Ryan Gosling Is My Neighbor

How we fight with our neighbors before we walk up the hill.

            I recently found out that Ryan Gosling is my neighbor. A dog walked up to smell my dog through a fence, and, looking at the dog, I asked the parent what kind of dog he was. We talked for a bit before I looked up at his face. “This guy looks a lot like Ryan Gosling,” I thought. Then, “Am I talking to Ryan Gosling?” He wished me a good day. “I just had a whole conversation with Ryan Gosling, and my dog doesn’t give half a shit.”

            I live in an eight-unit building in Los Angeles. On my block, there are more apartment buildings like mine. As you move towards the hills, condos are littered in with modest sized houses. Another block up and you begin to find mansions, one with an orange grove in front, another with three Mercedes Benz’s in the winding driveway and a backhouse behind an ornate iron gate. My dog walks take me up there and I look admiringly and hopeful and simultaneously judgmentally at the beautiful homes I expect never to be able to afford. Nonetheless, almost as a spell, I mutter to myself, “I’d take that one, and that one, and that one” about the ones I like and, “I’d sell that one” about the ones I don’t.

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