Won't you be my neighbor?

I've lived in my current apartment for nearly four years. I first decided I liked this place when I saw that a major focal point of the inside was a 70s-tastic love nook with fireplace and built in vinyl seating. The bedroom is a loft. The walls are wood paneling. All this disco fabulous living, and it wasn't in such a bad part of town, so I moved in. But since moving in, strange things have been happening in the neighborhood, and now I'm wondering just where I'm living.

I affectionately refer to my neighbors across the parking lot as "Domestic Dispute." During one of their brilliant fights last summer, the guy living there nearly drove his Jeep Cherokee through their sliding glass door. He got out of the vehicle yelling four-letter words at his... girlfriend? Wife? Baby mama? And I had half a mind to jump in his running vehicle and drive it to the 7-11 just to be funny. I decided against making that incident interactive and instead settled back onto my porch to watch the show.

Why just last week "Domestic Dispute" put on another stellar display, culminating in her throwing a bar-b-que grill lid across the parking lot at his head. While I can't give her points for substance (typical four-letter words and basic defamation of his sexuality) I can give her style points. I keep waiting to wake up one morning to even more police officers casing their joint because one of them has killed the other.

Speaking of deaths around my neighborhood, I don't know if I ever mentioned the guy who died last fall in the back half of my duplex. They partied a little too much, and when I got home from the gym the next day the whole area was blocked off with yellow police tape. I thought I killed someone when I left the house with New Kids on the Block blasting on the stereo just to passive-aggressively "get back at them" for keeping me up the previous night. But it wasn't KNOTB that offed him, he apparently overdosed. In the other half of my duplex. Dead. There's something a bit unnerving about seeing a fully-zipped body bag being wheeled past your back door.

Almost as unnerving as that day is the sight of my new neighbor's decor I just noticed when I came home for lunch today. Maybe I'm a bit cranky because new back half of the duplex neighbor was having a good time with his bass knob last night, but I couldn't help but take this little photo of his fantastic new curtains that I'm fortunate enough to see each time I walk up to my own front door:

Asian bordello? No sir, that's the back half of where I live!

I shouldn't complain, at least I have somewhere to live. And it's warm. And it's covered in wood paneling. But who are these people that live around me?