My neighbor asked me to marry him the other day.
Just to give some background, he is a middle-aged man standing a few inches below my eye-level and lives in the basement of the brownstone next door to mine.
I often find him in my front yard raking the leaves or shoveling my snow (which is a little beyond the normal neighborly civil duties, but who would complain about that?). In the warmer summer days he spends an exceptional amount of time outdoors cat-calling (he literally meows/purrs/both), which I assume is his friendly way of saying "hello."
Though all my housemates have equally as frequent encounters with the neighbor, none of us ever managed to find out his name. He's been calling all of us "Queen" for years (we assume because he doesn't know who is who) and we have begun using the same name when referring to him. Being that he is topic of so many discussions, we have all gotten so comfortable with calling him "Queen" that there have been numerous occasions when we have almost called it to his face.
Aside from the typical cat-calling/meowing, he'll often stop me on my way home for a quick chat which usually go something like this:
Queen: Hi, my queen! How are you?
Me: A little tired, how are you?
Queen: I'm better now that I see you! Would you like a massage?
Me: Oh no thank you.
Queen: Are you sure? I can come in your house and give you a massage.
Me: No no, I don't think that will be necessary. But I appreciate the gesture. Gottarunbye.
We've come to the conclusion that he is the creepiest person we know but you can't not love him.
So the other day as I was leaving the house, I got a phone call from a lady name Laura asking if I was still interested in donating my kidney just as I bumped into Queen waiting for me on the sidewalk. He interrupted my kidney donation conversation with a "Can I ask you a question?"
It seemed urgent and important (though now that I think about it, so was my confused conversation with a stranger requesting my kidney that I had completely forgotten I had ever signed up to donate). But being that I was no longer as interested in donating my organs as I apparently had been a few years back, I used this as an excuse to quickly end my call with Laura. "Can you email me this information and I'll think about it?" I asked Laura as Queen patiently waited for his turn to speak.
"Sorry about that. What was your question?"
"Oh. I just wanted to ask you if you would marry me?"
He was as serious as one should be when asking someone to marry them. He had great eye contact but no ring.
This was right about when I started to panic and wished I was still on the phone with the lady who wanted my kidney.
I was not prepared for this and I couldn't come up with a rejection that wouldn't insult him. I stumbled over my words, started mumbling something about marriage not being my thing and then ran. And as I power walked away from him, he kept yelling down the block, "I think it's a really good idea!"
I'm usually better with my responses but I believe the kidney lady threw me off my game. It was too much fluster for me to handle on a Sunday afternoon on my way to brunch.
Next week I'm ordering delivery.
