I’ve only been living on my own for just shy of a year, but I’ve had my share of interesting buildingmates. I’m in a one bedroom apartment in an eight-unit building, the bottom floor out of two stories, back corner. Though I have my “OMG YOU GUYS TOTALLY SUCK” experiences with some buildingmates, for the most part it’s been pleasant. The pains were usually temporary things that passed over in time:

Upstairs Boyfriend. If you haven’t been stuck wide awake listening to next door’s tenants screwing, you haven’t lived. Upstairs Boyfriend terrified me every time I heard his footsteps over my head. Because Boyfriend’s footsteps meant Boyfriend might sex the tenant. And sexing the tenant meant that as I slept, I would soon be awakened by the creakiest sounding mattress in all of South Berkeley. He’d pound away up above and with every thrust, my paranoia about the ceiling crashing in on me grew. I had a very clear vision in my mind that if I were to die, it would be from being crushed by the couple above me as they were mid-coitus.

Upstairs Boyfriend stopped visiting months ago, and the tenant moved out as well. You can’t imagine how grateful I am.

Allan, AKA: “Asshole.” My rent includes access to a parking spot in a basement garage. There are only five spots in the lot, but this doesn’t pose much of a problem as some tenants park on the street. One night I asked Bongo to park my car as I took some groceries (or other errand-type loot) inside. Bongo returned with my keys and let me know he parked in the first spot. I thanked him, thinking nothing of the fact that a Lexus usually parked there. As my Black teddy bear of a landlord told me numerous times, the parking spots aren’t reserved, so who cares where Bongo or I might have parked my car?

The next morning I was about to drive to Sunday brunch with Bongo, when we saw that a shiny black Lexus was parked alongside the backside of my car, a mere 5 or so inches from my bumper. I was completely shut in. I wanted to give the parker the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe she or he was in a rush.

I left a note on the door which included an apology for parking in the parker’s usual (unreserved!) spot, my apartment number, my name, and my phone number. In the note, I specified that being blocked in was no big deal, and asked that the car be moved by Wednesday.

Come Monday, no movement. Okay, whatever, it’s only been 24 hours since that first note was left.

Come Tuesday, I knocked on the door of a different neighbor who has lived in the building for years, and found out the car belonged to “Allan,” of apartment number 6. I walked to Allan’s apartment, knocked on the door, received no answer, and left another cordial note.

Come Wednesday morning, the Lexus still hadn’t moved. As much as I tried to stave off how perturbed I was, I was calm when I phoned my landlord at lunchtime. I explained that I left two notes, both of which included my contact information. I verified that the parking spaces were unreserved. My landlord was nothing but sympathetic and apologetic to me. He had seen the Lexus blocking my car and assumed we tenants had banded together to accommodate for other cars using the lot.

“No,” I said. “I’ve never even met the guy. He just hasn’t moved his car.”

I stressed that I needed access to my car that night, and asked if I should call Allan Asshole myself or if Landlord could call him. Probably foreseeing the lack of maturity that might ensue from one angry tenant calling another, he kindly offered to contact Asshole.

I received a voicemail two hours later from my landlord, that Allan Asshole said he would move his car by the end of the work day. When I arrived home, yes, he had moved it.

Thursday morning, a different car parked in “his” usual spot. Suckah. I have given him the cold shoulder ever since.

Though Allan Asshole did indeed move his car, he also prompted a later “Rules of the House” e-mail from my landlord to all the tenants when he blocked the driveway (into the basement garage, mind you) to work on his Lexus.

It’s been a few months since Upstairs Boyfriend got exed and Allan Asshole made the worst first impression in the world. (Actually, no, that one probably belongs to me.) Since then, my next door neighbor moved out, which makes me kind of sad, because I kind of liked her. Two weekends ago I noticed a couple driving a U-Haul up to my building. When I later arrived home from work, the patio was livened up with a handful of plants and potted trees. Cool!

No, not cool. Very very un-cool.

Shut your face, you hippie crybaby. A couple moved in next door, and I was all excited because they were making my corner of the building green and plant-happy. They have all kinds of garden-y stuff piled around their door, so you’d think they’d be there to make the place more beautiful, right?

Wrong. One thing that tipped me off to the undesirability of this couple was that they kept accumulating stuff. More garden-y things, more crates and boxes of things, more bags of packaging trash, more of what just looks like a lot of crap.

But even if I was blind and could not see all the stuff they had piling up outside (and, inevitably, inside) their apartment, I would be bothered all the same by their nightly arguments and the girls’ random bouts of wailing.

They babble about inane things. Their first argument went exactly like this – word for word, it was that memorable:

Girl: Should we get a new doormat?

Guy: What?

Girl: Should we get a new doormat? This one’s all worn-out.

Guy: Why do we need a new doormat?

Girl: It’s the first thing people see, and it’s all old-looking.

Guy: I don’t think we need to get a new doormat. We have plenty of other things to do today besides get a new doormat.

Girl: Whine whine whine I’m so annoying doormat doormat doormat whine whine whine. Let’s argue and whine and bicker in front of Mayka’s open kitchen window some more.

…You get the point.

The girl cries. A lot. I’ve spent around 10 nights in my apartment while they’ve been here, and they’ve bickered every single day. Even when they’re not bickering, I’ll hear a “What?” from the guy, and then this rising, hair-raising wail crescendos out of the silence. (Which I now relish.) It’s as if the girl can’t stand not nitpicking over something incredibly stupid, and then she’ll invent something worth weeping about in her neurotic little head, and then here come the waterworks. Of course, when she cries, the words are not at all discernible. It sounds like a weepy ghost. It’s semi-cute when a dog does it, but this girl sounds like some kind of histrionic basket case. (I’m fine with basket cases; I just don’t want to have to fight to sleep while living next to them.)

They’re still moving mounds and mounds of stuff into the apartment, even nearly two weeks after they’ve moved in, so a lot of their conversations take place at or around their doorstep. Which is right outside my kitchen window. Which I used to like to keep open. Currently, they are whining about what to recycle, and did the guy pack the thing for the girl, and don’t take out that cardboard yet.

Holy shit, I know you just moved, but pull it together, you fools! You make me want to scream many other things!

They’ve got a hookah sitting on their kitchen shelf that is easily viewable from their window. At first I daydreamed about relaxing with them and smoking some shisha for free. Now i imagine the girl smoking bad pot and going into trips of paranoia.

That’s all I have to say about that.