Devon Henry
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read
I hate them so much.

I recently moved into a semi-crumbling old Craftsman that was, at some point, moved from Venice to Hollywood, giving us amazing bay windows that once used to look out at an old-timey boardwalk and waves that didn’t have baby diapers in them yet. Now I use them to watch failed actors jog while I sip wine from a Daiso mug and cackle.

The house has many selling points, in my opinion. The former mansion has been split down the middle, with young men living on one side and young women living on the other like a creepy Edwardian boarding school. Apparently an old woman died on the men’s side of the house in their half of what used to be the Master bedroom. I have a door in my room that leads to a balcony with no railing. There are three claw-foot bathtubs in our backyard. Apparently one side of the house is sinking into the foundation. I’m not sure which side it is, but I’m excited to find out.

It also has a washer/dryer and a massive driveway.

It is my dream house. No sarcasm. Going home to my creepy little mansion at the end of the day warms my perma-Halloween, April Ludgate heart in a way that the pre-planned, amenity-heavy apartment complex I used to share with my ex simply did not.

But it can’t all be ghosts and foam wig heads hidden in the liquor cabinet. There is one, massive downside to my new Addams Family digs.

Our neighbors suck.

They are every heinous statistic on gentrification. They are Lydia Deetz’s parents, “updating” and “modernizing” their Craftsman and filling it with shite art and women who have yoga-arms and wear wide-brim hats with delicate gold “layering jewelry”. But, worst of all, they have a full three-car garage but still insist on parking their one Hyundai Elantra in the middle of their driveway that borders ours- effectively forcing my roommates to come out every morning and play car Tetris at 7AM so that we can all get to work.

They are the worst kind of people, and yes I am counting those assholes who don’t pull into the intersection to make a left turn and my one busy-body co-worker, Carol* who has to comment every time I’m late and cc my boss on every passive aggressive email she sends.

*Carol’s name has been changed because she’s such a busy-body she’d probably find this article. Get a hobby, Carol. Stop telling people about your gland problem.

I don’t know much about the people next door, aside from the fact that they are all probably terrible. There appear to be about six of them but no one else seems to have a car besides the one woman who probably gets aroused every time she gets to tell someone how to pronounce “Acai”. I never see anyone coming or going and the only car that’s ever in the driveway is that damn Hyundai Elantra. So I really have to wonder what it is they keep in that massive three-car garage.

Here are some theories:

  • Everything that got cleared out of the Los Feliz Murder House when they tried to sell it last year.
  • Every single red wig in Hollywood, explaining why they had to put Emily Browning in that Ronald McDonald monstrosity on American Gods.
  • Spiders
  • Tiny chips of wood to inexplicably spray paint on a nice Saturday afternoon when some people just want to sunbathe without inhaling paint fumes.
  • Bodies.
  • Three large treatises on feminism and intersectionality written by Taylor Swift that will never see the light of day lest she alienate that arm of her fandom.
  • An assload of quinoa.
  • Arnold from Hey Arnold’s real last name.
  • An alternate reality in which 2017 is not the shining political clusterfuck it is today.
  • An alternate reality where my crush is actually really good at texting.
  • An alternate reality where 2017 turned out just how Parks and Rec predicted it would.
  • Carol, who has secretly rented the garage to spy on me and see what time I actually leave for work because she’s what happens when you don’t tell kids that Hermione Granger was actually kind of a dick.
  • Three identical white Hyundai Elantras.

)

Devon Henry

Written by

Writer, Nerd Queen, T-Rex Impersonator, Amateur Viking, Mostly Harmless

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