BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT

My bad-boy neighbors have been evicted for nonpayment of rent. They're the ones I called the police on a couple of times, so you think I'd be happy — no more drunken screaming at 3 a.m., no more drum practice at any time, no more tire tracks in the yard, no more "Lord of the Flies"-type bonfires — but really I'm sad.

It's funny how other people's dissipation can grow on you, how it becomes something you can count on — like when I'd leave the house in the late afternoon and they'd all be on the porch, shirtless, bed-headed, smoking the first cigarette of the day. I was never sure how many actually lived there, but there were always three or four boys, all thin and pale, newly arisen from the night before, making plans — on their phones and with one another — for the night ahead. They were perpetually making new plans. For new fun.

And they had a band, one that they seemed to be serious about, based on how often they practiced. The neighborhood was always alive with the silly, passionate sound of amateur music. Theirs was some hard-rock variety with racing guitars and manic drums and Jim Morrison-type screams. Usually they practiced inside, and the house would pulsate, but sometimes they'd sit on the porch with guitars and play the same verse over and over. I deduced that these were song-writing sessions. During one of these sessions I looked out my kitchen window and saw them passing around a liter of Johnny Walker Red, which they drank thirstily from the bottle like it was Gatorade. That's when I figured they probably weren't students. College kids traffic in bottled beer and pre-mixed margaritas, not deep, unflinching swigs of Scotch whiskey at 4 in the afternoon.

A lot of the stuff I find out about my neighbors comes from my mom. She and my stepdad frequently work on my old house and, being very sociable, fall into easy conversation with people in the neighborhood. The other day she told me all about a neighbor to the south I didn't even know I had. He walked by on the sidewalk and I thought he was a random passerby, but my mom said, "Oh no, that's so-and-so. He lives in the upstairs apartment over there and works downtown." One day she talked to the landlord who owns the bad-boy house. He told her he had been trying to evict them because they were "running down" his property. He cited a huge stash of empty wine bottles they had thrown in the yard, tossing in speculation that they had stolen the wine from a local Italian eatery where he said they all worked. I was surprised by the news that they worked, let alone in an upscale restaurant. They seemed so adamantly unemployed, except musically, and, based on their skinny pastiness, like perfect strangers to nutritious food. I would have guessed nachos and marijuana, not bruschetta and Caesar salads. The landlord said derisively to my mom, "They think they're musicians." And he told her they had just gotten a $350 ticket from the city for being a noise nuisance. Apparently everyone in the neighborhood had been lodging complaints.

I don't know when it was exactly, but at some point I started to find them more endearing than annoying. Maybe because I was around college kids all the time who were obsessed with networking and resumes and "looking good" to employers — kids who had no passion or even genuine interest in what they were doing, who were devoting their youth to breaking into the grown-up world of salaries and respectability and "success." The boys next door, meanwhile, were spending their youth. And youth should be spent. It's what it's for. When these guys are 45, I thought the other day, they will look 45. They will look like they have lived — while their corporate counterparts will be desperately preserved with skin creams and high-fiber diets, putting all their money in 401Ks so they can have fun when they're 65. I'm not saying I condone the boys' behavior. I don't at all. I just kind of love it.

Despite having called the police on them for noise, I never considered that we had a hostile relationship. I'd even say we were somewhat friendly, especially after the Mabel incident.

The Mabel incident was this. One day the boys were out on the porch and my loud-mouthed coonhound, Mabel, started barking/howling furiously. One of the boys — the lead singer — totally snapped and maniacally yelled "SHUT UP!" He didn't realize that I was standing 20 feet away on my porch — until I walked to the railing and calmly said, "Mabel, that's enough." Then I turned to the boy and said, "Sorry for the noise." The irony planted itself in the space between us and blossomed — comically — into instant understanding. The boy looked mortified and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scream. We were just having kind of a heavy conversation over here." I said, "That's OK. Mabel can be really annoying, but she's a good dog if you talk to her." The boy looked sheepish, and I could tell that beneath his rough, alienated exterior he had acquired manners somewhere and could draw on them when needed. "I'm really sorry," he repeated.

We had never really spoken before, but after the Mabel incident the boys started saying hi and waving when they saw me. I developed a genuine warmth that made me want to take them casseroles and tell them to be nice to girls and ascertain that they were brushing their teeth from time to time.

I began to see that living next to them was kind of like living next to the Great Gatsby — with the same themes of excess, alienation and unreachable dreams — only without a butler to pick up the wine bottles. They even had a swimming pool — not like the glorious one Gatsby died in, but an inflatable one from a hardware store (now drained and crumpled on the patio). Never mind the difference. The impulse was the same: to have — the one night they used it — a grand time.