I Live Next To A Real-Life Kramer

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When Moses brought the Ten Commandments to my people, he instructed us to love thy neighbor. Well I’m sorry, my Hebro, but I just can’t do it. I live next to a delusional pod who has no sense of boundaries, social cues, or acceptable behavior. She’s become entrenched in our apartment life like a tick and I have no idea how to communicate to her that she needs to ease up and distance herself. I always wanted to get to know my neighbors, but I’d gone two years without meeting any…until The Roommate’s girlfriend decided to approach a puppy. Our lives would never be the same again.

Back on a beautiful Saturday in September we were drinking beers and playing cornhole outside the apartment (we have a courtyard with some grass, what up h8ers). The neighbor in question – we’ll call her Kat (which is ironic because she’s a crazy dog lady, although I made it ironic on purpose, so is it still ironic?) – comes strolling by with her puppy. It started out so simple: “What’s your dog’s name?”

Now, I don’t think I should tell you what the dog’s name is, for the sake of anonymity, because she has like 10K Instagram followers (not the owner, the dog), but it’s as ricockulous in real life as the pseudonym she’s going to get: Her Highness Fairy Dust.

Within minutes of meeting Kat and Fairy Dust, we got the whole life story of the dog, why she can’t compete in dog shows, how much she cost (an absurd thing to be telling someone moments after meeting them, and, sidebar, when did dogs get so fucking expensive?), how Kat was able to skirt around our building’s strict no dogs allowed policy (Fairy Dust is a therapy dog, which I thought was a made up thing, but now six months later I’m convinced Fairy Dust is a legitimate medical necessity for Kat). We were even made privy to the fact that Fairy Dust and Kat bathe simultaneously. Fucking sit in the damn tub together. Dog filth and human filth just chilling in lukewarm water, the germs of two species combining to form a primordial ooze in the upstairs apartment.

From that introduction on, Kat has made herself no stranger to The Clubhouse. She’ll go to take Fairy Dust for a pee, see that our TV is on, then come knocking. Actually she has the dog knock on the door for her, which in and of itself drives me absolutely bonkers, and before she’s even stepped foot into our foyer all of our heads start to roll and the “you get the door” “no you get the door” game starts to heat up. The visits can sometimes be quick – usually it’ll be ten minutes of too much information (like when she told us she often has to fix Fairy Dust’s prolapsed asshole by hand, or how she watches pimple popping videos before bed) – but sometimes she’ll pull stunts that you would think are too unrealistic even if seen on a sitcom.

One such stunt pertains to the continual manipulation of a picture on our bar. On our bar, we keep a picture taken a few weeks before entering the real world at Countryfest 2013. It features me, The Roommate, and our third roomie who moved out recently because that asshole bought a condo. Anyway, it’s a really awesome photo of us that we display to represent our journey together since college. For Christmas this year, Kat was nice enough to get us gifts. It was a sweet gesture, but one of these gifts was a photograph of Fairy Dust. Without asking, while we were opening our other gifts, she removed the roommate photo and replaced it with the photo of her dog. Psycho move. When she left, we returned the original picture to the frame and left the Fairy Dust photo next to it on the bar. Two days later Kat saw that we changed it back, and without even acknowledging we switched the photos back, she did it again, replacing the roommate photo with the picture of her dog. This charade has continued for a month now; no less than five switches. And no words are exchanged. Just passively aggressively changing the photos.

She also has this outrageous habit of unlocking our door every time she comes over so that she can come and go as she pleases for subsequent visits. And she does this without asking! So if we don’t catch her doing it, it never gets fixed, and we end up leaving the door unlocked for extended periods of time. Our theory is that she does this so she can break in at night and watch us sleep. She seems like the kind of person that would really do something like that.

Kat is also one of those people who have such an obnoxious social media presence that you have to mute them on all platforms. Once she friended us on Facebook, The Roommate and I were being tagged in multiple daily posts about her “puppy sitters” and how happy Fairy Dust is to have us in her life. We’re being tagged so frequently that both mine and The Roommate’s parents have asked us who the crazy person tagging us daily is.

In general, Kat has abysmal social cues. During football Sundays I have seen her steal the seat on the couch of the poor bastard that had to get up to let her in. I don’t need to hear Kat telling us that all of Fairy Dust’s toys look like anal beads, because then I start to think that’s exactly what Kat uses them for in her free time. I hate that Fairy Dust’s go-to move is to jump in your lap and lick your face like it’s a fucking ice cream cone, and it’s all because I see Kat on a daily basis encourage this behavior by presenting her face to Fairy Dust and allow the dog to take to her face with tongue flicks you see in bad pornos.

The title of this suggests I live next to Kramer, but the thing is, everyone loves Kramer. Sure he’s a doofus, but he’s a lovable doofus. My Kramer has all the bad qualities without anything we have come to know and love about Seinfeld’s Kramer. Kat is like eight flews over the cuckoo’s nest and I’m afraid that if I say anything to her about boundaries that she’ll break into my room at night, kill me, and let Fairy Dust lap up the blood.

I need some help. Should I say something? Continue to put up with it? Or should I move? I’m honestly leaning towards moving at this point.

PS – As I’m writing this, Fairy Dust is balled up next to me. Kat asked me to puppy sit from 6-7. She dropped the dog off at 5:30….it’s currently 8:45…and it’s Friday night. SOS..

Image via YouTube

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Boston Max

Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly

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