My apartment building came with pretty thick walls—thick enough that I never heard any noises from any other apartment for months. But recently, my upstairs neighbors decided to start playing “throw the U-bend into the corner”, and I can hear them quite clearly.
The cause of these sounds mystifies me. What are they doing up there? Sometimes it sounds like they corralled a herd of fat people and sent them stampeding across the room. I do not know where they got the idea to race fat people. Our apartments are much too small to be conducive to contact sports, and apparently, fat people do not come with brakes. The collisions seem to entertain my neighbors, who continue to send wave after wave of fat people crashing into their walls. It’s all in the name of science that they perform these experiments.
Other times, they enjoy a good game of Roll the Polyhedron. It sounds as if they have purchased or built a boulder-sized iron polyhedron with irregular sides, and are thrilled by rolling it around the room. Nothing else could explain the patterns to the noises I hear. I attempted to replicate them by repeatedly stumbling over a fallen chair, but it just wasn’t the same. I won’t rule out the possibility that they have set up an obstacle course of chairs that they constantly fail to pass, but this would be in addition to polyhedron-rolling and not instead of it.
When they’re not falling over their furnishings or playing frisbee with pipes, they’re making loud bodily noises. The “clunk” that ends a victorious round of polyhedron-rolling is often followed by the obnoxious drunken classic, “Oooooooh!” You know that sound. It grates against eardrums in a way that nothing else short of a baby’s screech can. Nobody who has ever heard this sound has ever enjoyed it, unless you’re someone like Charles Manson, and your idea of a good time is hacking up Roman Polanski with a machete.
Their apartment is also home to the most hilarious vomiting I’ve ever heard. It’s impossible for me to explain in writing what is so satisfying about hearing a burp turn into a fountain of puke shortly after one of their games concludes. Maybe it’s the way it’s oddly muffled. Maybe it’s the spontaneity–the unexpectedness–of the barf, because I can’t see any of the drinking or gut-punching that leads up to it. Maybe it’s just simply schadenfreude. Either way, the only thing that could make it less funny would be if my ceiling starts dripping.
And about two times each day, I hear them pee off their balcony. Our balconies overlook a high-traffic four-lane road, a church, a children’s hospital, and a nursing home.
Lastly, they host orgies with multiple people who finish pathetically quickly. (HINT—to the question “what the hell are they doing”, this is the actual answer.)
One time after I heard them having sex, within 30 seconds they bounded down the stairs and ran outside like late retards running after the short bus. I did not check to see if they were clothed. But my point is, obviously they’re bad enough at sex that it does not tire them at all. They’ll go for 3 minutes, stop, and then 10 minutes later they’ll go again for 3 minutes. This is a TERRIBLE way to attempt sex.
Every time we hear sex, there are clearly more than two people in the room. The Surgeon General and I have discussed the possibility of making bets about what position they’re in, busting down their doors, and settling the score. “Eiffel Tower, baby! I knew I heard a high-five! You owe me $20!” And then turning to the only girl, “…and you owe me a blowjob.”
But what I know about my apartment building prevents me from ever doing anything that might resolve the mystery. We would never barge into their room and see what they’re doing, because a few years back, there was a small furry convention in this apartment building. We don’t know what apartments were involved, or if the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. But suffice it to say that this is enough to quell my curiosity.
That’s about as much as I can stand to write… any more will send me into an uncontrollable rampage, and The Surgeon General still hasn’t recovered from that time I watched Dougie Howser and stuffed an extra set of vertebrae up his ass. Next time, instead of discussing how the noises of my upstairs neighbors permeate through the walls, I’ll be doing an exposé on how the smell of my next-door neighbors permeates through the walls. Ta-ta for now!
