Like a Commune Where No One Communes

Living in an apartment building reminds me of living in a college dorm. A bizarre, impossible college dorm where you've never met or even seen most of your floormates. But nevertheless you're privy to their smells--pot roast, laundry detergent, burnt coffee, outrageously fruity shampoo--and their smells oddly become part of what makes the place home. And while I'm not always crazy about apartment life--strangers smoking right outside my open window, awkward meetings with neighbors who won't look me in the eye, circular saws in the hallway at 8:30 in the morning--and I hope to someday live where I don't have neighbors, not close ones anyway, I've got to admit that if all the mysterious other people who live in this building left and took their smells with them, I would feel pretty lonely here.