that (GASP!) had a hot dog in it. Frank insisted it was an entire ham, not a hot dog, which was almost as infuriating as him policing us like fucking teenagers. There was also the time we left a coffee maker out on the curb for anyone to claim. Within the hour, he called to inform us that we'd broken an important rule.
But in Frank's world, nothing mattered more than an anonymous (at least when I asked) phone call reporting that I'd been running around the parking lot in my underwear.
I always wondered how, even when he wasn't around, Frank managed to keep such close tabs on us. Eventually, I realized it was the lady upstairs, a middle-aged spinster with a lot of indoor cats who liked to jump. She was definitely behind what I like to call "the underwear incident." Houston, in case you've never been there, is a swampy inferno half the year. Sometimes, I'd duck outside without a shirt. One time, I dared to do laundry in the common area in only shorts. I thought absolutely nothing of it. It's not like we lived on Park Avenue. We lived caddy corner from a building that housed a local gang plucky enough to keep MS-13 at bay and a zonked transsexual came by regularly to steal circulars out of our mailbox. But in Frank's world, nothing mattered more than an anonymous (at least when I asked) phone call reporting that I'd been running around the parking lot in my underwear. Things got so bad that I thought of trying to get Frank Posada or the Cat Lady on the terrorist watch list. I can't remember if that was before or after Frank decided to kick us out for insubordinate behavior.
In Seattle, we found the ideal situation: a mother-in-law apartment in the house of a well-off empty nester. Our problems were her problems too. We bonded over a mutual hatred of Comcast and when the water heater exploded, I lovingly moved all of her stuff to higher ground. She was our neighbor. She was our landlady. She was our neighbor. She was our landlord. We'd chat daily and sometimes we'd have her down for a drink. Did I mention that we lived in a woody, bucolic neighborhood right by the lake that we'd otherwise never had been able to afford? I almost feel bad writing too much about her, since writing about people is inherently rude even if you like them. On the other hand, about once a month I feel guilty that we haven't stayed in touch. If nothing else, I'd like her to see pictures of our daughter and report back to her on the state of the well-loved Mercedes she sold us for a pittance.
Now we're in Portland, in a part of the city that's yet to be settled by residents of the New Portland you keep hearing about. We rent a full-fledged home, which also means a yard that everyone can see and judge us for and a bunch of people who are close enough to have an opinion of us, but far enough away that we can ignore each other if we want. My partner tells me that I worry too much about what neighbors think, but unless you've lived in a residential neighborhood like this, it's hard to explain just how oppressive it can be. Everyone is so civilized, or at least knows how to keep to themselves. It's not like Frank Posada, where I knew exactly what he thought of me, but in some ways it's worse. I have no idea what they're thinking and while this may just be evidence that I have massive control issues or a touch of paranoia, it's also the kind of suburban angst that makes so many people lose their shit.
I'm not going to sit here and say that I wish I still had Gene and Charlene around. The middle-aged me knows that safety and stability are important, especially now that I have a kid. But, in many ways, I'd rather have people right outside my window at 2am than a snooty lady across the street who has never once spoken to me and probably never will. Maybe I'm the asshole. Maybe I'm the bad neighbor and just too oblivious to realize it. That's always a possibility. And of course, this is all one big life lesson that's an integral part of becoming an adult. Still, there are some days when I really miss my Philly neighbors. They didn’t give a fuck about me and, if anything, were relieved that I didn't give a fuck about them.
Bethlehem Shoals is a writer living in Portland. You can follow him on Twitter here.
