LOUD LOVE
I found this story pretty funny and all too relatable having
rented flats/houses most of my adult life, and none of them detached (in
England this is how we define freestanding or non freestanding abodes). In
essence, you’ll pretty much always have neighbors and boy oh boy does that
bring its fair share of amusement, annoyance (!!) and interesting anecdotes.
In Italy, one man took eavesdropping to a new level. As the
story goes, In the northern town of Reggio Emilia (is it me, or do the Italians
have the best named cities?), a man who was all too familiar with listening to
his neighbors have sex, decided to invite his friends and drinking partners at
his local to come and listen to his very loud and ebullient neighbors.
Apparently, when the neighbors caught wind of the fact that they had an (even
bigger) audience to their lovemaking, they didn’t take it very kindly. As expected,
the neighbors got into an argument, and the police were eventually called. The
man is now being investigated for possible disorderly conduct. Apparently there
is no ordinance when it comes to having loud sex, so those neighbors are coming
out of the fracas unscathed – embarrassed, but that’s about it. Funny thing is,
any one having extremely loud sex I would think subconsciously knows that they’re being
loud and secretly likes the fact that they’re being heard, or seemingly doesn’t
care. Hence, the fact that their neighbor was merely inviting more to hear
them, I would think would delight them, giving them a moment to shine and all
that. Guess I got that one wrong.
Living in the urban sprawl, I have had my fair share of loud
neighbors. And while I greatly appreciate the nosy single neighbor’s exhaustion with
the vociferous rabbits next door and their need to shout their love to the
rooftops, it’s very hard to live a silent lifestyle, no matter what the
activity. As past readers of the blog can attest, I knew more about my old
neighbors than I cared to know (this worked both ways I’m sure, which makes me
shudder as I’m a very private person). We knew when they’d fight, have make-up
sex, and when he was out on a bender (as they say here) and she was calling round
to everyone they knew to find out where the heck he was. And at times notes
were passed between us, them shouting at us to keep our son from stomping on
the floor (near impossible) and us telling them to keep their drunken fights
down at 5a.m. We were never driven to invite our friends round to experience
their arguments, but my husband heartily enjoyed following the downstairs soap
opera and sharing it with our friends at dinner parties. He loves a good gossip,
my husband.
The problem is, when you live on top of one another, so to
speak, you have to expect that a certain amount of your business is going to be
other people’s business. Of course there is a respect factor that one hopes
that everyone abides by, but it’s not always the case. I mean, I’m a fiery
Lebanese gal; I can make some serious noise when I want to, but I’m also half
English with a large discretion gene. So this balances out my exhibitionist
nature.
There are also the instances with neighbors where it gets to
the point that you are doing things simply to annoy one another. It’s childish
and not always recommended, but sometimes situations get the better of us. So
were their times I incited the King to dance on the living room floor with an
almighty ferociousness at 7a.m? But of course. This was usually when our
downstairs neighbors smoked and drank so much the night before I could smell it
on our clothes. I figured it was fair game. Did it solve the situation? Not so
much. But it certainly made me feel better.
So next time you’re getting busy
with your partner and feeling like reenacting the scene from Ghost on your
potter’s wheel, take note, you may have an audience, so you better make it
impressive.
Happy Hump Day.