Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (17 page)

“I know, but I still wish for you to have it,” I responded.

“I could rig it if I wanted to, but I don’t. Okay?” he said as he began searching for something.

“Okay,” I said, wondering which steel pipe would afford me the best chance at getting a clear shot to the head. I knew I would eventually be overpowered, but if I could leave a big enough mark, someone in the building might discover the location of my body within the next year or so.

“I found it.” Stanley pulled out a worn blueprint from his stack of papers, breaking my concentration. He handed me a thin document. I stared at it, puzzled for a few moments. It just looked like a series of carefully sketched lines. Some sort of map.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never been a fan of cartography. If you could just show me how to fix the water issue, I’ll get out of your hair.” Oops, he was balding. I hoped he didn’t take offense to that statement. I had so wanted my death to be painless.

Stanley leaned in close to me, wanting to show me something on his map. “Right there. That’s your problem.”

His finger pointed to a line that ran from one complicated-looking square to another. I was confused by all the lines and numbers, but after a while I began to realize that he was showing me a blueprint of our building.

“Is that my apartment?” I asked. I was starting to feel just like Lisbeth Salander putting together all the loose ends of a high-profile case, the only difference being that I was missing a dragon tattoo,
nipple piercings, trained combat skills, and computer-hacking capabilities.

“Your problem is that you share a water heater with someone else in the building,” Stanley announced.

“Who?” I asked.

“This apartment, right here.” His dirtied fingernail pointed to the unit above me. The girls.

I should’ve known that it was Cathy and Claire who had been stealing my hot water. For as long as I’d heard them, their showering habits had been ridiculous. Some days I would note a combined two hours of bathing. I’m someone who gets bored in the shower after just a few minutes. I had even made the switch to Pantene Pro-V’s 2-in-1 Shampoo and Conditioner, just so I could get it done all at once. Get in, rub-a-dub-dub, and get out. I guess men and women have different showering habits. But honestly, what could the girls have been doing in there that would possibly take up so much time? I had my theories.…

Shaving their legs and other sundry parts (I’ve heard all about the red-bump irritation).

Practicing for
American Idol
(there’s no way Cathy’s making it to Hollywood Week).

Generating steam for nude re-creations of their favorite noir films (not likely, but my favorite theory so far).

Pooping (covering up bowel sounds from each other with running water. Didn’t work on me, though).

eBaying (I believe Claire pretended to be in the shower but secretly outbid Cathy on a cashmere sweater).

Hangover nap time (how else could they explain the morning of April 17, 2011, when the water ran for five hours straight?).

I said my good-byes to Stanley, and he responded with some sort of good-bye grunt that was a cross between “See ya later” and “I’ll be killing you later.” Now I had someone other than the girls keeping me up at night in fear.

On the way back to my apartment, it hit me. I found that the only feasible explanation for my recent hot water shortage was that the girls were all of a sudden waking up earlier than I was and using it all up. I have always considered myself to be an early riser. Those days, I couldn’t sleep much later than eight
A.M.
And the first thing I did to start my day was take a shower. The girls above me, on the other hand, could sleep later than Lindsay Lohan on a bottle of Ambien. I’d even clocked them rising as late as three in the afternoon. So why the abrupt change in schedule? It’s not like they all of a sudden had nine-to-five jobs or anything. Was it possible that my two familiar voices had actually found a line of work other than selling used clothes on eBay?

I decided to cancel dinner plans with an actor friend of mine who wanted notes on his reel (the only note I had written so far was “Give up!”) and awaited a conversation from the girls that would shed some light on this quagmire. Unfortunately, they weren’t giving me what I wanted. So I waited.…

“He’s really hot but sometimes in public he acts so premature. Grow up!” You’re not even remotely using that word correctly.

And waited …

“Do you think I could ever win an Emmy for just loving
Grey’s Anatomy
so much?” No I don’t.

And waited …

“What does it mean to be Lacoste Intolerant again?” The inability to wear a preppy shirt.

I was losing brain cells by the second. When were these girls going to spill the beans as to why they were waking up so early? Finally, while I was in the middle of making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, accompanied by some Top Ramen noodles, they filled me in on the secret.

“You know I don’t even like Pilates, right?” Cathy said.

“Yeah, neither do I,” Claire replied.

“But the instructor is just so hot.”

“I know, it’s like offensive how hot he is. I would so rub up against his calves if he let me.”

I looked down at my own legs and became fairly certain that no girl had ever yearned for them. I flexed my calves, hoping they might transform into something more attractive. They didn’t.

“It sucks that he only teaches morning classes,” Cathy admitted.

“And we have to wake up so early to make ourselves look all sexy and stuff. The things a girl will do for an Australian.”

Aha. I knew there was no chance they had become employed. I should’ve known that this sudden behavioral shift was all because of a beautiful Australian man. As usual.

After continuing my eavesdropping for a while longer, I found out that the Pilates class they were taking started at eight
A.M.
, which meant that their showering began at six thirty
A.M.
Since Cathy and Claire shared a bathroom, one of them would take the first showering shift, which lasted about thirty minutes, and then the other
would get in. This meant that hot water poured out of their faucet nonstop for over an hour. No wonder I had been bathing in icicles.

So I decided to beat the girls at their own game. I switched my regularly scheduled BlackBerry alarm from 8:01
A.M.
to 6:01
A.M.
This way I would be the first resident to use the freshly heated water in the morning, ensuring a successful cleansing experience. What I didn’t plan for was how exhausted I would get after I finished. There was really no reason for me to be awake at such an early hour, so after a while I found myself waking up at the crack of dawn, showering, and then going right back to sleep. My entire day would get thrown off schedule. I was eating breakfast at lunch, lunch at afternoon teatime, and tea for dinner. And then, to make matters worse, the girls were beginning to catch on to my little scheme.

“My shower was lukewarm at best,” Claire whined.

“I know, mine too.”

“I think the bearded guy below us is using up all of our hot water.” No matter how many times I gave them my name, I was still just a face with lots of plush luxurious hair on it.

“Good thing the Australian hottie teaches a seven
A.M.
class. Let’s just wake up earlier!” Cathy said with enough enthusiasm to make me want to vomit.

I switched my newly scheduled BlackBerry alarm from 6:01
A.M.
to 5:01
A.M.
I was knee-deep in a hot-water battle with the girls above me, and there was no way I was going to lose, not this one. So now I was waking up while it was completely pitch-black outside. I would stumble into the shower as if I were a drunken zombie. Something that had once been such an enjoyable and refreshing part of my morning was starting to become a horrible chore. When the water hit my body, I would wince, and when I applied facial cleanser, the grimace got even worse. Nothing was pleasant to me that early in
the morning. Even Marvin, who associates waking up with “food, food, food,” was not on board with my shenanigans. But I stayed strong in my fight for heated water.

The early-morning Water Battle of the Sexes lasted for about a week. In the end the girls surrendered to their Anthropologie-quilted beds. They had fought a good fight, but the stronger, or quite possibly the more pathetic, survived. Looked like Cathy and Claire would have to go back to getting their kicks from
Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
on DVD.

As my Dear
Girls Above Me Twitter following grew, so did my guilt and anxiety. Each day, more and more people were discovering my “letters” to the girls, and I felt as if it was only a matter of time before they stumbled across it. How would they react to a Twitter feed dedicated to their uncensored conversations? Probably not too favorably, unless they possessed a perverse attraction to Peeping Toms, or in this case an “Attentive Charlie.” Was it possible they would happen upon it and not even realize it was them? Based on the level of discourse that typically dripped through my ceiling, I believed I had a shot.

My main focus was trying to find a way to tame my paranoia. Whenever I would hear a knock at my door, my instinct was to hide in the large cupboard in my kitchen. I moved pots and pans and even my George Foreman Grill from this area, just to give myself enough room to conceal my entire body.

“I’ve got a package here for Charlie McDowell,” the FedEx guy called out, completely exposing my identity for anyone who might have been lurking in the hallway.

“Just leave it by the door,” I said from the depths of the cupboard.

“I need a signature,” he shouted back.

What if the girls had discovered my blog and hired a gentleman disguised as a deliveryman to survey my apartment as part of a planned attack later in the week? Because of this likely possibility, I considered not opening the door, but then I remembered I was waiting on a shipment of Wild Harvest oatmeal. I needed that fucking oatmeal.

I cracked my front door open. A man dressed in black shorts and a matching FedEx shirt and hat stood before me. His outfit appeared to be authentic enough, although a knockoff didn’t seem that complicated to piece together. He handed me my package, and I could tell from its weight and size that it was indeed my oatmeal (thank you, God). As I was signing the FedEx slip I watched as his eyes peered into my apartment. Did he see anything?! How much were the girls paying him? Should I offer him double? I swiftly shut my door until there was just enough space for my arm to hang out and finish up my John Hancock. I tossed his pen to the ground, diverting his attention and giving myself enough time to reel my arm into safety. Sorry, ladies, but you gotta get up pretty early in the morning. And we know that’s not your thing.

This paranoia even began to carry over into my sleep. One night I dreamed that I came home and the girls were in my kitchen cooking, dressed in matching aprons. They appeared so cheerful when they saw me … a little too cheerful. When I asked them how they had gotten into my apartment, they opened their mouths and started talking with cartoonlike enthusiasm, but no sound was coming out. For the first time, I could see them but not hear them. And to make matters worse, when Claire took the top off a pot on my stove, inside, sitting in some heavily seasoned broth, was Marvin. They were boiling my faithful dog alive, and the sickest part of all was that he seemed to be enjoying it. I feverishly woke up looking as if I had
participated in a wet T-shirt contest. I checked on Marvin, who was fast asleep in his bed, far away from the kitchen stove.

I was hoping that my girls-above-me nightmare was a one-time thing, but the very next night I had another one. This time I was alone on vacation in the Bahamas, escaping any conversations from above me (I even requested a room on the top floor just in case). After an incredibly relaxing week, filled with sunbathing, scuba diving, a badminton tournament, and intense karaoke nights, I decided to ride a horse (bareback) to the other side of the island on my last day there. It was an exquisite jaunt, and I was feeling quite good about myself … that is, until I happened upon a cove where Cathy and Claire were making sand angels … with my mother. Much like Marvin in the stew, my mom was having a wonderful time with Cathy and Claire. They had all sorts of inside jokes and were even hand-feeding each other freshly cut pineapple. I watched all of this from behind a palm tree. All of a sudden my mom cried out, “I love this Club Med vacation with my soul sistas!” What the hell was going on? My mother hates Club Med!

There was definitely a moment when I contemplated abandoning writing the “letters” altogether and deleting any evidence that might expose me to Cathy and Claire. This was a big decision to make and it wasn’t easy. Was this supposed to be a quick and harmless way to vent my frustrations, or was it my duty to transcribe these discussions for thousands of people’s enjoyment? I was at a crossroads.

I pulled up Google and typed, “What to do at a crossroads?” I clicked the very first link that popped up, which was a quote from Taylor Swift. She said, “Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you’ve had a bunch of bad days and there’s different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.” Wow. What a sage singer/
songwriter. I could totally draw a parallel to my own life. You see, “bad days” for me represented the difficult breakup I had gone through, but then I “dealt” with it by “turning,” or in my case being forced to listen, to the conversations of the girls above me. Cathy and Claire were my “music.” Also, instead of giving interviews about it to music journalists, I had nightmares about the girls partying with my loved ones while I watched in horror.

It was partly thanks to Taylor’s wisdom that I decided to continue on, but it mainly had to do with the overwhelmingly positive responses I got each day from people who read my letters. I can only assume that my readers felt sympathy for me instead of finding me thoroughly creepy, although there were a few of those people too. But over time I actually started acquiring “fans.” These people would show up every day and comment on my Twitter posts, Facebook status, and website. This didn’t exactly put me into John Lennon status, but I did feel as though I was at least Ringo Starr. Okay, okay, I was a Monkee. But for the first time in my life I was adored by people other than the members of my own family. From a self-worth perspective this made me feel very good about myself. Here are a few of my favorite supporters: