Neighbor Relations

NYC Living Series

Shhh. I can't let anyone know I'm in here. So I'll keep this quiet and brief.

Just last week, I hit my low point as a human being, and conversely, my high point as a New York City apartment dweller. While waiting for the microwave to finish "preparing" my Bowl Appetite (Betty Crocker's latest just-add-water-and-microwave meal), I had flipped on the TV to check out Big Monday on ESPN. Nothing out of the ordinary. But when the microwave's bell rang and its dull whine ceased, I found myself reaching not for its door, but rather for the TV remote-to turn down the volume. So that nobody in the adjacent apartments or the hallway would know that I was in my apartment. Watching television. By myself.

In any other place, such a ridiculous act of self-consciousness would have immediately bathed me in shame. But here in New York City, I had just achieved a whole new level of social interaction. Not sure whether to jump for joy or jump out the window, I slunk into the Ikea chair I had somehow shoehorned into my apartment and took a moment to contemplate this dilemma.

On the upside, I had finally joined the social fray in my apartment complex. Let me explain. Unlike people in other parts of the country, New Yorkers do not make a point of getting to know their neighbors directly. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to avoid any contact. Chance meetings in the hallway have an awkward and gruff quality and involve little more than a cursory greeting or acknowledgment. So in the absence of speaking, communication between neighbors is reduced to what you can perceive of them and what you put out there to be perceived. In the case of most New York City apartment complexes, this amounts to a nondescript apartment door, whatever noises come from behind it, and whatever smells waft out from under it. This is not much to go on.

Why bother trying to get to know such incorrigible misanthropes, you ask? Well, like everyone else, New Yorkers rely on their neighbors to create the sense of place and familiarity. Their habits – whether innocuous or annoying – provide a subconscious comfort zone. That's because we always feel more at ease-more at home, if you will-when we think we know what is going on around us. Neighbors also provide us with a measuring stick for our own status and accomplishments. We need people to feel superior to, as well as people to envy. People to hate, and with whom to relate. It's a matter of assigning roles to the people who inhabit our personal universes, so that they can support the structure of those universes and drive their mechanisms in the way that we choose, somewhat regardless of reality.

Take the guy two doors down from me. I've never met him. Never even seen him. But I think he's an asshole. Why? Because he cooks. That's right. He prepares proper meals for himself in his kitchen. I'm not talking about some Cup-A-Soup that merely requires a spin in the microwave or the addition of hot water, either (like mine). I know this because I have to smell this motherfucker's chicken filets, tuna casseroles and fuck-knows-what-elses every night when I come home. But thanks to this, I am able to ascertain certain facts about him, ascribe certain characteristics to him, form an opinion of him, and thus, assign him a role in my universe. For example, if he's cooking, he must have a stove, and probably a freezer-two items that I do not. Therefore, his apartment must be more expensive than mine. If he can afford an apartment nicer than mine, than he must make more money than I do. And if he makes more money than me, then fuck him.

The guy right next to me, however, is a piano player. I can hear him practicing all the time. And let me tell you, he isn't all that good. But I don't mind him or his noise at all. Because I can relate to him. Here's a guy following his dream in the big city, just looking for a break. Perhaps trying catch on with some jazz outfit downtown. While I'm in here pounding away on my (computer) keyboard, he's right next door, in an apartment similar to mine, pounding away on his. In my mind, he's a nice guy, and I hope he makes it-although I would appreciate it if he would turn down that goddamned fucking alarm-clock radio of his in the morning.

Now for all I know, the cooker could be a kindhearted literary agent who grew up in Chicago and has a soft spot for the Smiths, pizza puffs and undisciplined writers, while the piano player could be a baby-shaking psychopath who chews with his mouth open, parks in handicapped spots and voted Bush. But what difference does it make to me? None. Because I already like the way things are – or at least the way I think they are.

Of course there is a somewhat disconcerting downside to this arrangement: If I'm in my apartment using my fleeting observations of these people's lives to assign them roles in my universe (regardless of their personal realities and without making any attempt to determine what those realities might be), then they must certainly be in their apartments doing the same thing to me.

So what do they think of me? What do they think they've figured out about my life? What is my role in their universes? At first, I had no idea. But the more I thought about it, the less encouraged I was. The Guy Who Never Does Laundry. The Guy Who Screams at His TV-A Lot. The Guy Who Passed Out in the Hallway That One Night.

Oh fuck.

Initially, I was frozen with fear and dread. I mean, I think I'm a pretty cool guy. Interesting. Intelligent. Complex. But how the hell was I going to orchestrate the random sounds and smells streaming from my apartment into a self-describing "symphony of me" that reflected this? I could just see myself standing paralyzed in front of my CD player, scanning my collection for something to play that would make me seem hip and interesting. Or loitering in Central Park so that I don't appear to be spending too much time in my apartment because I don't have anything going on in my life. Or second-guessing how long I stay in the shower, or how many times I belch. Before me lay a furtive life fraught with enough self-conscious paranoia and subsequent horror to give David Lynch's Eraserhead a run for its money. And my little trick with the TV remote was the first step down that dark road.

This prospect provided a number of sleepless nights-but then I had a revelation. Who says I have to project my personal reality? I can be whoever or whatever I want behind this door. So if I'm going to be assigned a role in someone's universe, why not make it a good one? Instead of being the guy that makes everyone feel better about themselves, why not become the embodiment of the mantra that all young New Yorkers aspire to achieve: I am stylish. I am successful. I am in demand.

Immediately, I began to develop tactics to make this a reality: loud conversations with myself at 1 a.m., in which I sound as if I'm rehearsing for a play – or better yet, a television show. Phone calls in a disguised voice to my own answering machine in which I prattle on about how hard it is to reach me and how I must get involved in "this project." Washing only black clothes in the building's laundry facilities, while smuggling my multicolored Fruit of the Loom boxers, pitted-out T-shirts and crusty socks in a large duffle bag beyond city limits via New Jersey Transit bus to a dilapidated 24-hour Laundromat in Weehawken during the wee hours of Sunday morning. Cranking Cinemax at 3 a.m. to make it sound like I'm knee-deep in ass. (Actually, that wouldn't be such a great idea-those slow, soaring guitar solos and that New Age booty groove music that accompany today's soft porn is just as audible as the pleasured screams and moans of the actors. Which would communicate that I either have horrible taste in music after all, or that I've been putting some serious mileage on the "original palm pilot." Damage control would take weeks.)

Unfortunately, these scenarios didn't seem too healthy, either. In fact, it almost seemed sinister, in a way-manipulating people's perceptions by exploiting their comfort mechanisms. Plus, either way, it would require a lot more effort than I am accustomed to putting forth in my down time. Besides, I like yelling at my television. And I'm not going to stop.

In the end, I guess it really doesn't matter what I do. People are going to think what they are going to think, and assign their roles accordingly. And if anybody has an inaccurate perception of me, well, at least they can count on it. And that is really the point. Like them, I'll take the misinformed comfort over the unknown reality any day. And let's face it: the only way to ruin these individual comfort zones we've constructed for ourselves would be to actually speak to each other, and there doesn't seem to be much chance of that.

Therefore, I think I'll kick back, open my window and crank a good hour or so of the Beastie Boys on the old boom box. On second thought, maybe I'll just listen to it on my Walkman.