Try Not to Love They Neighbor

This week's therapy session is going to be about how short the road is from smitten to smited. I am quickly falling hard for my neighbor. Too quickly?

There is that undefinable quality in a person where you just know after ten minutes that you like them a lot. The first conversation I had with her there was a surge of butterflies in my stomach and a tightness in my chest. My first reaction was flight from the situation. The proximity factor was too dangerous. I fought it that first week, but we hung out a lot. This culminated in going out again last Friday night.

Let me just jump in with a childhood story. I was probably twelve years old and had done particularly well at baseball tryouts and got bumped up a division. I got put on a team with 14 year olds. I showed up to our first practice and everyone else was much bigger than me. Some probably had pubic hair for christ sakes. This was my first encounter with operating out of my league. I tried to hang, but it was very frustrating as everyone else was two years ahead of me. It was a rough year, but I eventually got through it and the next year was much easier. I feel like I'm operating out of my league with my neighbor at this point.

She is super cute, young and actually has a glowing personality. She makes me giddy. She makes me feel funny. She makes up funny words for things. She makes me drop all of my normal defenses that I employ. She scares the hell out of me and is a threat to my normal, sustainable routine. I've been here a few times and the eventual result was devastating, but when it all went down at least I didn't have to see them everyday or sit in my apartment and know that they are on the other side of the wall.

Anyway, Friday night she came over after work and we listened to music on the porch and had a few beers while she smoked these cigarettes that smelled like candy. They will forever be associated with her. She went into my apartment and grabbed my guitar and looked at me and simply said, "Play for me." I don't play for people anymore. It's something I do by myself in my apartment. I looked back at her and couldn't say no.

She had me play along with some flamenco music that she loved and then I turned it back on her and gave her a real quick lesson on some basic chords and she was killing it. She was playing along with "Ashes of American Flags" by Wilco within a half hour. We decided we needed to eat so I suggested we go downtown and grab something.

We changed and jumped into a cab and headed downtown. I showed my exceptional talent in singing traditional Indian music and impressed both her and the cab driver. He thought I was a natural. We got downtown and I jumped out of the cab and ran to an ATM to grab cash for the cab. I was so wrapped up in the moment that I left my card in the ATM. Brilliant.

We walked to the restaurant and managed to crash a table for two with no reservation. Totally crediting kismet for that and also putting absolute trust in it at that point. We had a nice dinner with the best gay waiter known to man. I thought he had a crush on her until we figured out that he had a crush on me by the end of dinner.

From there, we rolled to a club and put on a dance exhibition. The dances included Making Pancakes, Grocery Shopping, Double Dutch, Jumpshots and a variety of other completely goofy dances as the patrons just stared as us as if we were absolutely crazy. We both could fall back on being part-time mimes at any moment in our lives.

There is a definite caveat when hanging out with a super hot girl in a club environment. Every dude in the club and some of the girls want to destroy you. Even with that distraction, she never dropped her attention from me. I was probably too buzzed to really appreciate this as we devolved into a pair of hot messes. She grabbed my glasses and turned into sexy Sarah Palin before stepping on them and then managed to lose her credit card. We were killing it with recklessness. I realized we were done and pulled her from the club.

We walked past a group of homeless people and her golden heart bled. So, we ended up buying forty bucks worth of pizza for the homeless as all of the cabs sped off into the night filled with drunks. After she had distributed all of the pizza, she looked at me and said, "I'm hungry." This is where we had our first argument. We were really packing in a lot in a small amount of time. We argued in some alley and did that awkward face in face thing, but resisted making out because we were neighbors.

She saw a couple sitting on a curb and the girl looked really tore up so she grabbed me by the arm and led me over to the couple where she talked to the girl and then held her hair while she gave it up into a planter. As the couple walked away the dude looked at her and said "That dude's an asshole. You shouldn't date him again."

I looked at her and told her to hold my glasses while I went and showed him how much of an asshole I was. She grabbed me and talked me out of it as we walked back to where the cabs used to be. As we approached, a cab was going towards the throngs of displaced revelers waiting impatiently. She jumped into the street, stopping the cab short of the people waiting and yelled to me, "Get in!" She then rolled down the window and flipped off everyone waiting while she yelled "Fuckers!" at them while we drove past.

That was the point that I realized I was done. I was smitten.

We made out in the cab on the way home like the ship was going down. Both of us realizing it was totally wrong and that we shouldn't be doing it because we were neighbors.

We got home and...The next morning she was laying on my chest while I stroked her hair and we just talked about whatever before I snuck her back to her apartment next door in an effort to conceal it from any of the neighbors. It was as at peace as I've felt in a really long time and more potent than any amount of booze that I've ever tried to use to self-medicate and forget. She made me want to remember every moment we were spending together. She made me want to live and die on every word that came out of her mouth.

This is not a crush. This is an emergency.