Inspiration in the form of a plush rhino

Single white female seeks suck-ass neighbors.

I have lived in exactly 5 apartments in my lifetime. 4 were in Austin, 1 is in Dallas. In every. Single. Apartment, I have had some sort of sucky neighbors. Some are worse than others, but they all deserve to be tortured and shot at dawn. Or something.

Apartment #1. August 2002-May 2003. West Campus.
There were 2 major problems with this place. One was that the idiots above me couldn't quite grasp the fact that jumping up and down, dropping things, and yelling did, in fact, carry through to the rooms below them. However, this was really a mild problem, as they had normal sleep schedules and only pulled crap like this during daytime hours. Of course, it always happened on the rare occasion that I got to take an afternoon nap in my own bed (as opposed to in a random building on UT's campus--but that's another entry)...

No, the real problem were the morons next door to me. You see, in apartments, smells carry. A/C systems are shared. If you live near someone who sucks at cooking and/or enjoys cooking stank-ass nasty shit, you feel my pain.

Or, similarly, if you live near someone who likes to smoke. Indoors. And there is NO smell worse than stank-ass cigarette smoke after it has wafted through the ventilation system. Nevermind that it was a no-smoking-inside building. Nevermind that I bitched multiple times to the management. These assholes would start up at 2 freaking AM, and no amount of coaxing my ceiling fan to buck up and perform like a man would be of any help. However, had I known what was in my future insofar as hellacious neighbors, I probably wouldn't have cared much.

Apartment #2. May 2003-August 2003. North Campus.
Aside from a music major who has apparently never heard of the term "Practice Mute", this one really wasn't so bad. I mean, it looked like ASS from the outside (John saw it--it was the one that looked like a cheap-ass beach motel), but it was cute, and it was cheap. The problem in this one was actually my roommate, but she was kind of my neighbor.

See, Austin gets HOT in the summer. Like, hella-hot. Like, you can't actually get dressed until you've exited your car, or you will have a gigantic sweat mark on the back of your shirt.

But my roommate and I were both gone for the majority of the day--I left before her, as I had class and an internship, and she just had the latter, but we were both outta there by 10 AM, and not back until at least 5 PM. So, yes, it made no sense to keep the a/c at a nice, cool 77 degrees all day long for absolutely no one (not even a pet fish). However.

My logic dictated that it made more sense to turn the a/c up to about 85--that way, it would still run, but not as often, and not as hard. My roommate, however, thought we should just TURN IT OFF all day long. So, yours truly (who was ALWAYS the first one home, and so I got to deal with the heat while it cooled back down) would walk into an apartment that had reached something like 99 degrees, turn on the a/c, turn on the fan and point it directly at my sweat laden body as I laid on the sectional in various states of undress, and wait an HOUR for it to FINALLY cool back down to 77.

My roommate could not figure out why on earth our electric bills were in the neighborhood of $100 a month for a small 2-1 apartment. Um, genius? It takes waaaaaaaaaaaay more energy to cool an apartment from 99 to 77 EVERY SINGLE DAY than it does to just keep an apartment at 85 for 6 hours, then move it back down to 77. But, I lost that battle. Oh well.

Apartment #3. August 2003-August 2004. West Campus.
This one. Ohhh, this one.

I was on the first floor. Advantages: Easy move-in, easy to bring groceries in, quick entry and exit, easy to take trash out. Disadvantages: people lived above me.

This apartment had HUGE ceilings--14 feet, I think. It was cute, it was nice, I had the worst neighbors in history living above me. Guy next to me? Quiet as a mouse. I'd see him coming and going occasionally, and once he set the alarm on his stereo and wasn't home when it (VERY loudly) went off, but come on--once is once. Guy on the other side of me? Never heard him. Ever. Never saw him, either. Guys above me?

Oh. My. God.

First of all, they walked as though they weighed 300 pounds each. Every footstep. Second of all, they seemed to have no idea that they weren't on the first floor. They were constantly just dropping shit--heavy shit--on the floor. Textbooks, cast-iron skillets, who knows what. And at all hours of the night--I mean, when it's 4 AM, and you're clearing off your bed so that you can sleep, and you know there's a bedroom below you--don't drop a stack of five textbooks. Set it down.

And there was the Saturday when I lost it and let them have it. I'm sitting at my desk, in the den, working on a paper and studying. And all of a sudden, I hear a pounding on the ceiling/floor (depending on whose perspective you're looking at it from) above me. I thought it was going to collapse. A few minutes, and it happened AGAIN. I hauled ass up the stairs to find out what the hell was going on.

The idiot was sitting on the floor, watching a football game, and POUNDING HIS FISTS every few minutes. Um, HELLO?!?!?!?

And the sex. Oh, the sex. The floors squeaked. Therefore, when you put any weight on the floor, changed pressure, it squeaked. So when a bed moved, back and forth, the floor squeaked. And the guy whose bedroom was above me? Had a lot of sex. You say "Oh, well, why didn't you just go to sleep earlier/later than when they were having sex?"

Because no matter what time I went to bed--be it 10 PM or 3 AM--they were just starting to get it on. At first, it was funny. Then, it was fucking annoying. I mean, the guy didn't even have any fucking rhythm.

Luckily, he also had no endurance. But still. I wound up having to call the cops on them one night--not 311 for a noise complaint, but 911 for a domestic disturbance. It seems that the one having sex above me was not, as I had assumed from seeing a girl in and out of the apt. a lot, banging a she. It was a he. Which I found out the night they had a fight, and he kicked the boyfriend out. Who then proceeded to sit on the porch sobbing. And then the apt. resident followed him out to the parking lot, where they began a screaming match that could be heard twenty feet away through a wall. When I heard "You're hurting me, stop hurting me", I said "OK, enough". Yeah. Moving out was the greatest day of my LIFE, and I will NEVER EVER live below the top floor of the apartment again.

Apartment #4. August 2004-December 2004. West Campus.
This time, it was my next-door neighbors. The funny thing about these guys was that they honestly had NO IDEA how fucking loud they were. Every night, they'd be up til 4 or 5 AM, holding screaming conversations (no lie--I could hear EVERY word through a concrete wall) that would either a) keep me awake, or b) wake me up. If you're wondering how I learned about the concrete thing... I tried pounding on the wall one night.

Ouch.

There were nights when it wouldn't even be a conversation--just random screaming. Like they were playing a video game or something, and just... hollering. Bizarre. I called the cops so. many. times. I called the management company 3 times, and they got 3 warnings. At #4, you got evicted. I'm pretty sure they got evicted, because when I was checking that mangement company's website for apt. listings, theirs was suddenly vacant. Hee.

The funny part came one morning. I was up and getting ready for the day. It was about 9:45, and I assumed that was late enough for anyone to be awake, or close to it--it was a weekday, and we were college students, after all.

Uh, apparently not.

I started playing some music on my computer (which has rather nice speakers and a sub). I was listening to Fool in the Rain, covered by OAR, when the pounding began. Yep. The neighbor was apparently peeved that I was blasting music.

I turned it up. And put it on repeat. And then I left for the day.

A few nights later, I was asleep on my futon (as that's basically what I had to do to get ANY sleep since they made sleeping in my bedroom impossible) in the living room, when I woke up and heard them in the hall.

"Yeah, and the bitch next door? We're going to have a party this week on Wednesday to get her back. The other morning at like 8:00 she was blasting fucking Norah Jones and shit..."

This is as far as he got, as that was the point at which I got up, stepped out into the hall, and waved.

"Oh, hey guys--listen, Wednesday is totally cool with me. Oh, and it was 9:45. Pretty normal for those of us who actually go to class and accomplish things. And it wasn't Norah Jones. It was OAR. Like Norah Jones could generate enough volume to wake someone up. If you're going to mock my music, at least mock it correctly See ya!"

We didn't have any problems after that.

Apartment #5. December 2004-August 2005. North Dallas.
The chick below me this time.

See, I've had issues above, beside, and now below me. What's next? Diagonally?

She is also one that likes to smoke inside her apartment. And slam her front door, which shakes my entire apartment. And blast music late at night. And her television. And have her loud-ass friends over late at night, sitting on the balcony, which means that they keep me awake or wake me up.

She's really mild though, and since she responds well to the pound-the-foot-on-the-floor technique, I'll let it slide.

But goddammit, when I move in August, I'm moving into a house.

Stay up too late
and I'm too thin
We promise each other it's til the end.

posted by K @ 1:05 AM