Our next-door neighbors are giant, anthropomorphized Gummy Bears.
Having Gummy Bears for neighbors is not what you’d expect. They’re not playful or entertaining, as their varicolored luminescence suggests.
They don’t juggle, they don’t unicycle, and they most certainly do not shit bags of smaller Gummy Bears, as the landlord led me to believe they would.
Gummy Bears, in short, are just assholes.
Giant, anthropomorphized Gummy Bear assholes from England.
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Of course, Jacquie and I were happy to see the previous tenants leave.
They were a German-Kiwi couple, on the skids. The New Zealand-er tended to smash dishes and scream at the German every night.
I once thought it was because she was seriously bipolar, so I tended to avoid her.
Then I met her boyfriend: an over-disclosing, touchy-feely, Euro-dweeb.
We’d only known each other two minutes when he went into great detail about his moribund relationship with the Kiwi.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I just want to be loved. And she doesn’t want to give me any love. Is it too much to ask to be loved? I ask her to hug me. But she does not hug me.”
His sad story really moved me. All I wanted to do was smash plates over his head, and tell him to go fuck himself.
Obviously we were ready for new neighbors. Just not the ones we got.
Based on an actual photo.
I’ll never forget when the giant, anthropomorphized Gummy Bear couple took the place of the coo-coo and her deutsche-bag boyfriend.
When I saw them moving their stuff into the flat next door, I was like, Holy Shit! I didn’t know an acid flashback could be so realistic.
Or involve giant, anthropomorphized Gummy Bears.
The only thing about them that didn’t astonish me were their accents. Considering their brains consisted of corn syrup and rendered hooves, they could only be from Leicester.
Leicester gives Dayton, Ohio, a run for its money in the production of dumb, gelatinous people. That’s what makes England one the world’s leading manufacturer of ignorant, gelatinous people.
Nobody in the block of flats was surprised they came from Leicester.
But we tried to make them feel at home, anyway. We made sure to speak slowly so they could follow along whenever we need to talk. It was difficult, because you could not tell from their accents if they understood you or not.
So, we developed a system the Gummy Bears grasped immediately: one stomp was “yes”, two stomps “no”, and three stomps, “I don’t know, please clarify”. (Nine stomps was “call the police”.
In short, we all developed a rapport with the Gummy Bears, and we learned to tolerate their ways. When they cleaned and dried all their shoes in the communal laundry, thus destroying both driers, we laughed it off as just another Gummy Bear frolic. Nothing a contracted serviceman couldn’t fix.
Early this year, I noticed the male Gummy Bear enjoyed going without a shirt in his apartment, in the common areas, and at work.
Basically, male Gummy Bears see clothing as hindering the complete articulation of their limits, which, let’s face it, isn’t much to begin with.
Other neighbors complained, but I stood in solidarity with our new neighbor.
I’m the kind of person who’ll give any Gummy-body the benefit of the doubt.
But, I have to say, the other neighbors were right. It got kind of sickening to see this vaguely formed mass of cottage cheese everywhere.
It was hard not to gag when he stopped you in the alley for a long conversation about work.
“Evry’fing a’right, mate?” he would say.
“Yeah, yeah,” I’d say. “All good.”
Immediately, he would launch into his latest work troubles.
His prattling gave me time to muse on the unsavory image of in full view of all our neighbors.
We must have been a revolting sight. A partially-clad, glob of middle-age neglect, pretending to care what a man with huge tits has to say about selling gym equipment.
Needless to say, I haven’t gone partial bare-chested since that disgusting evening.
But the continued exposure to the Gummy Bear man’s bare chest has given me PTSD.
My dad had ample man-boobs, and growing up with three sisters, I was conditioned to hope for man boobs myself, one day.
Seeing the Gummy Bear man’s tits on a daily basis has made me realize I’m never going to be more than an A-cup, despite my lavishly sedentary lifestyle.
It made me a little sad to think I would never have a bigger chest than my sisters or my wife, let alone this Gummy Bear man. He has to be a D cup, at least.
I don’t want to do what it takes for a guy to be a D-cup. Last week, I saw the Gummy Bear in his kitchen window, his capacious bosom covered in what looked to be blood.
“Are you alright, man?” I said.
Gummy Bear stamped three times.
“You look like you’ve been stabbed in the chest,” I explained.
Gummy Bear laughed and lifted into view the 18 inch pizza he was currently masticating by himself, whole.
He offered me some, but I politely declined, ran inside and dry heaved over the litter box.
There have been other shocking incidents: an unreturned iron, a “borrowed” laundry basket, damage to appliances from excessive sneaker-washing, the extended stay of a Gummy she-Bear émigré, laundry left in the machine for hours, and on and on.
Honestly, retarded people would make far better neighbors. At least they master the basics in their Independent Living classes. And they understand shared spaces require courtesy. They get it. Believe me, I used to commute with a lot of them when I lived in New Jersey. Come to think of it, they were all retarded, which could mean only two things. I was riding the short bus. Or I lived in New Jersey, which I’m pretty sure I did.
Anyway, Gummy Bears, with their rudimentary central nervous system, are only vaguely cognizant that other entities exist, let alone have anything to do with them. So forget courtesy, they have no sense of responsibility. There’s a strong case for them to be in an assisted living situation.
Yet, somehow, they still qualified to foster dogs.
This went on for months. They got a new dog every other week. They frequently let the dogs off their leashes to shit all over the place. Thankfully, I always made sure I knew where to step.
Especially after I found out some of the shit belonged to the Gummy Bears (which is how I know they don’t shit bags of smaller gummy bears).
Toward the end of their fostering careers, they had a run-in with a neighbor I’m friends with. He owns an old cat, was freaked after being chased by a succession of unleashed demon dogs.
“So,” my neighbor said to the Gummy she-Bear, “could you please make sure the dog is on a leash?”
“Wot the fuckin’ bloo’y hell business is’t o’ yours, you fucking batty geezer,” said the bear. “‘on’t yooo tell mee oy cain’t wawlk me poor dawgs from etting your feckin cat anyway.”
So, now I know what the she-Bear does for a living.
She teaches English as a Second Language to mentally challenged 18th century pirates.
Which brings me to what got me thinking about all this in the first place.
Last Tuesday, I witnessed the Gummy Bear mentality in its full splendor, and it isn’t just mindless obliviousness that animates them. It’s sheer stupidity.
The Gummy Bears had parked their car in a driveway belonging to the private house across from our flats.
The Gummy Bears were sad. They had to go to Ellerslie, but someone had parked a station wagon in front of the driveway.
Their car was blocked in. They waited 20 minutes for the other driver to return. But they only got sadder.
And they were in a hurry. So they decided to squeeze the car out through the narrow gap between the station wagon and the neighbor’s wood fence.
To their credit, the idiots managed to accomplish this, in a complex, 170-point maneuver comprised of loud, public bickering.
They were getting ready to drive up when one of the four renters living in the house came out to talk to them.
“Don’t ever park in our driveway again,” he said.
“Wot the fuckin’ bloo’y hell business is’t o’ yours, you fucking batty geezer,” said the bear. “‘on’t yooo tell mee oy cain’t park me poor Toyota Cellica in your feckin’ space; I’s ‘ave pre-mission from the owner.”
“There is no owner,” the renter screamed. “It’s just us.”
The Gummy Bears repeated their story to me, about having permission from the owner, that is was their right, that they were English.
Of course, that’s not what the people who live there told me.
“Frankly,” said one of the guys, “I never cared much for Gummy Bears in the first place.”
Basement Life 
