It's time to return to one of my favourite blogging subjects; my profound and enduring hatred for my obnoxiously loud neighbours. My apartment building is small, only four units total, so I do have the rare pleasure of actually knowing all my neighbours but somehow, instead of making me feel some kind of solidarity with them it only makes their lack of consideration or social grace all the more intolerable.
Last semester there were a couple of loud, drunk Ryerson students who liked to go get wasted at the bar, especially on Thursday night (the pre-weekend) and come home to blast Euro-house music mixes at 3 a.m. But at least they were nice if I ever ran into them in the hall and usually after exceptionally loud or late nights there would be a humble apology scrawled on the whiteboard next to the front door.
However, in December the kind alcoholics moved out.
Let it be said that the corridor in my building is narrow, moving furniture through it is a nightmare, getting my desk up the stairs was a nightmare of Biblical-plague type proportions. So I understand when people bash into my door at the top of the stairs inadvertently from time to time. One night during exams there was repeated buffeting against my door as if some idiot, who didn't realize the door was locked, was trying to home-invade me to steal my stereo. My irritation mounted. Every couple of minutes an elbow or anonymous inanimate object would connect thunderously and shake my door almost off its hinges.
As luck would have it I had no groceries in the house and had to step out to the supermarket. Lo and behold a couple of "kids" were moving in all their worldly belongings. The foyer was cluttered with Ikea furniture partially disassembled and tacky framed posters.
As I exited the building I greeted one of my new neighbours.
"Hi, my name's Rebecca. You're moving in?" A dumb question I know, but sometimes stating the obvious makes a convenient ice-breaker.
The kid looked at me like I'd threatened him with a knife.
"Oh ... hi." Pause. "Uh ... I'm kind of busy. I'll talk to you later." And with that he carried on hefting a hideous shelving unit into the building.
Now, I try not to judge people. After all everyone HATES moving day, it's stressful, it's tiring, you don't know where any of your shit is, something is going to get lost and something ALWAYS gets broken no matter how much wadded up newspaper you use. But despite all that when you're meeting your new neighbours for the first time it behoves you to BE F*CKING POLITE!!!!
So the new upstairs neighbours and I didn't get off to a great start. But they keep odd hours and I've never run into them in the hall or at the post boxes since that first fateful encounter. Fine with me. And that would be the end of it if it weren't for the noise.
As far as I can tell it's a couple of guys and one of their girlfriends. Whenever they come home for the night, usually between midnight and 2 a.m., there is a spastic flurry of female giggling that accompanies the progress of their leaden footsteps as they ascend the staircase. Now this may not sound annoying but imagine you're trying to fall asleep or masturbating or (rarely) actually trying to study for school.
Once my evil neighbours are home they stomp around as if they were trying to scare away demons or practice for their summer jobs as grape stompers at a vineyard. I've lived in apartments for the last decade, for the most part peacefully co-habitating with a plethora of different people as diverse and numerous as there are stars in the sky. But my current upstairs neighbours have to be the most inconsiderate bastards I've ever shared a roof with.
Last Friday at around midnight there was some kind of mass hysterical convulsion going on, they were thumping so forcefully that my ceiling fan was actually shaking back and forth. To add insult to injury their invasive stomping woke me a little after 8 the next morning, that's right, SATURDAY! Anyone who wakes me up before 9 on a Saturday is in my shit-book for a long time.
Tonight the couple came home around midnight and after thumping up the stairs proceeded to have loud repetitive sex, presumably on the floor since I could hear a slightly uncomfortable amount of detail. It's now almost 2 a.m. and the girl is screaming in a weird sporadic bleat that could be either arousal or panic, I can't be sure.
As usual I'm sure I'll sit here in bed steaming about my neighbour's total lack of consideration for the fact that they live in a building with OTHER PEOPLE. But by the time morning rolls around I'll be too tired/distracted/apathetic to write a passive-aggressive note of dire warning on the whiteboard in the hall and I'll simply let the matter of their bizarre and boisterous nocturnal activities slide.
My neighbour on my floor (also located below the domicile of ridiculous childishness) is going to be of no help. K, who's very nice, smokes enough weed to put an elephant in a coma so I'm sure he's not the least bit disturbed by the fact that amateur porn could be in the process of being made above us.
So what am I going to do about my situation? Probably nothing. But God does it feel good to bitch about it!!!!
But to end on a positive note below is a picture of my first EVER ROYALTY CHEQUE!!! This is the holy grail of writers the world over. It is something we all dream about but never dare hope to see. That is to one day get PAID for our writing. Transcendental!
