Dear Girls Above Me

by Charles McDowell

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “He kept saying his name instead of using ‘I.’ What’s that called again? Same person? Talking person?” 3rd person (Charlie sighs).

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “All I want in life is a strand of Justin Timberlake’s hair so I can make his babies.” DNA doesn’t produce children.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “Okay, I honestly just noticed that keyboards aren’t in alphabetical order.” This is a quote from you and my two year old cousin.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I mapped out my course of action. The strategy was to deliver my rent check and then casually, while I happened to be there, file a noise complaint against the girls above me. I’m the king of the “Oh, by the way.” As I walked down the long dark hallway to Mr. Molever’s apartment, I heard a familiar clanking sound. My immediate reaction to this particular noise was to gag, find the nearest hiding spot, and wait for as long as it took till this noise went away. The source of said racket came from Penny’s collar; she’s a toy poodle who lives in my building and is my least-favorite dog on the planet. Her owner, Tania, isn’t much better. Tania thinks that Penny and my dog Marvin are “lovers.” Therefore, she believes they must see each other at least once a day to keep their spirits and sexual drive fulfilled. “A relationship is a partnership, which is why they both end in ‘-ship.’ ” I don’t know what that even means. “So my Penny can’t keep giving and giving emotionally while your Marvin is taking and taking.” What a lunatic. By the way, Marvin hates Penny. Interacting with Penny is Marvin’s “surgical neuter” … and he’d been surgically neutered.

  They live on the other side of the building, 4F, but will often make trips by my apartment for reasons beyond comprehension. I know this because sometimes I spy on them through the peephole. Tania will pretend she’s on the phone, just casually hanging out directly in front of my door. One time she was having a “hilarious” conversation with a friend on the phone, when all of a sudden I watched as her cell phone rang. She was so surprised and stunned by the loud ring in her ear that she let go of her phone and accidentally kicked Penny a good few feet down the hallway. She quickly turned and looked directly into my peephole, as if she sensed I was staring at her. She then sniffed around a little bit, which I found remarkably unsettling. The point is, I’m a grown man and I won’t allow myself to be reduced to a childish fear all because of a scary lady named Tania.

  So as I was frantically trying to find a hiding place to avoid Tania, Penny’s collar was becoming more and more audible. Where should I go? I wasn’t able to pinpoint the direction they were coming from, so turning back was just as risky as trekking forward. I was screwed. So, for whatever freakish reason, I got down on the floor and curled up into a lopsided ball. I guess I figured the hallway was dark enough that Tania might not even realize there was a person there. Or maybe I was unconsciously re-creating some traumatic experience I had suffered in the womb? Either way, even if she did spot me, maybe she’d think I was a pile of clothes or a sleeping zombie who should undoubtedly be left alone.

  What I didn’t take into account was Penny’s bionic nose. Out of nowhere she trotted up to me, took one sniff, and began barking directly into my ear. It was truly the most annoying sound I had ever heard. I had a violent vision of swiftly grabbing Penny by the collar and, with the ease of Chuck Norris (but without the homophobia), snapping her bony poodle neck. But I had committed myself to this position and believed I still had a chance to stay invisible to Tania.

  “Charlie? Is that you down there?”

  “Huh? What?” I didn’t quite know how else to respond.

  “What are you doing? Are you hiding from me?” Tania asked.

  “What? No. I was just—ducking and covering—from the earthquake.”

  “Umm, what earthquake?” She was onto me.

  “You didn’t just feel that tremor?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t feel it! You should probably go back inside your apartment and check the news for updates. Inside your apartment. The news. Inside.”

  “I didn’t feel anything. Neither did Penny. So, where’s our little Romeo?” Tania asked in a cutesy way that made me want to vomit.

  “Oh, Marvin? The poor little guy is feeling under the weather. He’s been resting.”

  “Aww, sweet sweet Marv. Well, I know what he needs.”

  “Yeah, rest,” I reiterated.

  “Nope. He needs the warmth of his lover.”

  “I’m pretty sure he just needs to rest.”

  But I was too late. Tania headed toward my door with Penny trotting at her feet. I thought about turning myself into a hallway barricade, making it more difficult for her to barge into my apartment, but I couldn’t muster up the energy. Without any warning, my poor little Marvin was about to get pounced on by a freakishly energetic poodle. In a last attempt to save Marvin’s life, I yelled, “My door’s locked!” But Tania paid less attention to me than she did to the earthquake I had invented. She easily opened my unlocked door and called, “Romeo? Where art thou, Romeo?”

  I left a good pug behind that day.

  Mr. Molever came to his doorway dressed in striped baby-blue silk pajamas. Not that it would look normal on anyone, but he looked especially ridiculous. He gave me an “it’s about time” glance, which then morphed into an “I’m disappointed in you” downward head nod, which finally transformed into an “I’m reminding you of your mother” glare because of his slightly squinting stare of indignation and subsequent silent judgment. But that might have been me bringing some of my own baggage to this exchange. After what felt like three hours of awkward silence and repressed childhood memories, I handed him my rent check.

  “Thank you. I don’t normally bend the rules for tardy tenants, but since I can see by your appearance that you’ve had a rough morning, I won’t charge you the late penalty,” Mr. Molever said to me. I felt like punching him in the testicles, or at least ripping off his terrible pajamas, but that would ultimately have punished me. I had to just grin and bear it, because I needed his authority in order to shut up the girls above me and bring some much-needed peace and quiet into my life.

  “Oh, by the way …” I explained to Mr. Molever my unbearable living situation.

  Who: The girls above me.

  What: I can hear everything they say.

  Where: In my apartment.

  When: All hours of the day and night.

  I went on to list specific examples of my noisy situation. I could tell Mr. Molever was intrigued by these girls more than anything and showed no signs of sympathy. He walked away for a moment and returned holding a large binder with a sticker on the side that read OFFICIAL COMPLAINT DOCUMENTS.

  “Here, fill these out. Assuming there are no spelling mishaps or grammatical errors, I will give you the next set of documents you’ll need to complete.” He handed me the binder, which weighed about as much as a grown-up bowling ball.

  “Can’t you just go tell them to keep it down?” I pleaded.

  “Theoretically, yes. Legally, no. Not until the proper paperwork has been filed.”

  My fists clenched. Although I’m not sure why, since I’ve never physically fought anyone before. If I ever do, Mr. Molever will definitely be the first person on my list, especially if he’s wearing silk that day. I took a deep breath.

  “I don’t understand what you’re complaining about,” Mr. Molever blurted.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, stunned by his boldness. I was quickly running out of fists to clench.

  “A couple of attractive young gals talking locker room? Isn’t that every guy’s dream?”

  Every guy’s dream? What guy wants to hear about the latest dieting craze, called “the Tic Tac and edamame diet”? What guy do you know who wants to hear in great detail the cause of “toxic shock syndrome”? Can you find me one, just one, guy who wants this version of “Little Bunny Foo Foo” stuck in his head: “Little Bunny Foo Foo, hoppin
g through the forest, jerking off the field mice and giving lots of head”? You should’ve seen the looks I got at the DMV when I accidentally sang that song out loud.

  Mr. Molever, not surprisingly, was of no help. I was a thousand dollars poorer and my maddening situation was still very much in existence. I reluctantly took his “I’m never getting laid” binder of building incident reports and complaint forms, then headed down the hallway with my tail between my legs. Speaking of tails, I hoped Marvin was protecting his. If Tania was still playing Cupid at my apartment, forcing our dogs to make love to each other, I might possibly have been having the worst day of anyone’s life. Except for maybe poor Marvin’s. “You can always just go knock on their door yourself,” Mr. Molever yelled out after me. What an idiot. The whole point of filing a noise complaint against your neighbor is so that they don’t know which person ratted them out. If I showed my identity to these girls, I’d practically be handing myself over on a silver platter. Up until this point they had been noisy without even trying. Could you imagine the racket these girls would cause if they found out the snitch lived directly below them?

  APARTMENT LIFE

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  I apologize for the Chewbacca greeting in the parking lot, I was eating a banana.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  Our building doesn’t have a ghost “trapped in the walls on Thursday and Friday.” It’s just street cleaning.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  Sometimes when you’re having sex, I play you in Jenga. Right now I’m winning 3 games to 2.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “I wish my bad date could’ve been in dog years so it ended faster.” I’m so thankful your lease is in human years.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “So, I gave him two options, breakfast in bed or a blow job. Guess what he picked?” Well I didn’t smell burnt toast, so …

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  I changed my wireless Internet name to “JohnStamosCondo” in hopes that it might confuse and excite you. It did.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “The cleaning lady canceled! Okay, go to YouTube and look for a video on how to use a washing machine.” Remember lots of bleach.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  I know you’re going crazy but stop Googling “someone who kills birds, Los Angeles.” Try replacing the battery in your smoke alarm.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “We still have no electricity! Wow, the wind really fucked us last night.” Is “the wind” code for the guy with the French accent?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Most people talk themselves into doing something gutsy. I much prefer talking myself out of doing something gutsy. Who needs gutsy? To me, gutsy is ordering double toasted at Quiznos. Unfortunately, before I was able to talk myself out of it, I found myself standing in front of the girls’ front door. I could hear muffled “Valley girl” conversations on the other side, so they were home. All I had to do was knock on their door and politely ask them to never speak again, and I could finally get enough peace and quiet to get my life back in order. But why was I so afraid? I’m sure a therapist would have told me it comes from an incident in my childhood when my family neglected me. Most likely this fear comes from the time I took part in a local jump-rope competition at my middle school. Neither my parents nor my sisters showed up to watch me take home the gold … jump rope. I remember looking out into the crowd during my awe-inspiring grand finale, and there were the cliché empty seats where my family was supposed to be. To be fair, there were about forty empty seats. In fact, there were only two people sitting down, and they were both the grandparents of the student in charge of holding the stopwatch. Regardless, I prefer to blame most of my unique and challenging problems on this particular incident.

  Intimacy issues … The jump rope competition.

  Fear of rabbits … The jump rope competition.

  Attention deficit disorder … The jump rope competition.

  Annoying way of phrasing words … The jump rope competish.

  Motion sickness … The jump rope competition.

  Inability to walk in a straight line (even while I’m sober) … The jump rope competition.

  “Come on, Charlie. Be strong.” Yes, I whispered those words out loud to myself. I needed some extra motivation to actually go through with knocking, so why not act like a crazy person? As I slowly got closer and closer, roars of laughter from what sounded like three hundred females echoed through their door. I was petrified. I’m not going to lie, I almost turned back. But since I had already accepted that in my lifetime I would never reach the summit (or the base camp, for that matter) of Mount Kilimanjaro, this would be my version of a treacherous trek.

  So, I went for it. I raised my fist, which was conveniently still clenched from my previous encounter with the landlord, and I pounded on the door. Well, I pretended to pound. In reality I timidly knocked in the pathetic hope that they wouldn’t hear it and I could proudly walk back to my apartment, all while telling myself, “At least you tried, killer.” But then suddenly, the door opened before I could walk away. I froze. A young twentysomething girl stood in front of me, but she wasn’t one of the girls above me. She looked me up and down and couldn’t have hidden her disappointment even if she tried. Which she didn’t. “If I’d looked through the peephole before answering, I never would’ve opened the door,” she said. The jump rope competish all over again. “Ugh, we’re totally not interested in changing religions.”

  “Okay. Good to know,” I said, having no clue what she was talking about.

  “That’s why you’re here, right?” She stared at Mr. Molever’s binder, clearly mistaking it for some kind of religious recruiting book. “You want to convert us to whatevs your religion is.”

  “No. I’m just a guy with a beard.” Thankfully I wasn’t wearing a black tie, otherwise things could’ve gotten really awkward. “Actually, I’m the neighbor who lives below.”

  “Oh, okay … It’s just … your beard. It really threw me off.” I could hear my mother saying, “See!” From her makeup and platinum-blond hair, I stereotyped her as a friend of Cathy and Claire. She was pretty enough, in an amateur-porn-star sort of way; like “I’ll make a sex tape and just conveniently leave it around and when someone finds it I’ll act like I’m outraged but really I’ll be flattered.” You know the type. This is not a girl you bring home to mom, unless you want to send mom into severe emotional trauma. Either her lips had been recently stung by an entire beehive, or she had made friends with a Beverly Hills doctor who had enormous plans for her, and even bigger plans for her prodigious mouth. Just then, from the other room, I heard a familiar voice call out, “Bridget, is someone at the door?”

  A harem suddenly gathered around Bridget to see what the commotion was all about. They studied me as if I were a chimpanzee who had just awakened from an unsuccessful scientific experiment. Silent farts and dog whistles are heard in this kind of awkward silence. Cathy and Claire were there, but I could tell by their unsettling faces that they didn’t recognize me as someone who lived in the building.

  “Umm, hi. I’m your downstairs neighbor,” I said in a voice that a jerk liar might describe as a tremble. All of the girls let out an impressively timed group sigh.

  “Oh my God, come in! Come in!” they said at the same high-frequency pitch. I immediately tried to explain my reason for stopping by, but no one was letting me get a word in. Eight girls guided me into the apartment like an octopus’s tentacles luring its prey. There was nowhere for me to go except deeper and deeper into their cave.

  Due to the abundance of females, there was a moment where I wondered whether the girls above me were involved in some sort of cult. But from my understanding, cults mostly consisted of people who don’t get around to showering very much and who wear one-piece clothing accompanied by all-black Velcro shoes. The prerequisites for this particular cult would have been: at least a C-cup, modest IQ, Christian Louboutin heels, and memor
izing the Bible. And by “Bible” I of course mean Fifty Shades of Grey.

  As I walked in, I realized that their apartment had the same exact layout as mine. I had just figured that the main difference would be everything else. In retrospect I’m not sure what I was expecting. Actually, I’m exactly sure what I was expecting. Given the wide range of conversations I was able to overhear, I thought there’d be an Edward Cullen shrine between the kitchen and living room. Maybe some tiny wall space reserved for Team Jacob. (That Claire is a real bandwagon jumper and her “team” allegiances tend to shift just as frequently as Bella’s.) But there was no Twilight memorabilia. I assumed that no matter where you looked, you’d see pink—pink carpet, pink pillows, pink toaster, pink Brita water filter—and I even assumed they’d be listening to the artist Pink. But again, their color choices were normal, dare I say even pleasant. I assumed that I must have interrupted one of their many FMK (F@#k, Marry, Kill) hypothetical conversations. That imaginary game was always a pleasure to hear at four in the morning, especially when you take into account how each scenario always managed to end with their choosing “f@#k” for all three people. I’m not kidding. Even though it’s a theoretical game, impossible to play wrong, they’d manage to play wrong. Every. Time. Always. But alas, no such conversation was taking place. Normal-looking apartment, no Twilight shrine, and no FMK game being played incorrectly. That’s when I realized something.…