[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]Most people don’t want to live next door to a vacant house. Not me, I relish the absence of neighbors.
I must be walking around with some crazy, “bad neighbor” karma. I’m not sure whom I wronged in another life, but those bad vibes are coming back at me in spades. How our neighbors treat us, I think, has become a mirror for how Americans treat each other. In our cell phone, one occupant per car world, many of us act as if we’re in this world all alone. Seven billion people suggest that’s not the case.
I remember the first bad neighbor. I lived in cheap, off-campus housing in Ithaca. You know the kind of place college students can afford — thin walls and even thinner carpet. I had, wisely, I thought, chosen a top floor apartment. After all, I surmised, I’d never have to hear the sound of anyone walking, or dancing over my head. In fact, that was very true. Never was there a sound above me. What I hadn’t bargained for was someone below whose sound traveled. This woman, whom I never saw face to face, had a daily parade of sex partners. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed daily. There was nothing more annoying to a somewhat diligent student than random screaming throughout the morning and afternoon. Fortunately, she was a quiet night person. Though, in retrospect, with the daily revolving door, I have to wonder why I never thought her a member of the oldest profession. She must not have been that good at her job. She was late paying the rent and didn’t last long.
My days and nights were quiet until I moved to a fourth floor walk-up (always the top floor) in Cleveland. An old, old pre-war building, I assumed, would keep any noise muffled. The way the building was designed, I only shared one common wall with any neighbor. I never heard the neighbor behind me. The one below me, though, was another story. The man was a traveling salesman. He was only home on the weekends, but those weekends were filled with pulse-pounding music (of which type, I never knew, because I could hear nothing other than his bass). I discovered, then, that a fireplace was a wonderful noise conduit, sucking the heat out of a room.
Now We Will Have Serenity
When we bought our first house, I hoped the noise problems would be over. Though it was a two-family, I figured since I would be choosing my own neighbors, I’d be guaranteed peace and quiet. For the first year, all was well. The family who rented out traveled almost every week. Except for the vermin they invited in by leaving food out while they were gone, their mostly empty apartment remained quiet. The next year, we rented to another visiting professor – assuring, I hoped, another quiet year. It was not to be. My tenant left her husband and decided to explore her inner lesbian. Her lover, when alone, liked to scream that she was a lesbian and proud of it at the top of her lungs whenever the spirit moved her. We moved out before they did.
I never suspected that living next to an old, infirm woman could pose a noise issue. Smarter now, when I purchased my first house in Los Angeles, I asked about the neighbors. I drove by, night and day. All seemed quiet. The neighbor to my north, I was told, was a wheelchair-bound woman, suffering from the complications of diabetes. Only her companion joined her in the five-bedroom house. The neighbor to the south, the real estate agent assured me, was a property manager who was never home because she was, well, managing several properties in Beverly Hills. There were two people, I thought, who would be sensitive to noise. Turned out, the former owner lied. Why had she moved out? My neighbors were only too happy to tell me it was because of the noise issues (and an inability to pay the mortgage). Those three years, had to be the noisiest of my life. First, I had to contend with the constant hum of the 10 Freeway. I could almost ignore that were it not for the almost nightly helicopter flyovers – as the LAPD charted a patch from their helipad to whatever crime besieged South Central L.A. that day. Coupled with the night sun and bullhorn, the police were their own nuisance. Combine that with the neighbors, and I thought I’d moved to Beirut, not sunny Southern California.
The Trouble with Relatives
The housebound woman, it turned out, had noisy, irresponsible grandchildren who were routinely homeless and turned up at her house regularly seeking shelter. There were the relatives who cleaned and shot guns in the backyard. There were the relatives who talked over the walkie-talkie loud Boost mobile phones every night. There were the relatives who decided to raise fighting pit bulls in the backyard. And there were the relatives who rode those illegal pocket motorcycles all day and night. That was only one side. The other was just sad. Their home was the picture of domestic violence, the screaming, the hitting, the police sirens, then a repeat a few days or a few weeks later. I’ll spare you the neighbor to my rear whose five children never attended school and liked to light propane bonfires. Let’s just say, I didn’t miss that house when I left. Scarily, all of this was going on while I was showing and selling the house – and they bought it anyway.
I was super diligent in the search for my next house. I loved a beautiful (and well-priced) house in Beachwood Canyon. But when I went back the second time, I noticed the man at the house next door – had moved his huge television to his garage and was watching TV outside. I could hear it when I drove up – and figured that it could only get worse. I didn’t know if his early afternoon beer/television routine was limited to NFL Sundays or if he would turn out to be an equal opportunity sports lover. After I caressed the beautiful countertops and gazed lovingly at the bedrooms that opened into a well-maintained yard, I walked away – waving to the neighbor as I hopped into my car.
My house in the hills, I was sure, would be a sanctuary. In many aspects it is. I’ve eliminated helicopters and police sirens. There are far fewer houses. I have a street-to-street lot this time. Both sides of our street are surrounded by (never to be developed) Santa Monica Conservancy land. All was quiet when I moved in. The house on my right was inhabited by a former (not by his choice) television producer. The other with a family of children who were going off to college.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe, just maybe, there would be blissful nights of sleep in my future. It was not to be. This time one neighbor had wandering dogs. The little Bichons Frises love to bark wildly all day and night, often from my own backyard or front doorstep. It turns out that Bichons need constant companionship. They bark at everything. With the kids gone, the little dogs set everyone’s teeth on edge. They are quiet now (some five years later). Don’t ask how. Let’s just say it involved a hearing with the city. The producer was lovely, until he ran out of money – and moved out. The house, which is owned by the developer and has always been a rental, sat quiet for almost two years. It was a thrilling time. When no one lives there, silence is assured. But no rental income did not sit well with the owner. So she compromised and rented to a group of roommates. Let’s just say that four or five twenty-year-olds, who regularly park in front of my garage, use my hose (being scalded is not fun), and fill my garbage containers before I have a chance to throw out anything are not a pleasure.
At this point, I know you’re wondering, what kind of neighbor I make. I’d like to think I’m lovely. I have dogs, and yes, they bark – at the mailman, at the UPS man, at the FedEx man, at the exterminator, and so on, but that’s all from inside the house — behind double-paned windows. I don’t leave them outside, ever. I’ve been known to listen to a little loud music from time to time – but the closer I get to forty, the less that happens. And I’m the worst gardener in the world. Weeds grow everywhere around my house, like, well, weeds. But that’s it.
I try to be considerate. After all, I realize I don’t live on this earth alone. I just wish others would. Years ago, I was complaining about a neighbor (who knows which one) to a friend, and she sagely said, “They don’t care a lick about you.” She was right. It’s a metaphor, I think, for today’s America – and that’s not a good thing.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
