Thy Neighbors Loveth Too Much December 3, 2007

Our neighbors in Apartment 1209 have begun a competition with my boyfriend and me and like all good conspiracies, I am the only one who actually believes this.
 
The truth of the situation became unavoidable once insomnia made me its bitch last month.
 
Unable to fall asleep and tired of tapping my boyfriend’s shoulder every ten minutes to remind him that I still wasn’t asleep while he oh so happily slept, I began making bed in our living room and making friends with the television and late night cable. And it was all great fun until one night - in the midst of an American Gladiator rerun on ESPN Classic - I heard noises.
 
Sex noises.
 
Sex noises that made it clear that the two noisy people (or more?) were posturing. The kind that screamed, “Listen to me, I’m having amazing sex! I know how to make amazing sex! I’m a star!”
 
For me to criticize two people who make a lot of noise during sex would be like if I were to complain that the person next to me is breathing. I’ve probably encouraged many past and present neighbors and roommates to wonder if the sex I’m having with the person I’m having it with could really be that good. So even though overhearing two people having sex is awkward and uncomfortable for anyone with ears and a decorum of decency, I recognize that part of the awkward and uncomfortable I experience is a result of feeling called out. Embarrassed that I’ve put other people in that position and knowing that the recognition of how loud I really am only makes itself known in my little brain after the sex is over. 
 
But overhearing my neighbors that night just annoyed me.
 
Because it felt deliberate. Like they were trying to tell me, “See! We can have loud sex, too! What you think about them apples, bitch?”
 
My boyfriend and I have lived in our apartment for three months now and have yet to meet any of our neighbors. There are some I’ve passed and said my hellos to, but no one that I could freely borrow cups of sugar or glasses of gin after realizing the Bombay Sapphire is finished from. It’s not that I’m unfriendly. It’s just that after growing up in a town where most people didn’t lock their doors even at night or ever used the horn in their cars unless to say hello to a passing car (beep: hi there!) or gently alert a child that one and a half tons may run it over if it didn’t stop chasing its basketball onto the street (honk: look over here!) then finding oneself living in a city where one is met with suspicious looks if they happen to smile or acknowledge another people’s presence in any way, one’s attitude towards strangers can begin to change.
 
And after three months of walking through our apartment building’s lobby, riding its elevators, and visiting its fitness center (a grand total of seven days), I’ve observed that our apartment building is home to quite an eclectic crowd. The investment bankers and the consultants; the artsy students with the hipster appearances and daddy’s credit card; the pampered princesses with the pampered miniature dogs and the pampered Louis Vuitton purses; and the yuppie parents whose babies ride in strollers that probably cost more than the total amount of one of my paychecks. It’s the kind of crowd that seems very nice but I don’t dare accidentally push the Close Doors button in the elevator when I mean to press Open Doors for someone running to catch said elevator because if they happened to have a glance at my face, there’s a good chance they would hunt down my identity and blacklist me at all of Chicago’s preferred places to be or knife me - albeit with a very nice butter knife from the Vera Wang Byzantium collection - the next time I cross their path.
 
The apartment itself deserves love though. It boasts high, vaulted ceilings; beautiful, shiny hardwood floors; and appliances whose existence had become a faint memory for me during college and my last two apartments, appliances that I stroke lovingly and whisper Oh you sexy washing machine you, please don’t ever leave me. It’s the type of apartment I’d have no business calling mine except that I get to split the exorbitantly high rent with my hedgefund-employed boyfriend. And I’ve lived in enough shitholes in the past six years for me to really enjoy this experience.
 
So I listened to the sex noises long enough to feel annoyed and attacked that night, turned up the volume of the TV, and called it a night.
 
Until the following week, when - in the middle of the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel - I heard screams dripping with emotion. Indignant cries of unfairness. Pitiful pleas for forgiveness. And I immediately turned red.
 
Red, because the night before, my boyfriend and I had fought the kind of fight that reduced me to feeling like a 17 year old that’s so misunderstood. The kind of fight that - after it was over - allowed me to really understand how really lucky I am to date someone who really looks at these tarriances from our customary state of bliss as building blocks to a better us. The kind of fight that ended with my boyfriend hiding himself in the bathroom with the door locked because he needed to not see me for a while, something he had never done before. The kind where I was left sobbing the theatrical, panting, really loud type of sobbing.
 
The kind of fight I didn’t need to be replayed by my neighbors the next night.
 
I ran into our bedroom, shook my boyfriend awake, and indignantly whispered, “Can you believe it, baby? Can you?”
  
My boyfriend: “Uhh … sleep … no …. “
 
Me: “Listen! Listen. They’re copying us again!”
 
My boyfriend: “Work tomorrow … why … sleep”
 
Me: “How dare they! I really don’t know what we’re going to do about this.”
 
My boyfriend: “Zzzzzzzz.”
 
Since that night, they’ve allowed us me some freedom from experiencing anymore uncomfortable deja vu. I’m not sure if that means my sex has been quiet or that the fighting between my boyfriend and I has been minimal (life once again proves it is all about trade-offs), but it seems like my neighbors don’t know what to do unless I provide them some initiative.
 
Then last Sunday, I decided to cook fried chicken. Because I love fried chicken and wanted to recreate the dinner I made for my boyfriend last winter, when I cooked the most delicious fried chicken with a gallon of his extra virgin olive oil that I had not known was extra virgin olive oil until I had used a gallon of it.  
 
When waves of smoke started consuming our kitchen and living room, I told my boyfriend not to worry.
 
When my boyfriend yelled, “[Damsel]! Fire!”, I looked over and saw that there really was a genuine orange and yellow fire rising from one of the stove’s burners.
 
When I suggested he use the sink’s water sprayer feature, he screamed, “Not for grease fires!”
  
When he reached for the bowl of flour to blanket the flames, I squealed, “No, not that flour! Use the plain stuff in the bag, I just mixed in the perfect amount of seasonings into that bowl!”
 
And when the fire had been vanquished, we were left with smoke billowing into the hallway and oil all over our granite island counter and the wood floors and the stove top.
 
Moments later, Chris, one of the doormen, popped his head into our apartment and inquired if everything was okay in here, while I desperately fanned the air with a cookie sheet so the fire alarm would stop its incessant beeping and my boyfriend hopped around trying to avoid stepping in oil. Soon, we heard our neighbors in the hallway commenting on the smoke in the hallway and the overwhelming yet delicious scents of fried foods.
 
And then I heard one of them say, “Oh, we should cook some fried chicken this week too!”
  
If I go home one of these nights and there happens to be a raging fire consuming our apartment building, I’ll know why. And I may only have myself to blame for providing them the inspiration, but at least my boyfriend may finally - really, finally - believe me that our damn neighbors won’t stop fucking copying us.