My next door neighbor, after a two-week reprieve, was at it again last night. The party started at 2am and ended at 4am. This, after I drove 300 miles yesterday to and from Charlottesville for a campaign meeting, getting back here just before 1am. I finally got to sleep at 4am, and was, to my horror, woken by music again starting at 6:45am. I couldn’t get back to sleep over the din, and my alarm went off at 8am for my morning class. So I am now functioning on a shade under three hours of sleep.
But that’s not the news. The news is that my next door neighbor, Jesse, is not a she, but a he. This is a strange thing. For months now, I have been quietly seething at my neighbor, the neighbor who does not answer the door when I knock, the neighbor who listens to horrible music at all hours. I knew my quarry — or so I thought — and to find that she is a he is oddly alarming.
I found this out when I knocked on the door just now, shortly before noon. A sleepy voice demanded to know who was there. “Next door neighbor,” I said, grumpily. Footfalls came down the metal spiral staircase from the upstairs living room, and the door opened, revealing a cluttered, dirty apartment and a scraggily-bearded face framed by rimless glasses and tousled hair.
“Oh, did I wake you up?”, I asked.
Jesse grunted.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I know people have different sleep patterns, and I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”
I’m not sure that he appreciated my dry wit, such as it is.
I explained the problem to him, and he pointed out, weakly, that he’d been a lot quieter recently. I agreed that he had been, but the fact that I had not slept indicated that perhaps he had not been quite quiet enough, what with my not having slept. And I said, simply, that it’s been six months, and I’m simply done being nice — any more problems, and I’d call the landlord and the police.
We’ll see how this goes.