We’re Smarter, Smell Better and More Awesome Than You

My new apartment block seemed amazing based on first impressions. We’d barely moved in and our friendly neighbours were racing each other to introduce themselves.

It’s a pretty amazing situation: the entire apartment block frequently hangs out as a group socially. Everyone knows each other, and it sure doesn’t seem like there’s any secrets. Driveway cricket, keg parties, lots of laughs… it seemed like such an ideal social environment.

Unfortunately, over time, my housemate Matt and I came to realise a few home truths.

We are smarter, smell better and are more awesome than everyone else in the building. That’s not being up ourselves, it’s simply the wretched facts. Indulge me as I explain…

We are smarter

At first, we figured everyone just really liked talking about beer, football and hair extensions. Then we came to realise these are the goalposts which govern these peoples’ lives. It’s extremely rare we hear any conversation veer away from these reliable topics (which are usually bellowed from various balconies at 3am in the morning). If someone dared mention someone like Ron Mueck instead of Gary Abblett Jnr, you’d see a few heads splatteringly explode in bafflement.

We smell better

The apartment downstairs has a periodic cooking festival, where they seem to cook a freaking fortnight’s worth of food over the course of 24 hours. By food, I refer exclusively to aromatic curry. At first, that can be quite pleasant; but by the twelfth hour you’re really beginning to understand how the stench of korma paste can infiltrate your clothing.

Matt’s deduced that due to poor building design, the downstairs oven ventilation is generally flowing right into our kitchen cupboards, which recently lead to us sealing up selected doors with masking tape. Although we don’t have easy access to our saucepans anymore, we’d rather get take-out than get smoked out with vindaloo.

We’re more awesome

How do we spend our days? Spontaneously dancing to Andrew W.K. and causing ourselves great injury (I recently gashed open my leg attempting to use a bicycle pump as a baton). Creating ridiculous alternate personas and talking in the most ridiculous voices. Having fun!

How do the neighbours spend their days? Loudly blaring out Shannon Noll and Kings of Leon while they shriekingly dissect how drunk they all were the previous evening (while getting back on the turps all over again). That’s fun now and then, but when it’s exclusively how you spend your days… BORING.

Oh, there’s also the small matter of..

We’re not massive whores

Well, we’re both red-blooded single men, so we’re a tiny bit whore-ish; but that’s nothing compared to the three lasses who live downstairs. Although we’ve definitely confirmed from the other neighbours they’re all exotic dancers, some interesting evidence is coming to light.

Matt recently took a weekday off work, and noticed the consistent flow of hourly visitors to the dancers’ apartment. Hourly, as in, on the hour – every hour. Methinks there’s a little more than mere dancing going on down there…

As excited as we were to move into this building, we’re slowly cottoning on that we’re cut from a different cloth from everyone else who lives here. Unless we lose a few brain cells, begin cooking rancid goat meat every evening and develop a case of gonorrhea, I think we’ll remain on the outer.