Dogs & Drugs in Apt. 17

Excerpt From an Essay

**I moved into a new apartment last week! So of course, I started reflecting on the place I used to live. This is an excerpt from a longer essay draft I’m working on. It is FRESH.**

I unexpectedly had to move into apartment 17 just over 4 years ago. It was the middle of 2020, I was unemployed and my mom had to co-sign my lease. Unemployment payments, even during a global pandemic, don’t count as “income,” if you didn’t know.

Because of the aforementioned pandemic, and because I was quite poor, it was just me and my partner moving me into my apartment. Up and down 3 flights of stairs all day, drenched by our sweat in August heat. Too tired to put my bedframe together, I slept on the floor of my living room that first night, sad and alone and anxious.

The first weekend, my partner was over and we were watching the 2014 Godzilla (because of course) and hit pause as a swat team raided the building next door. My parents were already worried about where I’d ended up, so I resolved not to share that detail with my mother.

In the first 6 months, I’m like 87% sure someone died in the apartment next to my bedroom. I’m hopeful it was just natural causes but I’m afraid it was probably drugs or worse. There were multiple generations living in that apartment, the walls were thin, and the family was fighting a lot.

One night, an ambulance and fire truck outside woke me at 2:30 a.m. The apartment was very quiet after that. This was something else I didn’t tell my mother.

2 years in, I arrived home after work one day to find the police surrounding the building across the way, and as a result, I couldn’t get to my building. So I had to park at a distance, approach an officer, and ask if I could go into my apartment. He asked which one was mine, I pointed to my back door on the third floor. He said (and I QUOTE) “That should be fine.” 

I’m sorry, I need a little more than “should” if there are a dozen cop cars scattered around the place. Regardless, I hustled to gather a go-bag and my Dungeons and Dragons players handbook (because of course I was on my way to a session) and got the heck out of dodge for the night. Again, I didn’t tell my mother.

Multiple neighbors lived below me and were evicted for smoking weed in their apartment. I never complained officially, but the smell drifted into my apartment regularly through the vents and I hated it. We got many notices from the landlord about it, reprimanding us for not considering the children and the asthmatics. 

I once overheard my downstairs neighbor (who owned an old dog named Jellybean) yelling at a woman in his apartment for doing heroin. He is the same neighbor who once tried to start his dumb old truck 37 times at 5:30 in the morning last year. He still has the truck.

A few months ago, 4 (to 6…) young men who don’t speak English moved in across the hall. They work in construction, leave their shoes in the public hallway, and occasionally get drunk in the parking lot while blasting music from one of their cars. We receive many notices from the landlord addressed to all of us, but clearly about them.

They got a new puppy last week, and it cries, loudly, when they’re gone. It made me glad I was moving out soon. I’ve seen too many neglected pets in this neighborhood already.

The woman who lives on the bottom floor also had a large dog that they regularly left chained on the front porch. I think it belonged to her boyfriend. The poor thing nipped at me once and was clearly underfed to the point of malnourishment. One day we came home to find him getting sick on the porch. We called the humane society to come get him, and they came right away.

The man left, but the woman still lives downstairs. She stole my food delivery once but otherwise has kept to herself. Very recently she has a different boyfriend she makes out with in her car in the parking lot. She feeds the stray cats tuna.

A few weeks after we got their dog taken, I saw the dog again. I almost didn’t recognize him outside of that sad context. It took me a moment to place his furry face when I saw him at Blip Roasters with new owners, happier and healthier.

I wonder if the same thing will happen to me, now that I don’t live in that sad place anymore.