Like a lot of cheap apartment buildings, this place has thin walls. Often I hear my neighbors. Drywall and hollow space is the only separation between units.
3:00 in the morning, alone in my apartment, wishing I was asleep, a stranger's grunt wasn't welcome. In a don't-give-a-shit mood even while taking a shit, I said, "It doesn't want to drop, huh?" Said it at my normal speaking volume, neither loudly nor softly, but knew it would carry through the wall.
There was silence, and I wondered whether I'd regret making conversation on the crapper. Bad manners in the middle of the night, and maybe dangerous — I'd never met this neighbor, but I'd seen him. Big guy. Maybe he'd holler at me, or pound on my door and then pound on me.
After a moment's pause, though, there came laughter from behind the wall. More to my surprise, it was a woman's laughter.
My neighbor is a man — I've heard him singing in the shower. Maybe the man next door was married? Or he'd moved out, and the woman next door had moved in?
I said nothing more, she said nothing, and the night was silent, until a splash came through the wall. That sound is unmistakable — you've heard it when you're in a public stall, but home alone when the splash comes from your neighbor's toilet, it's funny. I laughed, she laughed, and a moment later she flushed and said, "Good night," through the wall.
I said "Good night," and that's the first and last time my neighbor and I have spoken. It's
been months, and I haven't met her, and have no desire to. This is not
the set-up for a romantic comedy, and we're not going to become friends.
We're just two shits that passed in the night.
12/10/2020
Republished 4/27/2024
"Two shits that passed in the night:" that pun really stank.
ReplyDeleteGuilty as charged. With nothing to say, I'll reliably reach for a profanity or a pun, or both.
DeleteSeemed OK to me. Is there a way you could dateline your posts? Yeah, I know this was four years ago, but have you been in your luxury suite that long? Or is this from Wisconsin? California? I don't remember any women adjoining you in your current environs. Seems I was just reading of your exploits en route to Seattle, but it might have been four years ago. My head clock hasn't worked properly since my heart attack of 2016. I can still sort of write, but time keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future.
ReplyDeletejtb
There's usually a date at the bottom. This one has two dates, cuz it's a rerun and yeah, from Wisconsin. A few entries have three dates, cuz they're double reruns. Absolutely understood about the head clock. Mine too. Sometimes the alarm goes off when I don't remember setting it.
DeleteIt's four in the morning as I write this. One of my problems is that when the alarm goes off I don't know whether to get up, go to bed, or pill Captain Jack. I stress that this is only one of my problems.
DeleteJohn
Pill Captain Jack? Is this a Doctor Who reference?
DeleteI don't expect you to remember my cats' names when I sometimes can't, but Captain Jack Sparrow, usually shortened to Jack or Jackie, is our oldest cat at 17 (tied with his sister, Ducks). He doesn't have much longer, but we're doing another round of antibiotics, fighting a cat cold that seems to have him on the ropes. He's still eating, still purring and still walking outside to enjoy the sunshine. Hard to have him euthanized in those circumstances.
DeleteJohn
Exactly my standards. A pet that's still enjoying life should be allowed that, and I've never been a pet 'owner' who'd deny them that.
Delete. . . and can anyone explain why or how my personal icon returned at the upper left? I haven't seen that for a year or more. Yeah, I was an IT guy back in the stone age. Why do you ask?
ReplyDeleteJohn
The Googles work in mysterious ways. Have you recently logged in to your Google account. That's my guess.
DeleteCouple of days ago Google wouldn't let me post one particular comment on this blog, and kept giving me the *extremely* *helpful* error message, "Your comment has not been posted." So I posted that comment from a different browser with no problem, except it forgot my face. Maybe it remembered your face instead.
Well, I haven't logged on on purpose, but I find it's pretty easy to do by accident.
ReplyDeleteJohn
For me, the face is automatic — if I'm logged in to Google my comments get Jeff's fine sketch of me being startled, and if I'm not logged in I'm faceless.
DeleteI don't seem to have an automatic face, but it shows up from time to time. When it does, I prefer to look like Groucho, even though I don't have a grouch bag. Groucho and the boys used theirs to carry marijuana (among other things). Then the tightass politicians made weed illegal and the boys ditched their grouch bags, but Groucho remained. I don't ingest marijuana, but I use the likeness in memory of his other achievements.
ReplyDeletejtb
Startled me there, to think that the Marx Bros were so relatively recent that they predated anti-pot laws. We're such a nation of idiots.
DeleteI'm also a little startled that your face is Groucho. My eyes are old and I hadn't looked closely enough; thought it was Dali.