It's been three and a half years since I bought my house and discovered the beauty and delight that is my own washer and dryer. I don't miss apartment living much, although now that my electrical outlets in the two front bedrooms have ceased working except for mysterious and unpredictable 3-second periods, I have to say that there were appealing aspects about being able to pick up the phone and have a repairman there within the day, one that I didn't have to pay. I can still get repairmen to the house in a somewhat timely manner, but before they will leave they tend to expect some sort of payment, and apparently "acceptable payment" does not consist of cupcakes, hand-knitted dishcloths, or old lumber.
Something else I really miss about apartment living is the neighbours. Most of the time I complained viciously about the noise they made, the cheek of them WALKING at all hours, making the floor above me creak. There was the time I woke up in the middle of the night to see my neighbour peeing into their ornamental fountain on their deck, which, thanks to the fact that we lived in a old house that had, judging from the strange configuration of the rooms, been converted by monkeys, was right outside my bedroom window. Another time I turned into a crazy old lady and hit the ceiling with my broom handle, only to have the handle go through the thin plaster and make a crumbly hole that I was never really able to patch.
But what I really miss is watching my neighbours. Admittedly, I am something of voyeur, and so the opportunity to live in close proximity to other buildings that had windows facing mine was tantalizing. One of the apartments I had in Toronto looked out onto a sort of really big courtyard and three other buildings. I had no less than 300 hundred windows to look into. THREE HUNDRED. On Tuesdays, friends would come over to watch Buffy and we would look out the window to the building next door and see the same guy a few floors down, naked and playing on the computer. The people directly across from me were pretty boring, they never did much other than watch tv. Other people played apartment hockey, which must have made their neighbours really happy. I would have had the broomstick out in a heartbeat.
When I moved to Ottawa I rented a place with a view into the next apartment building, a mere 15 feet away. My apartment was cute, but with three dogs and two people in a one-bedroom, things got pretty crowded and chaotic. The apartment across the alley stretched the whole length of the building and consisted of room after room of light-filled calmness, with floors that didn't slant so much that furniture had to be propped up with bricks, and a kitchen and bathroom that had always been a kitchen and bathroom and therefore were properly sized and not built expressly for midgets. Sorry. Little people. Add to that proper grown-up furniture in muted shades of grey and brown, a real dining table with upholstered chairs, and a fridge chock full of vegetables, fruits, and grains, and it was enough to make me watch that apartment like it was my favourite channel on television.
The one complication was that this beautiful oasis of calm was inhabited by a co-worker of mine, someone I talked to every day and considered a friend. Spying on random strangers is one thing; spying on people you know is creepy and stalker-ish. Not that it stopped me; as I sat on my rickety futon in my awkwardly laid-out living room, I could see her sitting in a lovely and well-designed armchair upholstered in a muted inky-green velvet, knitting or reading, and you could tell she was probably listening to CBC radio or Enya. The calm, oh, the calm! Meanwhile, I was battling dust bunnies composed entirely of dog fur, and they were not only rolling around the floor in the winds created by the drafty windows, but they were floating in the air, landing in food and getting caught in my hair.
Sometimes she ate at her beautiful wooden dining table made from reclaimed wood, and I watched her from the plastic lawn chair and patio table that served as my dining room, separated from my living room by 2 feet of floor space. And, as if to tease me, her sleek grey and white cat often sat in the window across from my kitchen, just looking over at us and occasionally smoothing down his perfect fur with a casual pass of a paw. Behind me, three dogs with punk-rock haircuts jostled for position in front of the fridge and parked one inch from the backs of my feet, ensuring that when I turned around to walk out of the kitchen to de-lint myself, I would trip and sprawl on the floor with all the grace of a drunken baby.
One night I happened to look across the laneway to see that she had a date over for dinner. I knew they'd been out on a few dates, but had never met him and so this was my first chance to get a close look. I remember that he wore a button-down shirt and a sweater vest, and some sort of chino, although I can't remember if they were flat-front or pleated. Given the sweater vest, I'm thinking pleated. It took me a few minutes to clue in that they were actually on a date, and then about 0.3 seconds before I had turned off all the lights in the apartment and parked myself on my knees in front of the kitchen window. This was better than the cable tv I didn't have.
He sat in the dining room while she prepared food in the kitchen, and because it was summer, the windows were open and I could hear everything they said. I could see her in the kitchen, and see him at the table in the next room, and I could hear her ask what he wanted to drink, all from the safety of my darkened apartment. It was exciting for the first 10 minutes, especially when I had to run to the bathroom window to get a better view of the two of them in the kitchen. But watching people eat isn't as interesting as I had hoped, and pretty soon I lost interest and wandered away to fold laundry or spy on the neighbours with whom I shared a wall and a patio. I checked back periodically, hoping that the post-dinner activities would prove more exciting. They didn't. There was a lot of talking, but no physical contact, no shedding of clothes, no sex on the countertop, sex on the couch, sex on the table. It was, in a word, disappointing.
I found out later that this was probably their last date, and while I felt bad for my friend, I felt worse for me because spying on a cat cleaning himself just doesn't have the same appeal.
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