The People in my Neighborhood

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There are many things I love about living in an apartment, no snow to shovel, leaves to rake, or gutters to clean. The best part, however, is absorbing your neighbors' lives through the walls and windows. And, I think it's all fair game provided that you don't use any devices to help you hear or see.

I like to think of these as TV shows for which you develop your own narratives.  And you have to take the good with the bad - the newyleds across the way who refuse to lower their blinds - ACES.  The overweight sextiginarian who evacuates himself with the bathroom door open -- brutal.

Sometimes these shows can be dramas, like the older couple who lives next door, who recently relocated uptown from Chelsea. The regular yelling and sobbing that seeps into my apartment suggest, to me at least, that they moved here to get a fresh start but their problem wasn't their old neighborhood.

Other shows are late-night viewing only. A few years back I was in a friend's kitchen in the city talking on my phone when I noticed an amorous couple across the street. This couple, whom I determined to be conservationists and multitaskers, were in the shower together. Although the window was opaque, the three hands on the window made it clear exactly who was doing what to whom. 

Like all good art, these shows can also be very emotional. There's an old lady who lives across the way who is easily in her mid-nineties and stalks the hallway with her dog and without a bra (NB: this isn't the emotional part). The lights in her apartment typically come on around 6 am and are off around 10 pm. Around Thanksgiving her lights were off for a few weeks, and, when the darkness stretched through New Years, I grew worried that this show wasn't in hiatus but had been canceled.  In April, I learned it was only an extended hiatus and she's back to her old ways (one aspect of which I still don't like).

When I lived in Brooklyn, I heard a blood-curdling scream from my female neighbor at like 2 am (this was a big departure her boyfriend's usual screams that she ruined his life). When I woke the next morning, he was scrubbing the apartment, door open, with rubber gloves and bleach. Straight up Rear Window situation until she came back with breakfast (I was kinda disappointed, tbh, if only for the story).

By far the most uncomfortable show was when a "gentlemen" across the way was negotiating with his date. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when he lost the negotiation but I suspect it was while she was getting a drink of water in the kitchen and he disrobed on the couch - that was the end of that episode. 

Ucalegon, noun,  (plural Ucalegons) (dated) A neighbor whose house is on fire or has burned down.

Origin

From Latin Ucalegon, from Ancient Greek Οὐκαλέγων (Oukalegōn). He was one of the Elders of Troy, whose house was set on fire by the Achaeans when they sacked the city. He is one of Priam's friends in the Iliad (3.148) and the destruction of his house is referred to in the Aeneid (2.312).

Epicaricacy, Noun, (uncountable),  (rare) 

Rejoicing at or derivation of pleasure from the misfortunes of others. (This is the English word for schadenfreude) 

Usage notes

The word is mentioned in some early dictionaries, but there is little or no evidence of actual usage until it was picked up by various "interesting word" websites around the turn of the  twenty-first century.

Origin

From Ancient Greek ἐπί (epí, “upon”) + χαρά (khará, “joy”) + κακός (kakós, “evil”).