I have a psycho neighbor. He lives in the apartment under me. The building is not well constructed and I have an idea that insulation was unknown to whoever did the actual construction. I get to hear him pee in the mornings, I get to listen to his TV and radio, I get to wake up to his alarm. All of which I understand is part of apartment dwelling.

The problem: He gets to hear me walk around, listen to my TV and radio, and presumably listen to me pee, and he’s pissed. Two weeks after I moved in last November, he was playing his music so loud that the couch I was sitting on was vibrating. I had no idea how long the apartment had been empty, so I thought maybe he didn’t realize how loud he was being. I went downstairs and introduced myself nicely and asked if he would mind turning his stereo down just a little bit. He responded by screaming at me and telling me that I walk too loud. (To be fair, the floors really squeak, there’s no insulation, and I’m sure it’s loud. It’s also true that there’s not much I can do about it.) He said (yelled) that he could keep his music up as loud as he wanted until 10 PM. I told him I would just have to ask the manager about the noise policy and he told me to go ahead. Which I did, and I was informed that loud music at any time was unacceptable and that the guy who was yelling at me wasn’t even on the lease, his girlfriend was. Apparently the Napoleonic Troll (he comes up to my nose, I think he’s about 5’4″ or 5’5″) has a history of screaming at other tenants too. Manager assured me he’d talk to NT and settle it.

Things were relatively quiet at that. Every once in a while when I was walking around my kitchen, I would sometimes hear him yell “LOSE SOME WEIGHT” out his window, but other than that things were quiet. Everyonce in a while he would play his music loud, but I mostly ignored it.

Then comes my birthday (on a Saturday) in February. After playing pool, I had three friends come over. We sat in the living room for most of the time and they left pretty late. I’m sure we made noise. I unwisely made the assumption that if we bothered NT, he’d pound and everyone would go home. We didn’t hear a peep from him. The next day, though, he played his stereo at full blast the entire day, once going and getting his truck to sit outside the door. I took it for a long time, went out to breakfast, sat there, but after about four hours I figured it was ridculous and called the manager.

Since then, off and on, he’s been obnoxious. I come home late on a Friday night and have the gall to walk around my apartment for five minutes before going to bed, and the next morning he blasts his radio and screams “WAKE UP!!” because he’s mad that I came home late and walked around (the fact that I saw him awake watching TV when I got home is beside the point, apparently). I’m sitting on my steps smoking, and he looks at me, and I look at him and don’t look away, and eventually he leaves, and in retaliation for me not being intimidated, he blasts his music some more. It’s Sunday, I decide to clean my apartment, he gets mad and blasts his music for several hours. Each time NT blasts his music, I call the manager (who, it turns out, is basically a wuss and just wants me to move out because it would be easier. I wonder if that’s what the last chick did). The last time I talked to the manager, he spent the entire time looking at my boobs and told me a story about how one guy shot his neighbor in an apartment complex.

Anyway, all of that was merely annoying. If this short little ugly guy with an itty bitty penis (did I mention he has a really big truck, and every time he drives away in it, he has to rev up the engine and zoom out?) needs to act like a five-year-old and assert his manhood by blasting his music and making snarky remarks about me (it wasn’t the girlfriend — these things never happened when only she was home), that’s fine. I’ve lived through worse. The guy never actually confronts me or talks to the manager; his M.O. was always the music or the rude comments.

This morning, however, things took a turn for the ugly. For the first time ever, I left for work before he did. As I was walking down the stairs past his door, he said something snarky and slammed the door. I yelled, “WHAT?” and he said nothing. By this point I was mad about all of his passive-aggressive shit. I said, “WHY DON’T YOU COME OUT AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE?” Which probably wasn’t smart, but this guy really ticks me off. He came out, walked up to about three feet in front of me, and said, “You’re fat.” To which I said, “That may be, but you’re ugly and I can lose weight.” (I had to go aaall the way back to second grade for that one.) He spent the next few seconds pondering how likely that would be and started calling me rude (but wouldn’t answer me when I asked him how I had been rude to him) and a bitch. I walked back up to him and called him an asshole and asked him if he were five years old. He said, “YOU’RE the asshole.” To which I replied, “Whatever, dude. You’re just an angry child,” and I started walking away. He yelled after me, “You better call your dad and get your brothers. I’m going to make your life a fucking hell,” and then he repeated it and then went back inside.

I drove away and called the manager, who didn’t answer his phone, of course. I called him back later and told him that I’m going to call the cops and if he wanted to talk to me first, he needs to call me by eleven. After eleven I’m going to call the cops and make sure they have my complaint on file. I’m not actually expecting them to do anything, but I want them to at least have it on record. Tonight I’m going to go see the manager and get the number of the owner of the building.

After all that, here’s my question: Is it all worth it? Should I move? I don’t really have the money to move. I have a lot of furniture and have to hire movers and I don’t make that much money. There’s also that part of me that doesn’t want the bastard to win. I am not doing anything wrong. He should get kicked out. He’s not even on the lease! I get the feeling he’s a hide-behind-the-curtains kind of guy anyway. Besides, the apartment is in a very nice neighborhood about fifteen minutes from where I work. I love my little apartment. I spent two months looking for this apartment in the first place. Am I just being obstinate and stupid? Should I take my kitties and get the heck out of Dodge?

Pissed-Off Neighbor

I have an online-life query I’d love your perspective on.

Nostalgia led me to do some internet searches on childhood friends, and I found the web site of a good friend from ninth and tenth grade. At first I was excited, as we had lost touch about ten years ago. But her site included an online journal, which I read, and now I feel strange — not just because some of it was pretty personal (and could I stop reading? No!) but because she had written a lot about me. About how she has wondered for the last decade about what happened to me and how painful it was for her when I stopped writing and how she can’t get closure. She included my full name and various details about me. She still lives with her parents and has begun writing fiction about our lost friendship.

This floored me. There was no particular reason I had stopped writing — I moved across the country after tenth grade, then went to college, lived in new places, made new friends, et cetera. Like most people, I feel like my life changed a lot between sixteen and thirty.

So now I’m vexed. On the one hand, I had genuinely cared about this friend and wondered what happened to her — that’s why I was searching! — so maybe I should contact her, especially if it would help give her closure? But on the other hand, it feels spooky that she’s thinking so much about me. And printing her thoughts, to boot.

What would you do?

Shirley