My neighbor, the woman downstairs, throws up a lot. I find myself wondering what her deal is. One big “whoof” and then the toilet flushes. She sounds like a pro.
Is she a drinker? Does she have some kind of chronic illness? Does she have morning sickness, which everyone who’s been knocked up knows should be called all-day sickness? Maybe she’s bulimic, which would kind of make sense because I usually hear her puking around ten, which everyone who’s been a teenage girl with a box of Thin Mints knows is the witching hour for binge eating.
I mentioned to you earlier that she came upstairs in January to tell us to stop fucking so loudly; perhaps I could go downstairs and tell her to stop puking so loudly.
The women next door, who I assume are a mother and a daughter, have boisterous parties that I never hear unless I’m in the hallway outside their door. These apartments are queer; they have thick, thick walls, and thin floors. The women speak Spanish very loudly and kick salsa music on Sunday mornings. They ignore me, but I like them.
The couple across the hall from my downstairs neighbor has lived here for twenty years, according to my landlord. They are ancient and teeter around the halls, barely able to hold up the gallons of milk they carry sometimes. I see them in their old Skylark, waiting to back out onto Phinney, which terrifies me. I hope they don’t drive like they walk.
The other people I don’t see so much. This building is quiet and people keep to themselves. On a clear day I can see both mountain ranges from my living room windows, and my bedroom wall is nothing but windows, covered with hot pink curtains. When I wake up and the sun is shining through them, it’s like being in a pool of candy apple goo. I don’t miss old ghetto Crown Hill anymore.
Your bdrm. sounds fab. But it freaks me out you can hear your neighbor puke.
My upstairs neighbors’ bathroom was right over my office. When I’d play a video game, they’d listen to me playing and if I ever ran into them, they’d offer advice on how to get past various blocks they heard me trying to maneuver. They could tell this based on the music from the game, and I listen to the TV not so loudly.
Also once when I was whistling a song at my computer, I heard one of the guys whistling along with me.
These are in fact the same guys who, every week, on Tuesday, would have a Dramatic Argument about who threw away Mike’s pizza. Mike would say, “Dood, what happened to my pizza?” Joe would reply, “Dood, it’s been there like three weeks.” To which Mike would cry, “But I was just about to eat that!” This made me wonder if there was a constant state of three-week-old pizza stacked in the refrigerator, cycling in and out depending on how annoyed Joe was with Mike’s failure to consume his damn pizza.
I could go on for hours, but I won’t, because I’ve told these stories a million times already, and your readers want to hear about YOUR fantastically cool stories. Not mine, else they’d be reading me. Yeah.
I get to listen to my neighbors in back beat the shit out of each other on a regular basis. I’ve called the cops, and it’s made no dent. In psychological terms, this would be called a “volatile relationship” because they are both aggressors, but to me it’s just fucked up. Damn, I hate my neighbors. Assmittens.
I’m deaf in one ear, so have been able to sleep in blissful quiet (as long as the good ear is to the pillow) It was helpful when the ex snored! He was in the basement and I could still hear him. Neighbor works on cars in the evenings (he works shifts) and no pillow can drown that out.