Parents, Please, Cut Them Off Before It’s Too Late . . . Aagh, It’s Too Late!

And this is precisely why the evildoers hate our freedom:

There are times when a confluence of people find a way to become a sort of family. It can happen at summer camp and in college dormitories and at Internet start-ups. But in New York, where many people don’t know their neighbors and prefer it that way, 126 Rivington Street, where the residents eat together, often sleep together and live above a cupcake shop, is an anomaly.

Ever since Mike Dreeland, 32, moved into the second-floor apartment with two friends from Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., two and a half years ago and started having parties on his rear patio, the 102-year-old tenement between Essex and Norfolk Streets on the Lower East Side has become a cross between the shenanigan-filled apartment building on “Friends” and the drama-soaked fictional complex Melrose Place, 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles.

. . .

The 15 members of the 126 gang drink at Iggy’s on Ludlow or Whiskey Ward on Essex, eat at ‘Inoteca on Rivington (where they are friends with one of the chefs), buy birthday cupcakes at Sugar Sweet Sunshine on the ground floor, and wallow in one another’s personal affairs whether they like to or not. There have been at least six sexual relationships in the building, along with an untold number of angrily slammed doors and tearful reconciliations. As with “Friends” and “Melrose Place,” the central theme of this show may be: how long can one continue to enjoy the bacchanalian pleasures of youth before one craves a quieter adult existence?

How about not one more sugar-frosted minute?

On the top floor Hannah Long, 27, lives in an apartment that smells like incense and hot tea. A scorpion, a tarantula and several preserved beetles hang in display boxes along the walls. She is a satellite fixture at 126, traveling a lot, but as a self-described “serial neighbor dater” she is an intimate member of the group nonetheless.

Mr. Dreeland said that Ms. Long once telephoned him 15 times in a day. “It’s a little soap opera I’d rather my boyfriend didn’t know about,” she said, rolling a cigarette on the arm of a large wooden chair from Bali.

As for Mr. Dreeland, he now prefers to date people outside the building. Wearing a ski cap while watching Comedy Central in his apartment, he recounted the adventure of the night before, when he brought home what he described as an “urban cougar,” a woman over 40, he explained, who is attracted to younger men. Apparently this particular cougar didn’t turn out to be all that interested, he admitted.

To preserve whatever semblance of a social fabric that remains in this city, can we at least agree that we will never, ever repeat the phrase “Urban Cougar”?

(Sunday Styles Section, it had been a while — damn you for occupying so much mental space!)