How to Keep Friends and Alienate Bitchy Manhattan Neighbors

The bitch that lives downstairs — okay wait. Pause. I'm talking about her like you all know what I'm talking about and I've never even mentioned her before. Picture a not-so-cute, angry, bitter girl with annoying curly brown hair that you just want to wash, wearing Cornell sweats and stays in every weekend and has no friends and is jealous that you are such a social, attractive individual ... picture her. She's the girl that lives below me. She's awful. She once complained  that the BF was walking down the stairs in our apartment too loud on his way to work... and then mentioned a Rock Band incident from like a MONTH before. "You guys kept me up all night. You were playing music at midnight!" Sweetheart... that was a lovely rendition of "Maps", we were just serenading you! And to be honest, I just re-read that and it might not sound as awful as I make it seem but just take my word for it. She sucks.

Anyways, this weekend I had a birthday party for a friend of mine that started at 10PM on a Friday. One hour later I get a knock on my door and Miss Congeniality is standing there demanding to talk to whoever lives in the apartment. "You are WAY too loud. This is absurd. I'm going to call the police if you don't tone it down."

I swallowed my reply quoting one of my favorite movie quotes ever: "I'm sorry I'm not the most boring person ever okay? I'm sorry I'm not poor, I'm sorry I don't have a fat ass" and assured her we would be quiet. I went down to my friends hopping around to Madonna and told them to take off their heels and jump on the couch. (Which looking back now is probably how I ended up with chili handprint stains all over my walls.) My friends are very bouncy. 

She came up for what I thought was the second time, what I later realized was the third, and was on the phone to my super complaining and yelling about how it was 1 AM on a Friday and we didn't have any respect. I offered her a sip of my bottle of Jack to calm her down, but that only served to further upset her. I didn't understand why she refused to talk to us, so I promptly, and wastedly, called my Colombian super, explaining to him in broken, drunk Spanish that we were clearing out the apartment and I was so sorry. I thought that I would win, because hey, we are both Latin and ethnicities have to stick together right? 

Me and one friend were going to walk downstairs and yell at her for being such a party pooper, and another friend of ours offered to come down and take pictures while we did that. Out of a party of 30 people, only the BF had the sense to stop us. Looking back, that was probably a good thing. I don't know that walking downstairs and getting yelled at by two drunk girls while getting paparazzi'd would have helped the situation. I think I also said I was going to put on a Penn sweatshirt so she would know that not only was I more social than her, I was just as smart.

I didn't have the satisfaction of doing this (instead, I settled for jumping up and down loudly in my apartment like the total mature woman I am) but I later found out that a friend of mine had answered the door the second time Miss Congeniality came up. When MC complained about the noise, my friend said to her "Honey, if you don't like the noise, you shouldn't live in New York City" and then shut the door in her face.

And that is why I love my friends.