Loving Thy Neighbor

“The glory of living in the city is that even when you are alone, there is comfort to know that there are thousands, if not millions of people living around you. It’s also a comfort to know that it’s perfectly socially acceptable to not talk to any of them, and that it’s okay to live in the same building for years and not know who lives across the hall from you. The pandemic has given us a strange inverse of what our previous realities were.”

One of the perks of living in a city is that you absolutely do not need to get to know your neighbors. In fact, even bad neighbors bring with them a sort of street cred, a social glee when you can show up at parties and crow triumphantly "my neighbor went through my recycling again." In the countryside, seeing your neighbors' houses is considered a bit of a downside, and in the burbs, neighbors are generally good for picking up mail or coordinating carpools for the kids, and definitely for spying on. In the city though, there is almost no boundary between your neighbors and yourself. You can hear exactly how much sexual stamina the guy who lives across from you has, and the lifestyles of his different partners, depending on what time they leave the next morning, as well as whether or not they order an uber or walk home, tottering, in their heels. I know that my neighbors above me have at least two cats (one fat and one skinny), even though pets aren't technically allowed in the building. They've also lived in their rent-controlled apartment since the 90s and once told me that someone was murdered in our building. Was it my unit? I asked, but thank god, it was not.

The girl below me texted a couple of times at the start of the pandemic to check in on me and to complain about the construction going on down the street, which unbelievably started right at the beginning of quarantine and has continued non-stop every day since then, starting at 6 or 7 in the morning. Cheers, guys. The apartment that is down the hall from me has a kitchen that looks into mine, and I’ve lost count of the number of mornings I've been naked in my kitchen and had to do a quick army crawl out of there when I noticed one of them getting their breakfast ready. The only time I met them was when they were moving out to go to Nashville, and they let me raid their fridge and steal their condiments and frozen corn tortillas. They were good neighbors.

My apartment is on the third floor and both bay windows look directly into the building across the street from me. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a flurry of notes posted in the windows of our buildings, a sort of two-cans-and-a-string system of communication with people we had never cared about previously. I got to find out the name of the cat living directly across from me; it was Earl. I also got to spy on The Incredibly Hot German, whose abs were so pronounced I could count them from across the street. How did I know his nationality? He caught me spying and put up a sign in the window asking for my phone number. I couldn't write my phone number down fast enough. Hell, I knew he was living alone, so why not?

He would text me asking if he could come over, and incredibly, I could now watch in real time as a man I’m seeing would get dressed, check himself in the mirror, and then turn off his lights, shut his door, exit his building, cross the street, and ring my doorbell. How delicious to see the process, how amazing to see from start to finish how your takeout order arrives at your door! Alas, it was short-lived because he got back together with his ex and moved to Hawaii, but at least now a really adorable asian couple live in that apartment now, and their dog hangs out the window and smiles at me.

Last weekend, my newest lover D came over for takeout and to watch both Mulan movies together, back to back. We made cocktails and danced around to emo music as well, and halfway through the night he told me that he actually knew the girl who lived below me. They'd been on one date before, but because of the pandemic things sort of sizzled out between them. He had seen her name on a package downstairs when he came up, and now they were texting. Does she want to come upstairs and watch with us? I asked. A couple minutes later she had said yes. What followed was a frenzy of running up and down the stairs like freshmen in a dorm as she explored how I decorated my apartment, and how she decorated hers. We also broke into some of the other empty apartments and talked about the neighbors that we had barely known. We went back to my apartment and I made her a drink, and then we watched the end of the original Mulan movie with her on my right, and my lover on my right. When she left, I promised to pick up her mail and store her packages for her while she was away.

The glory of living in the city is that even when you are alone, there is comfort to know that there are thousands, if not millions of people living around you. It's also a comfort to know that it's perfectly socially acceptable to not talk to any of them, and that it's okay to live in the same building for years and not know who lives across the hall from you. The pandemic has given us a strange inverse of what our previous realities were. We aren't allowed to see most of our loved ones, and so our neighbors, the people we actually live with, have become our new family, and you know what? I'm kinda okay with it.