It's Saturday night. After an arduously long day as solo dad (the wife's away for the weekend), I finally got the kids fed, bathed and in bed -- all while losing a strenuous battle with my allergies. While cleaning up the toy-strewn apartment in between sneezes, I couldn't help but notice that my super-obnoxious upstairs neighbor was fucking CRANKING her stereo, and playing tireless rotations of selections by Kelly Clarkson, John Mayer, Maroon 5 and the fuckin' Black Eyed Peas? Seriously -- the Black Eyed Peas? Different strokes for different folks and all, but honestly, who listens to that bullshit on purpose? That's like listening to Vanilla Ice in earnest. The mind reels.
In any case, we don't have a very good relationship with our upstairs neighbor. Actually, scratch that -- we don't have a relationship at all with her. She moved in about a year ago and evidently blithely disregarded the stipulation in the building's by-laws that says you have to have at least 65% of the floor covered in some form of carpeting. She apparently gets a big kick out of her hardwood floors and regularly tromps around on them in her clacking high heels. Not wanting to be pesky dicks, we slipped a very nice note under her door one day, welcoming her to the building and apologizing for asking if she could please put some rugs down, as we were getting kinda tired of hearing her shuffle about in her Manolos.
Said letter went unacknowledged.
Some weeks later, in a fit of pique, we composed another letter to her -- still taking the high road. That fell on deaf and/or inconsiderate ears as well. This sent the wife into a rage, and she promptly took her grievance to our co-op board who have, as yet, done nothing about it. That's just life in the big city, kids.
The high heels thing pisses me off, but I can live with it. She's obviously just a self-absorbed princess who doesn't give a tinker's cuss about the concerns of her neighbors. I don't condone that -- and I regularly treat her to the serial killer's glare every time she's dumb enough to step onto the elevator with me -- but I've normally got bigger fish to fry. But if I have to hear your music through my ceiling -- let alone your unspeakably bad music -- oh, it's so on, bitch!
But, y'know, at the moment, what can I do? I'm stuck home here with my little kids. A decade ago, I lived a couple of blocks away and had a douche bag next door neighbor who used to play horrible drum n' bass (remember when people listened to that shit?) at bizarre hours of the night, usually in a coked-up frenzy. Being single and usually drunk, I used to take up the challenge and fire back with some weapons-grade airings of Motorhead, The Stooges, Venom, Lydia Lunch, Einsturzende Neubauten and/or The Birthday Party. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. But, at the very least, it was fun. Actually, if you ever want to torture your neighbor, I highly recommend Plague Mass by Diamanda Galas. Trust me on this one.
Right now, though, my only options are to call down to the doorman and whine like an old lady, or -- in keeping with the old lady theme -- break out the broom and pound it on the ceiling. Neither of these options are especially satisfying, nor are they likely to work.
So I sit, break open another beer and plot revenge.
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