apartments

I’m very sensitive to noise, so one of the best parts of working from home, I thought, would be controlling my aural environment. I more or less need absolute silence to get anything done, which was impossible to come by in my former cubicle situation, complete with Chatty Cathy yaking away about her tacky wedding all day. Finally, I thought, I will be able to work in peace, with only the sounds of Ben typing from two rooms away and CEO Ripley purring quietly at my side on the couch.

However, I forgot to take into consideration that I live in New York City. In an apartment building. And that just like every other person in New York City, I manage to have the worst neighbors ever.

Before you relate to me some story about how bad your neighbors are, let me say this: our neighbors play the tuba.

And the cello.
And the synthesizer.
And the violin.
And the saxophone.

Oh, and they sing opera.

This might - might! - be acceptable if they had any talent at all, but they do not. They don’t practice actual pieces or even play scales. They just (excuse my language, but there is no better phrase for it) dick around on these instruments. For hours at a time.

When we first moved in, we invited them to our housewarming party. Within minutes, they had alienated everyone present, insulted our religious views and our way of life, and, when asked what they would like to drink, requested an “H2O on the rocks!”

I don’t have a problem with people who don’t drink or people who hate my friends or people who are evangelical Christians. But I do have a problem when you have a problem with me choosing a different path in life and tell me so while drinking out of one of my water glasses. Oh - and I can totally tell that you guys re-gifted us that Christmas present you left at our door. Nice try.

By now, I’m sure you can guess what they do for a living: they are Children’s Performance Artists. Yes, the performance artist - another way of saying that you own instruments but can’t play them. That you like art but aren’t talented enough to make any. It might even be worse than admitting that you’re a freelance writer.

And get this: they’ve complained about our noise level before, by leaving notes tacked to our door. It’s worse than the pot calling the kettle black, it’s like the pot calling the kettle a TUBA. AT EIGHT IN THE MORNING. I mean, sure, we listen to music from time to time, but our music involves tempos and melodies and choruses and is, for the most part, in tune.

And although Ben and I briefly discussed responding to their note with a note that said, simply, “TUBA!” we haven’t done much except not change our own way of life. But now that I’m in the apartment all day, trying to finish a project by five today but having trouble stringing two words together due to the noise pollution, we might have to act.

I’ve been catching snippets of this new A&E television show Paranormal State. The show chronicles the investigations taken up by a number of paranormal enthusiasts and mediums. I’m not sure if I’ve seen enough of the show to actually know the thrust or structure of the show, but I have seen enough to get the idea that it mostly consists of adults holding flashlights up to their faces, sitting in a circle, and listening for weird noises and claiming to get chills.

“Do you smell that?” one of them will say. “I smell tobacco! There is a spirit here!”

It’s very similar to a fourth grade sleepover except that they have some sort of a thermal sensor, which seems to be a vague way to detect ghosts. I find it mildly interesting, although much less interesting than one of A&E’s other shows, Intervention, which I am ironically addicted to.

In any case, as I was lying in bed not sleeping last night, with the heavy footsteps of our upstairs neighbors above me and the sounds of boring, floral bedspread sex coming from our neighbors across the way, I realized that if a city apartment was actually ever haunted, no one would really notice.

Every time I hear weird sounds late at night, I immediately accredit them to any one of the weird families and couples that reside in our building or any one of the sketchy structural problems our apartment suffers from. If there were a ghost, who perhaps tried to freak me out by speaking in tongues through the wall, I’m just going to assume it’s the vaguely Eastern European family upstairs, talking in their sounds-like-Russian-but-definitely-isn’t-Russian language. If there were a ghost who tried to freak me out by making strange tapping and creaking noises, I wouldn’t be able to differentiate them from our crazy radiator noises. If there were a ghost who blew tobacco smoke into a room in order to alert me of his presence, I would probably just assume that our chain-smoking landlord was within a 50-yard radius of our building.

I love the image, though, of frustrated ignored ghosts trying so hard to haunt loud, rickety apartments to no avail. After a few years of fruitless attempts to scare the crap out of people, they would take up ghost checkers or ghost knitting. A few years after that, the murder they’re trying to avenge or the spooky message they are trying to relay would be forgotten. They would probably sit around and watch Paranormal State, too, and think about how easy those rural farmhouse ghosts have it.