Over on List Addicts, stuff I know you’re supposed to do but, look guys, I’m just never going to. And at the charming Red Boots, I contribute to the Dear Sixteen Year Old Me letter-writing project with some advice I only wish I could have given myself back in the day.
NTKOG #241: The kind of obnoxiously chipper Suzy Homemaker who, of a quiet summer evening, knocks unbidden on a neighbor’s door with a tray of baked goods and an open heart.
I am: a pretty socially anxious dude. It takes me years of regular hangs and heart-to-hearts to upgrade someone from “acquaintance” to “friend” — to say nothing of that first leap from “stranger” to “acquaintance”.
I am not: even great about keeping social plans that I wanted to make. As The Ex will attest, 95% of my pre-going-out ritual consists of praying to Dionysus that I will get canceled on.
The Scene: The hallway of my apartment building, ungodly early one morning last week, bleary-eyed because the incessant baying of a neighbor’s hellhound had kept me up half the night. I’m a headache-prone dude, and when I first signed my lease, I only asked the landlord two questions: “Are there no-pet and no-instrument policies? Are they enforced?!” So you can imagine the virulent pre-7am torrent I was about to loose when the beast’s owner happened to open her door at the same time I headed out for my jog.
What the frig do you have in there? I wanted to ask. A great dane? A friggin’ coyote? But just as I caught the woman’s eye, she yanked on a leash, and out scampered a toy pomeranian half the size of my palm.
I don’t know what the national record is for an irate, sleep-deprived twenty-something melting to the floor and covering an entire dog with air kisses, but I’m willing to bet I beat it by a margin. Once I remembered there was a human in the hall, straightened up and introduced myself to said neighbor for the first time in my eleven months here.
To her credit, despite my blatant attempt at dog-poaching, she responded warmly and immediately told me that she and her husband love to meet people, and wouldn’t I drop by sometime to meet them properly? They’re home most nights!
Ha. Sweet gesture, but, c’mon, who in their right mind would ever take anyone up on that? As a compulsive maker of insincere plans (you’re the best dental hygienist ever! we should go see an opera together!), I flashed a big, fake smile and told her that maybe I would.
The thing is, I don’t even really spend time with people I like in Boston. I moved here in part to recuperate from flapping my social butterfly wings ragged. So when I set up shop in this city on the hill, I had one simple goal: don’t make any friends. Just don’t do it. And 95% of the time I’m totally thrilled with the decision to spend virtually all of my free time alone in my head, writing the literary zombie-pornos that pass as the building blocks of my fiction career and making conversation with my Roomba. And then there’s the five percent of the time I long for the old days of triple-booking brunch plans and non-stop hang-outs.
I’m not saying I lack for significant social contact. But I am saying that two nights ago I gave a birthday card to my favorite convenience store cashier. So there’s that.
Flash forward to yesterday evening. Heard the neighbors arrive home from dinner, bickering adorably, and thought to myself, “God, how awful would it be to force myself to actually go over there?!” And when I have a thought like that, dude, I just have to do it.
Loaded a Tupperware tray with half a batch of chocolate-orange dinosaur muffins (god bless insomnia baking) and nipped over to the door before the reasonable part of my brain could talk me out of it. Though it occurred to me just how weird the situation was when I knocked twice and then listened to them confer in alarm for a full twenty seconds before the door cracked open.
“Uh — hey. I met your, uh, wife the other day and I just made, like, too many muffins the other day, so I thought I’d drop some off? If you like muffins? Neighborly gesture?”
The dude was way less weirded out than I would be in the same situation. He waved me inside, called his wife to the door, and she bade me to sit down on their lumpy, pale blue couch.
We chatted briefly about the building and our mutual fear of the super, and just when I started to think, hey, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad — dreaded silence that we half-heartedly tried to chip away on all sides.
Weather? Humid! Sports? Sox! MBTA? MBTAre you friggin’ kidding me?!
The stilted ten-minute conversation sounded like a round of clues in the “Stuff Banal People Know About Boston” category of $25,000 Pyramid. Mercifully, we were all saved when the dog ran up to the couch and issued a tiny, perfect sneeze. We all gurgled adoringly over the palm pom, who ran around the coffee table in a display of manic friggin’ cuteness — after which, thankfully, enough time had passed that I could leave the museum of social anxiety once and for all.
As I waved goodbye, the wife called out: “You should come by again sometime!” Definitely, I smiled. Definitely.
The Verdict: Eeeeeek. Humans are underwhelming. I’m just going to glue some googly eyes on my Roomba and call it a day.
Do you guys ever hang out with neighbors? Can it actually be done? Should it?
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The first morning after I had moved into my new house (almost exactly a year ago to the day!) I saw my neighbour on the street in her dressing gown knocking on doors and coming back empty handed. I called her over and said hi and it turns out she was looking for maple syrup because it was her daughter’s birthday and she’d run out and had a house full of starving, sugar-deprived teen girls to contend with. Thanks to my mum’s maniac unpacking skills, our maple syrup was already out of its box and in the pantry, so we lent it to her. She came over a few hours later with a plate of pancakes, cream and our syrup back. Since then we’ve got to know each other really well and have dinner together/drinks/water plants/look after pets etc. It’s like something sickening out of Desperate Housewives, but it’s been surprisingly awesome!
I lived in BackBay for a year without meeting any neighbors. Then a week after getting laid off (which meant I was in a fantastic mood…or not) I stomped home and my neighbors were having a party and beckoned me in.
Anyway now one of my neighbors and I are roommates and pal around all the time.
I could have cared less about neighbors ten years ago. I was renting, moving each year or two. I had plenty of friends. Fast forward ten years and I don’t know how I would live without my neighbors. They are not just the folks I have lived around for the last four years. I consider my neighbors, several sets of them, to be, at the least, very close friends and, at the most, one of the greatest blesssings of adulthood.
That’s wonderful! That gives me some hope that when I settle down more permanently, I’ll be able to have a bond with some of my neighbors. I’ve always had the cheesy dream of living in one of those neighborhoods with block parties and cook-outs and kids staging little parades on the Fourth of July.
Umm I dunno. I have had such mixed experiences. When I was in college it was so easy to meet and get along with neighbors.. mostly because we were also peers and usually drinking heavily, which makes any situation easier.
In more recent years though, I’ve either had neighbors who talk too much, call the cops on me, or BBQ in their back yard naked… so basically all were very scary specimens. I’d love though to be able to get along with the peeps around me. I just don’t know if it’s possible with all the weirdos out there.
i don’t know what link i followed here but after reading this i sort of want to hit you with a baseball bat.
That’s cool. That seems productive.
I’d like to hit on YOU with a baseball bat. Chris Brown style. Too soon? <3 you!
The tough thing about hanging with neighbors is that if things go bad, there is NO WHERE TO GO.
We have neighbors two houses down that we got very friendly with, only to have them go into a relationship meltdown that they dragged us into and ended up cooling the friendship. They still live there, and we don’t really see each other much any more. It’s still weird.
Although not as weird as friends of ours whose neighbors invited them to swing. Yes. THAT kind of swing.
Oh my goodness, how awkward! No thank you! That’s the rub, I guess: in theory, it sounds nice to be able to pop over, but if you have different ideas about what a casual neighborly entails, there’s no way to tactfully freeze them out.
I was wiping the tears away as the neighbor actually opened their door.
I live in Las Vegas which is the ONLY place in the world that you can live next to a neighbor for 10 years and never know their name. Make that 20 years…
If someone brought me some baked cooks I would suspect they were casing the house for a future robbery.
Or a dog-napping!
I just moved last month and I had high hopes for getting to know my neighbors. I didn’t necessarily want new best friends, but being cordial would’ve been nice. Cut to me holding three bags, a box, and some loose stuff that had fallen out of the box, trying (unsuccessfully) to navigate my way down the three steps to the door, fumbling for my keys, and trying very hard not to drop anything. Enter the guy who lives in the apartment next door. Now, I was taught that it’s nice to help someone, i.e. to at least get the door, especially considering he had a key for the door in his hand. Instead, he said, “Uh, hi, I, um, live, uh, next door” and just kind of stood there. Maybe I have high standards for friends but my friends have to be willing to open the door/hold the door open for strangers. I’m sorry, that’s all there is to it.
Sorry for the rant…
Much better to make small talk about the weather than to learn about all of the dude-friends your neighbor also occasionally sleeps with–which is what happened when I met the girl who lived across the hall from me a couple of years ago. But she did once make me some Kahlua tiramisu, so maybe I can forgive (if not forget).
I once made the mistake of befriending a neighbor who then felt compelled to talk to me anytime I was outside,and told me some of the most heinous personal stories imaginable and also felt totally comfortable borrowing my EVERYTHING. I am an only child; I’m not good with the sharing, personal or material.
I was never so relieved in my life as when that person moved away, and I have never gotten beyond brief waving at any neighbor since. You know, friendly enough that they would probably call 911 if they noticed my house was on fire, but not so friendly that I know their names.
I’ve always been happy to not know my neighbors. But my apartment building has frightfully few children in it, so once I had my son, I really had no choice but to seek out the few other parents. They aren’t my best friends, but they’re always good for a playdate on a rainy day (or more recently, a day that’s too ungodly hot for playgrounds).
yeah, neighbors can be a mixed bag. i had really awesome neighbors at both apartment complexes i lived in during law school. here in the sublet, though, it’s been an adventure all freaking summer. the family across the hall alternately spends all day yelling at each other, throws “backyard” parties that take up the entire sidewalk up to our doors, and spends afternoons engaging in what my dad calls “communing with the herbal sacraments.” i don’t know how the girls who live here full-time deal with this. i’d have gone stabby a LONG time ago.
Dear, how very thoughtful and kind of you to bring over muffins. I hope you were very “Bree” (as in “Desperate Housewives” and used a beautiful basket with gleaming new checkered napkins). Dear, you make mother proud. One must always think “What would Mrs. Cleaver do?” Mrs. Cleaver would never dog nap, dear, never!
I’m not so good with the neighborliness. When growing up I was friends with some kids in my neighborhood, but in my post-college life I’ve only lived in places with families and kids and stuff. I’m good with a friendly smile and a wave or a brief complaint about the need to shovel snow but not much in addition to that. My college off-campus apartment I don’t think any of us shared a single word with any of our neighbors all year. All I know/knew about them is that downstairs dude liked to smoke pot and had a cat.
Dude… I had an experience like this, only at the other end of the spectrum. New neighbors down the street – so I made it a point to go say hi. It didn’t go so well. The whole horrible story – http://jenmcmillin.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/rudeness/
I don’t know how I did it, but I recently found the best house full of the best neighbors I’ve ever had. We’re on the middle floor- above us, a really incredible local folk/bluegrass band that practices on Thursday nights, and on the first floor, a really sweet gay couple and their roommate, who is a classical cellist. They’re all the nicest people, and we sit outside in the backyard drinking wine and talking about nothing all the time. Summer is great. They are great.
This is especially nice, because in the apartment before this, we were on the top floor, and the middle floor was full of awful frat kids who had stupid parties all the time, and the first floor housed a raging crack addict/child psychologist who invited me over for ginger martinis and pulled out a pipe. And his dealer thought I was just adorable.
Eep. Scary.
Oh good lord, your old apartment sounds horrific. More than made up for by summer evenings with local bands and classical cellists, though…
It’s true. You wouldn’t even know that I’m on the same hill in Portland, it’s so radically different. The second apartment I lived in in Boston was a giant building filled with BU students. My partner and I were both from NY, and our roommate was from California- we were the only people in the building who didn’t go crazy for the Red Sox win, and some people threatened violence. We were bad at being patriots if we didn’t light couches on fire in the streets.
We never really got to know our neighbors in our current apartment, but one day our apartment was broken into and they stole my camera/laptop/ss card/id/bf’s watch/bf’s financial aid information, and a big burly, scary, tattooed neighbor came over and hung out with us while the police documented everything inside. We’ve been friends ever since.
Just to be clear, big, burly, scary, tattooed neighbor actually ended up being very nice and in no way connected to the robbery. Just shows you how neighbors can be completely different from what you originally think.
I would LOVE to be friends with my neighbours. Maybe one day it’ll happen.
In our apartment building in Barcelona, we met up about once a month with the occupants of 3 of the 5 other apartments, who were all within 7 years of our ages). There was 1 other couple, a single girl, and then 2 single-girl roommates. We’d each bring a dish (Spanish tortilla!, cheese, pizza) and a bottle or 3 of wine and hang out all evening. We loved it!
Now we only have 1 neighbor, who has a completely opposite schedule from us. But she’s so sweet that we get together for tea like once a month, too.
I like having neighbors who are our age!
I introduced myself to the lady in the downstairs apartment when we moved in. She looked at me like I’d just sneezed on her favourite shoes. Not sure she’d appreciate a muffin I’d baked.
“praying to Dionysus”—this made my heart flutter and may have started a crush on you….
an actual friend moved into our building and had a party where she invited people from the building (say what?) well the wife and I went and I of course introduced myself as Jacob (instead of my real name jimi) well for years most of them here thought my name was Jacob.
I win.
Ha! I get stuck in the fake name thing way too often! I go exclusively by a first-syllable shortening of my full name, but sometimes when people, especially in work situations, ask for full names (ie: first and last), I think they mean passport-full, and then spend a few awkward months of a working relationship trying to explain that, no, I don’t use my full first name and, yes, I know it’s much prettier than the name I go by but — but y’all really need to respect my choices.
Also, when I meet people who slightly sketch me out, I go by a variation of my middle name, which always turns into an awkward situation if we actually do turn into friends.
The whole time I was reading your blog and the comments (albeit riveting stuff), I was thinking…just what are chocolate-orange dinosaur muffins? Do elaborate please! The next best think to ingesting chocolate is reading about chocolate.
Ha, I realize my casual reference to dinosaur muffins might be a bit esoteric. They’re simply chocolate-chunk muffins flavored with orange zest — and yes, I realize these are more honestly just unfrosted cupcakes, which makes them very VERY good muffins to give away half a batch of — baked in my beloved dinosaur muffin pans. Also, because I am obsessed with it, check out a picture of banana bread & pb sandwiches made from said awesome muffin pan.
I get it now…somehow I’d thought dinosaur=large rather than the actual shape. Cute! I love chocolate & orange together-I’ve made CC cookies w/orange instead of vanilla and I’m wild about orange cheesecake w/chocolate crust.
Kudos to you for an entertaining blog…I admire your gumption and wish I’d been that wise and brave (I’m, no doubt, in a similar age bracket as your mother) at your age to just “dare” as you do.
I have lived in my apartment complex for a little over a year now. There are only 8 apartments in my unit, so you’d think that we would know one another. But no. One night,I had the ultimate emergency… girl’s night with an MIA corkscrew. I decided that it was only 8pm, and that i should roll on across the hall… introduce myself… ask to borrow said corkscrew… and be on my merry way.
Alas, life never works out how it does in my mind. Two twenty-somethings tandemly answered the door (who does that?) And i noticed they had two small cjildren, just fresh from their baths. Let’s just say..they looked at me like my hair was on fire. If you don’t KNOW whether you have a corkscrew… our friendship probably will not last, no offense.
So I guess I’m saying… awkward as it may… hooray for happy endings.
Also…….. Love the muffin pan! I’m in the mood for creature-shaped brownies.