My
spousal unit and I would talk on the phone every evening, sharing our days with
each other, expressing how much it sucked to live apart, and generally trying
to stay connected. It was during one of
these nightly conversations that she complained about the woman living in the
apartment above her. Apparently, this
woman had a healthy sexual appetite and would satisfy her urges at all hours of
the night and day. (Later observations
revealed that it was in fact different men going into her place. To which I declared that I thought she was actually
a call girl, using her body to pay her way through college. This was never proven factually, but I still
think I was onto something.)
At
first, I thought my spousal unit was overreacting, as she is sometimes wont to
do. But after several nights of hearing
the same complaints, I finally asked how she knew that they were having
sex. To which my spousal unit replied, “Her
bed squeaks…a lot.” She proceeded to
describe the pattern, which was apparently always the same, whereby it would
start slowly and then pick up speed, until my spousal unit was sure that the
bed was actually lifting off the floor. Never
voices or any other kinds of noises, just the perpetual squeaking. Honestly, I laughed when I heard this. What else can you do? It was so absolutely ludicrous.
A
month or so later, I went to visit my spousal unit in Missouri, and I had completely
forgotten about the call girl upstairs. Suddenly,
around 2 o’clock in the morning, I heard this eerie squeaking echoing through
the bedroom. Slowly, slowly it got
louder and faster until it was an almost indistinguishable crescendo of
high-pitched noise peeling through the otherwise silence of the night. It was followed by a few minutes of thumping
and then it just as suddenly stopped. The
whole event probably only lasted five to seven minutes, but it was enough. I was wide awake. I looked over at my spousal unit’s face
silhouetted in the blue light of the clock, and she was smiling at me. “I told you so,” was all she said before she
rolled over and went to sleep.
When
it happened again the next night, I ran to the bathroom and grabbed the plunger,
and I started throwing it against the ceiling, hoping that the noise would make
them realize that they were not alone in this endeavor. Of course, I wasn’t prepared for it to
suction-cup itself to the ceiling and stay hanging there; stick dangling
tantalizingly out of reach as an insult to injury. I stood, staring at that stupid plunger stuck
to my ceiling, wondering how I was going to explain it to anyone that came
over, listening to the rhythmic music being played in the apartment above us. The minutes ticked by, the thumping, and then
silence.
Suddenly,
the story that I had laughed at over the phone was annoying and real. There was no way that I was going to endure
this all weekend long. So, the next morning,
I got dressed, and I headed down to the hardware store to buy a can of
WD-40. I took it upstairs, and I placed
it in front of her door with a note taped to the side, “Your bed squeaks.” The rest of the weekend was peaceful and quiet.
A
few nights after I had gone back to Texas, I once again was privy to my spousal
unit complaining that the squeaking was back.
This time it was occurring early in the morning, late at night, and
sometimes even in the middle of the day.
She was making up for lost time by taking on several “clients” a day. No longer laughing, I called the apartment complex
office and complained to the manager.
She asked me what I would like for her to do. I said, “I want you to talk to her. I can’t control what she does in her home,
but at the very least, she needs to do something about the squeaking. Obviously, the WD-40 isn’t working.” She asked me what WD-40 I was referring to,
and I told her about the can and note. She
snickered, and then she composed herself.
“Well, this is very awkward.
There is no precedence for something like this.” I replied that there was a noise ordinance in
the complex that there was to be no loud noises after 10 p.m., and this was
definitely a loud noise. She assured me
that she would take care of it. The noises
stopped, and all was quiet for about three weeks.
Once
again, the ominous squeaking made a vigorous return, and once again, I called
the apartment manager. One more
conversation with the call girl upstairs, and the next thing we know, a moving
truck was parked outside, and she had moved out. I’m not sure if she was that annoyed by our
complaints, or if she was afraid that the police would find out about her side
business. Either way, we no longer had
to worry about being woken up by the sexual squeaking upstairs. I still woke up, but it was because I was now
bothered by the stupid plunger hanging from the ceiling.
This
event taught me a valuable lesson…this is why people invented noise-cancelling
headphones.
