Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The townhouse community where I live has a pretty diverse population. Many of the residents own their townhomes, but several others rent theirs out and can charge any rent they like. This probably explains why I have a stoner/possible drug dealer living on one side of me (he’s friendly, though!) and a multimillionaire two doors the other way. I haven’t seen my next-door neighbor on that side even one time. I don’t have any idea what she looks like or anything.

I’ve been meaning to tell you a story about the stoner neighbor, but that might come another day. Today I have a story about the multimillionaire neighbor. Let’s call him Mr. Rich.

(By the way, the multimillionaire thing is a verified fact, not a Lorie exaggeration. Just saying.)

Mr. Rich was the first person I met when I moved in. He’s an older man, and I think he lives alone but I’m not sure. I see him a few times a week, usually in the mornings when I’m leaving for work. He’s super duper friendly – one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Mr. Rich owns two BMWs, and parks the older one in the extra space next to my spot. This morning, when I was leaving for work, I noticed that the older BMW’s trunk was open, but I figured he was loading it for a trip and went along on my way. When I went home for lunch, though, I noticed that it was still sitting there open, and I became concerned that maybe someone had hit the button by mistake from inside the house or something. I didn’t want anyone to get in the car and mess with it or anything, so I decided to go over and make sure he knew about it.

Our townhouses are all laid out pretty much the same way. He has a glass panel door in front, so when I knocked on his door, I could see inside:

He was sitting in the chair facing away, and could see me in the mirror (which is probably why it’s there). “I’ll be right there!” he called, and bent forward to put on his shoes. Or so I thought.

Because when he stood up, he was barefoot, and had pretty clearly just pulled up a pair of white boxers. The underwear kind, not the wearing-around-the-house kind, but does it really matter? Mr. Rich was almost certainly sitting naked in that chair when I knocked on his TOTALLY GLASS DOOR.

And I’m just standing there like, what the fuck?

He went to the right, out of sight for a few minutes, and when he came back around to the door, he was fully dressed and buckling his belt.

When he got to the door, he apologized, saying that he’d just gotten out of the shower a few minutes before.

Okay. Fine. But the shower is upstairs. So why’s he getting dressed downstairs?

And then I thought, well, the washer and dryer are downstairs, so maybe his clothes were downstairs in the dryer. As a matter of fact, I went downstairs this very morning in just a bra and panties because my work clothes were in the dryer.

But then, my freaking front door wasn’t wide open, either. And I took my clothes back upstairs and got dressed there.

So I’m standing there in his doorway making small talk about the community and talking about car repairs, and the whole time I’m like weirded. out. But man, if my job has taught me one thing, it’s to be friendly and polite even in the most bizarre circumstances. So I was.

As it turns out, he’d intentionally left the trunk open and the windows down on the BMW, because he’d recently had it in the body shop and the smell of paint was overpowering. I could relate, because I had a similar problem when I got my car back a few weeks ago. And blah blah small talk and in my head I’m like dude you were naked dude you were naked dude you were naked.

I told him I’d better head back to the office, and asked if he’d like for me to shut the trunk when I went back to my car. He thanked me for stopping by and said no, he’d leave it for a while longer, because he wanted to air it out.

Evidently, the car’s not the only thing he wanted to air out today.

6 Replies to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

  1. sounds like it would serve you well to get the guy’s phone number.

    (also, I don’t find anything disturbing about this story.

    …unless he was having a little -good time alone watching people walk by with the mirror.)

  2. I don’t think he was just “sitting” there naked… I think he was doing something… um “handy”…

    BTW the lady who lives down stairs from me was cleaning her apartment at 6pm ish last night without a shirt on with her window wide open… she was wearing a bra.. but i didn’t want to say ‘wearing only a bra” because i hope she at least had some undapants on!..

    eeeew

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