There are six separate units in the beautiful, ramshackle multi-level 1800s home my neighbors and I share in Portland. It is rare I run into any of them, but I always catch glimpses of their lives: smells of cooked foods, shoes in hallways, mail in boxes, recyclables in bins. From these traces, I imagine their lives.
For example, my next door neighbor subscribes to high fashion "W." She also receives packages from Weight Watchers. She struggles with her weight in lieu of pursuing a beautiful ideal. On several instances, I have see her from the back: Middle-aged, tall, thin and wearing clothes that are both conservative and high collared with Alexander McQueen-like touches, edgy hems and asymmetric skirt designs. I imagine her to be a dominatrix. Pounding the floor with her clunky heels. Wrestling her demons of beauty and weight and hiding a big happy girl in her heart and behind a tall, thin frame. Punishing her slaves with a certain unbridled but restrained and professional decorum. Yet beating them with her shoes for making any noise in her quiet apartment. She is Mistress Silence.
Downstairs lives another woman with her two lovers; at least that is what I suspect from the shoes left by the front door. I have seen this woman in town. She wears a beautiful straw hat to go to the market and buy fresh ingredients for her dishes: bouillabaisse, roasts, soufflés. Her cooking makes her lovers happy. I even smell their delicious aromas in my apartment. I imagine she eats with her lovers before they make love. Yet one of her men is violent. I hear him tell her to fuck off before he throws the dishes at her. He must envy the other man, the one who does not make a sound. They are living a romance a la "Jules and Jim," and strange Maine is the perfect place for it.
My other neighbor stutters. He lives alone, but I have seen him walk around town with a thin, nondescript and heavily-tattooed woman. On several occasions, he has tried to talk to me but gets frustrated from stuttering and walks away. He is in his mid-50s. Once, he told me he wanted to move to New Orleans because he was sick of the winters in Maine. Both of his arms are also heavily tattooed. He has the most amazing collection of music: rare and vintage blues, jazz, rock, folk, classic, boleros. I can't help but put my ear to his front door to listen to his wonderful recordings when I walk by his apartment.
My last neighbor smokes pot all day and night. Sometimes, the smell of pot wakes me up in the middle of the night. He is young and wears hoodies all the time. From a distance, his face looks hollow and lost like the wraith in Munch's "Scream." His worried mother occasionally comes to visit. I imagine his apartment to be unfurnished and his home to evoke the likes of an opium den in Asia where you smoke and drift away all day for the rest of your life.
My memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TT5DDWO
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