My Upstairs Neighbors Win The Award for "Having Sex At a Volume"

I find I don't mind it, I wonder if I do.

Having upstairs neighbors and being somebody's upstairs neighbors are two very different feelings. As a second-floor resident of a three-story apartment building, I feel uniquely qualified to speak on this experience.

One time I came home (from a party, yes I get invited to parties) and my downstairs neighbor was taking out her dog, so we crossed paths. She realized who I was in real time, saying, "Oh, the party's just on the first floor, oh never mind," and I mumbled back, "uh, I live here," and she laughed. I wonder if the third floor was invited?

In my life, I've never really wanted to meet my neighbors, I've just never cared much about their business. When I was a kid, our neighbors Bryce and Lynn had two cute dogs and a pool they would let us use, but we always got stung by bees when we would go over. Did they know about the bees?

When we moved to New York, we rented a house on a big hill and our across-the-street neighbors were our landlords. Sometimes they would pay one of us kids to dogsit for them when they went out of town, (shout out Renegade! Best dog ever! (dead now)) and they were nice, but I think one time they hired somebody to do some amount of construction or maintenance in or around the house, and he worked for like weeks or months in our garage but never made any progress, and we found out he was an alcoholic and stole one of our bikes, but then the landlords didn't do anything about it. I sympathize with his suffering, but the landlords probably shouldn't have let him be in our garage every day for so long.

Freshman year of college, I had a random roommate who joined a frat. He was super nice to me and only had sex while I was in the room two nights in a row and then never again. Three years later, I was at improv practice, and my teammate told me he was good friends with our neighbors from freshman year, and that our neighbors thought I was afraid of my roommate by the way they saw me in the hallway. I find that funny, because I never feared him, I just feared everybody. He shared his weed with me and always asked if I was okay with him smoking in the room. I don't know if he's a good person (I hope he is) but he was a good roommate. My roommate the next year was so messy and was barely in the room, and one time he was arrested for having cocaine in the room (while I was at work, he never told me, I only know from eavesdropping on him telling his friend on the phone, I'll never not eavesdrop).

I should get over my fear of opening up and knock on my neighbor's door one day to say hi. Keyword: "should". I think being friends with my neighbors would increase my life expectancy by at least five years, but what's five more years if I'm just spending them hiding from my neighbors?