Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? (15 page)

“I don’t really recall most Journey songs because I didn’t listen to them. Remember? I was all about Belinda Carlisle and Madonna, back before she lost her mind.”

“Then I guess you’re going to get hit a lot.”

Wrong answer. “I hate this idea.”

“Because you’re going to lose more often than not?”

Yes.
“No.”

“Would you prefer I run over a crowd of casual diners next time we play Slug Pug because you’re such a terrible winner?”

Yes.
“No.”

“I’ll make you a deal—how about we keep a log? If you’re getting creamed, I’d be willing to reconsider.”

I mull over his proposition, finally deciding, “That sounds fair.”

Jen’s Steeeve Perry Victory Log

May 26, Stanley’s Fruit Market on Elston
—Fletch scores with “I’ll Be Alright Without You.” I resist the urge to throw a bunch of plantains at him. (Barely.) Fletch 1, Jen 0.

May 30, Trader Joe’s on Clybourn
—Fletch scores with “Wheel in the Sky.” Arrrgggh! Fletch 2, Jen 0.

June 2, Best Buy on North
—Fletch three-peats with “Faithfully,” “Who’s Crying Now,” and “Separate Ways.”
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I am starting to feel a bit stabby. Fletch 3, Jen 0.

June 9, Jewel on Ashland Ave
—Fletch
again
with “Oh Sherrie.” I actually notice it before he does but can’t tell if it’s Steve singing.
“Is this him or another guy?”
I ask.
“Didn’t Journey have a couple of vocalists?”
Fletch responds with a blow to the biceps and a jovial,
“It’s Steeeve Perry!”
I demand a rule change and decree that I can punch first and ask questions later when in doubt. He grudgingly acquiesces. Fletch 4, Jen 0.

That same night, Jewel on Ashland Ave
—I hear a familiar song and strike an unsuspecting Fletch right in his breadbasket.
“Steeeve Perry!”
As he leans over the frozen vegetable bin, gasping for breath and clutching his stomach, he sputters,
“That was Pearl Jam, you asshat.”
Then he gets to punch me back because I’m wrong and I forfeit my win. Fletch 5, Jen still 0.

June 14, en route to post office
—Fletch scores with “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” (and divorcin’ if I don’t get a legitimate hit soon). Fletch 6, Jen 0.

June 17, our living room, at the end of
The Simpsons
episode guest-starring Rodney Dangerfield as Mr. Burns’s son
—When Fletch doesn’t realize “Any Way You Want It” is playing during the credits, I nail him in the thigh and shriek,
“Steeeve Perry! Steeeve Perry! Steeeve Perry! Aiiiieeee!!”

While jumping around crowing about my great victory, I trip on the coffee table, spill my glass of wine, twist my ankle, and collapse in a puddle of Riesling. I spend the rest of the night in damp sweatpants, icing my ankle with a bag of frozen cauliflower.

And you know what? It’s totally worth it.

Jen 1.

I win! I win! I win!!

To:
angie_at_home, carol_at_home, wendy_at_home, jen_at_work

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
jen equals glenn close? not so much.

Hey, all,

The driver of the number 56 Milwaukee/Blue Line bus thinks he has a stalker now.

Specifically?

Me.

A variety of errands too banal to explain here—yes, even I have my limits—put me on the number 56 a total of five times over the course of the day. Since I’ve taken a lot of cabs lately, I’ve become accustomed to giving salutations upon entering and exiting the vehicle.

Apparently, this small politeness is
not
de rigueur on public transportation and speaking to the bus driver is frowned upon.

So, when the vagaries of the Chicago transit system put me on the same driver’s bus that many times in a row, I couldn’t help laughing and exclaiming to the driver, “Hey, it’s me
again!
I must be following you!” as I fed my card into the slot for the fourth time.

That motherfucker had the gall to look at me as though I’d just boiled his bunny.

Okay, not to blow my own horn or anything, but if I were to:

A) completely shit-can my happy marriage, and

B) start stalking a desirable member of the opposite sex, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be

C) a sixty-year-old bus driver named Jesus.

Jesus, indeed.

Jen

Loathe Thy Neighbor

M
y track record of befriending neighbors leaves some room for improvement. Like, Aaron Spelling’s house complete with bowling alley, discotheque, and gift-wrap-area-sized room for improvement.

I’m not really sure how this happened; I used to be great at making friends with those around me. Growing up, I was buddies with almost everyone on my street,
1
and once I got to college things didn’t change much. My pals were those who lived on the same dorm floor as me,
2
and my very best girlfriend was my roommate, although I’m sure had Joanna and I been paired differently, the girls we may have lived with would have fit that bill, too. And when I pledged my sorority, suddenly everyone under that roof became my BFFs.
3

The fast and easy friendships from those days make sense because by residing in a college dorm or on a cul-de-sac in a subdivision, circumstances are fairly homogeneous. Whether it was having lunch in the same dining hall or playing on the same swing set, we were living similar circumstances and therefore intrinsically knew a CliffsNotes version of each other’s lives. We didn’t have to share long backstories to get a bead on our histories because they were pretty much the same. Maybe they watched
Happy Days
instead of
Good Times
,
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or they pledged Kappa instead of Pi Phi, but overall we had a real understanding of one another because we
were
one another.

I guess things changed after college when I moved into my first Chicago-area apartment. Suddenly I found myself living around people very different from me. We were diverse not due to ethnicity, race, or age, but because we didn’t come from a shared past; our jobs, hometowns, educations, and experiences were all vastly different and we had no instant commonalities. Proximity was no longer the pool from which I drew friends;
those
I made at work. Plus? Our neighbors were weirdos.

Fletch and I lived in a suburb called Palatine
5
for the first few months before we worked up the nerve to move to the city proper. We had a one-bedroom place on the top floor of a decent building. Our apartment was small but well laid out and brand-new, so it felt very grown-up. One wild night we were watching
The X Files
and playing Scrabble
6
when there was a knock at our door.

“Who could that be?” I asked. Ours was a security building and we’d yet to meet anyone who’d be comfortable enough to drop by unannounced at nine p.m. on a Friday night.

“Dunno. I’ll get it.” He rose from his spot on the floor and looked out the peephole while I surreptitiously swapped out my X tile for one with a vowel.
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He turned and shrugged at me before opening it. “Hi, can I help you?” he asked the guy standing at our door.

I recognized the man by the excess body fur creeping out of his shirt and up to his ears, as I believe he was half Sasquatch. I’d learned he was our downstairs neighbor because he introduced himself the day I moved in. He told me if I heard thumping, not to worry. His daughter wore a helmet to bed and sometimes she hit her head on the wall, and also, his wife had night terrors. So…yeah. I figured there were more details as to why
Follicle Man and the Family Helmet Head
opted for the tiny one-bedroom place, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what they might be. (I guess circus folk have to live somewhere, right?)

“You need to keep it down. My daughter is asleep.”

“Excuse me?” Fletch and I shot confused glances at each other.

“You’re making too much noise.”

“Are you sure you mean us?”
Do you think he washes himself with soap or shampoo? Really, it could go either way.

“Yes, I’m sure. The noise was coming from directly above me.”

I rose to join Fletch at the door. “Dude, are you kidding? We’re playing
Scrabble
. We couldn’t make less noise unless we were asleep. Or, like, dead.”
God, look at all the fur on his hands. You can’t even see his skin. He’s Robin Williams hairy.

“Well, you’re too loud.”

Fletch crossed his arms and folded them against his chest. “No, we’re really not. If you hear us moving around, sorry, but you chose to live on the first floor.”
I saw him once at the pool with his shirt off and I had to pretend I’d stubbed my toe because of how I’d screamed. And then when he’d dived in, the water slicked everything back and I swear to God his hairline started half an inch above his eyebrows. Correction, eyebrow.

“Are you saying you’re not going to keep it down?”

“Yes, because there’s nothing
to
keep down.”
Is it that hard to manscape? You know, get an electric razor, trim up your shrubbery, blow out your front yard a bit? Maybe he’s overheating because he’s too well insulated?

The neighbor began to nod quickly. “So—so—that’s how you’re going to be, huh? There’s a child downstairs and
you
can’t knock off all the racket? Really? Really. And what if I called the police?”

“Listen, pal, I’ve got a right to have a conversation with my girlfriend here in our apartment. We’re not partying, we’re not listening to loud music, we’re playing a motherfucking board game on a Friday night at nine p.m. If you don’t like it, call the police and get yourself a citation for falsely reporting a noise violation. Good night.” Fletch closed the door on the neighbor, who at that point had begun to vibrate with agitation, and I loved that he was able to resolve the situation without violence or intimidation.

“And maybe you should buy yourself a helmet while you’re at it, you hairy jackass!”
I shouted through the closed door. What can I say? Fletch is a better man than I.

Fletch sat back down in front of our game board. “Was that necessary?”

I thought about it for a moment. “You know what? It was.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda, the guy swore revenge on us, prompting me to purchase and stomp around the house in an ungainly pair of clogs. He and his family moved out a month later, leaving a lovely L-shaped couch in the Dumpster, which we immediately claimed for our own. Yes, he certainly showed
us.
However, our exchange skewed the way I looked at those living around me, and started me on the road from passive to aggressive neighbor relations.

The longer we’ve lived in the city, the less tolerant I’ve grown of sharing my space with other people. Sometimes I get so tired of existing a wall, floor, or ceiling away from strangers. I hate having no choice but to smell what they’re cooking for dinner or to hear what they’re viewing on TV. (Plus they never watch good stuff like
24
, as I wouldn’t mind hearing my boyfriend Kiefer Sutherland in stereo.) The only way to not let it get to me is to act like I’m in an elevator, tuning out everything but what’s happening in my square foot of personal buffer zone, but in neighborhoods—like in elevators—there’s always some ass-clapper snapping her gum or cutting his lawn at six thirty a.m. and I can’t ignore it. What Fletch and I need to do is move ourselves to a desolate, windswept mountaintop somewhere in Wyoming, but then I’d probably bitch about how long it took me to drive to Target. ’Til then? It’s Sweet Home Chicago.

When Fletch and I lived in the sketchy area during our unemployment, most of our neighbors were immigrants more intent on fostering the rodent population than assimilation, so we weren’t exactly a hit at the block parties. Chasing them down with steamy sacks of their dogs’ abandoned poop, saying,
“Ja pomýsléc ty zapominal twój drugie ´sniadanie u mój polana!”
also did nothing to improve our popularity.
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The hippie vegans who lived downstairs were American, but I managed to inadvertently alienate them when the female half of the couple told me she was a poet. Apparently it is
not
flattering to blow Dr Pepper out your nose and yelp, “Oh, sweetie, it’s okay if you’re unemployed! All the cool kids are,” and then ask if she knows any words that rhyme with “severance.” Couple that with their anything but noise-proofed ceilings and we had the recipe for an Israel-Palestine level of hostility. And it probably didn’t help when I’d hear said hippie vegans having organically grown sex and would shout through the floorboards the male half of the couple might last longer if he added some meat to his diet.
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The thing is, I accept responsibility for the problems I created for myself in previous living arrangements. I never should have admonished the hippies about smoking so much pot that
my
kids would be born with webbed feet. In Lincoln Park, maybe the college kids around us would have liked me more had I not thrown their beer cans back at them. And when we lived in the Bucktown penthouse, things may have gone better with the cool people next door if during our evening of
The Big Lebowski
and White Russians I didn’t drink so much I lost my shirt. And my dinner.
10

Upon moving into this condo complex, I feel like we’ve been given a second chance and I want to do everything differently. (If you’ve ever gone from being a six-figure-earning asshole to begging your parents for grocery money in less than two years, you’ll know what I mean.) I can’t change my past, but I can avoid making the same mistakes going forward. I’m going to try making some friends…or at least not creating more enemies. Somehow the idea of passing from home to car without danger of being pelted with rotten tomatoes appeals to me. To be a good neighbor, I needed to change my M.O., which means no more spying, no more booby traps, and no more throwing things. Hence, I put away my Gladys Kravitz–model binoculars and little catapult and folded up my
Don’t Tread on Me
yard flag.

Now, instead of my prior policy of glaring and mocking, I smile and wave. I make small talk. I compliment new outfits, hairstyles, and patio furniture. I hold the parking lot gate and allow everyone to pull in ahead of me. Honest to God, I’ve been on my very best behavior and have made every effort to be nice even though almost no one responds in kind. For example, despite the fact I’d like to tear down and pee on the Socialist Party campaign signs posted on every square inch of unit C’s patio,
11
instead I call a cheery hello whenever I see him hauling in hemp sacks of pesticide-free groceries from the local food co-op, even though he’s yet to acknowledge me with a nod.

When the anachronism otherwise known as Greg and Maggie dance out of their corner unit in their tennis togs with their eighties hairstyles after hosting one of their eighties Jacuzzi parties in their eighties black-lacquered, polished-chrome, glass-tabled, leopard-printed travesty of a domicile, I attempt to start a weather-based conversation while they scuttle off to their jobs as junk-bond dealers.

Honestly, I could catalog each respective snub from the gay guys I call the Giggler, Poo Diary, the Pitcher, and the Catcher, the mean woman across from us also known as My Big, Fat Manic Mommy, and Queen of the Harpies in the center unit, but I think you get the point. (Ahem, people? Maybe if you introduced yourselves to me I wouldn’t have to nickname you.) In an entire year I’ve made no progress, causing me to exclaim more than once,
“Damn it, why don’t you jackasses like me?”

It’s not like we’ve crapped up the joint; our yard is freaking immaculate and beautifully landscaped. I’ve spent every single penny I’ve touched in the past two months creating a garden paradise in the front of our town house. There are twenty-eight different types of budding plants between the patio and balcony alone, not counting all the vines and ferns. Big variegated violet and white petunias spill over the sides of the window boxes, nestled among white phlox and multihued vincas and dotted with velvety fuchsia geraniums, the blooms the size of fists that I’m not presently using to shake at neighbors. Because of careful pruning, dinner-plate-sized hibiscus flowers blossom daily with coral-colored petals surrounding their borderline obscene pink and yellow stamens. My gardenias make the yard smell like paradise itself and the area around my spotlighted tree where the red and white tulips grew after first frost is now covered in rich green climbing ivy and burnt sienna mulch, perfectly matching my well-grouped terra-cotta pots. Each flower was planted with my striped teak patio umbrella in mind and all the shades of yellow, orange, pink, green, and purple have been strategically placed around the property in perfect harmony.