2003-02-04 - 3:04 a.m.

So I just got a surprise visit from the woman that lives downstairs--the only person in the building whose name I know.

She bang bang bang bang BANGED on my door--I opened it to greet a steaming, nightgown clad blonde hag.

I don�t even remember what she said--she just started screaming screaming screaming at me in her shrill townie scratch, and I gave her my best dumbfounded glare in return--civil, logical, taciturn, but not without my own modicum of incredulity.

It was the noise again--all the stompin� around at night, and that music, and that strummin� th the cig-cig-cigar, I mean guitar!

I turned my head towards my room, my television--I was watching the news, by the way, in an effort to demonstrate how there was no way the reverb in her apartment could be any louder than the forgettable din from mine.

Are you DEAF?, she asked me.

I didn�t reply.

I asked her if she wanted my number, so she could call if she felt it was too loud.

Oh, I�ll call, all right. My daughter�s grades are going down because of YOU! I�ll call the landlord TOMORROW. 6AM! You bet I�ll call.

I really held my tongue. There�s no use arguing with a shrew, especially at her finest hour--I know that much is true. It would have been nice to score a few points by mentioning that the rhubarb she was causing was far, far louder than my most hedonistic moment spent here. Or that, perhaps she might entertain the possibility that most US Department of Education studies agree that upstairs neighbors are rarely the cause of poor grades.

I dunno. She came by one day a couple of months ago with her daughter (good ploy), and asked us to keep it down. I wasn�t there for this (thank God), but it was obvious that her unwatched-pot proclamation had been percolating for months--as if she was pointing out the obvious, as if even Mayor Dorothy Kelly-Gay would agree with her, and thank her for fighting the good fight and helping to rid Somerville of this dreadful scourge, pledging to fund an outreach program for schoolchildren, to give them a safe haven from those bad men out there who wanna come home from work and catch the end of a Simpsons episode.

The Roommate and I are the most tamest people under 30 I know--I mean, �cmon. At that point, I hadn�t even taken my acoustic outta its case. We experimented with my dear friend H's mini-stereo she left me, angling it in different rooms at increasingly lower volumes, 'till we finally decided to forego music from anywhere besides my room--the most insulated. I�d listen to music at night through my computer speakers at a volume I considered both reasonable and considerate. I didn�t see what the problem was, but we cooperated anyway, and religiously.

OK--so maybe it was the music. I bought a pair of headphones, and never played music through speakers after 1:00 PM, which is when I left for work. Same thing for DVDs.

I�d watch some TV sometimes, with the volume down just so I could hear it, and what townie is gonna complain about TV?

Guitar I saved for weekends, and lately I�ve been playing it in the afternoons, before I leave for work.

We�ve had one party (with guests, that is), and we asked her permission (granted). Fifteen guests, tops? I think so.

That�s it.

OK--so now she comes a-poundin� on the door, after the Roommate and I spend almost an entire weekend away from the apartment even (oh, and let�s not forget that this is an apartment building, with maybe 50-75 residents, and in one of the most densely populated cities--Somerville--in the frickin� country?), and says it ain�t enough.

She doesn�t care if I work �till 11:00 at night, either, I tried that one. Bad point for right then, good point to have already put on the table for later argument.

OK--so here�s what it boils down to. I�m so goddamned polite, that I�m afraid that my typing right now is making too much noise. I�m serious.

And that�s it. I�m sick of being bullied. Two months ago, that woman asked us to turn it down, and we did. Consistently. No sorry, dude, I forgots. No arguments, no smashing bottles, no rolling about before, and none afterward. We went from conscientious to conscientiouser, miffed, but no questions asked.

And if that�s not enough, if this woman is really gonna scream at me at 1:30 in the morning, and if one of her major points is the walking around, without letting me get a word in, without having said anything about anything since her first visit, letting it build, convinced that we�re evil, and if that woman won�t even take my phone number so she can save herself a trip upstairs, well, then, she just lost her right to be upset at anything at all.

It�s true. I�m 25 goddamn years old. I ain�t no college kid, and I don�t act like one. I pay my rent, bills, taxes, and dues to neighborhood courtesy. I return my library books on time. One consolation I take outta the path I find myself on is that nobody, but nobody can rightfully accuse me of being anything less than a good neighbor, that no stranger has a right to call me rude.

Nobody.

And if that bitch is gonna blow her top over walking, well, what does she want me to do, fly?

If the sacrifices I�ve made aren�t enough, or noticed even, if I�m this noisy asshole that lives upstairs, and always will be, then I guess it follows that it doesn�t matter what I do.

This is my home. I�ll still wear the headphones when I listen to music at night. I�ll still wait for the weekends or afternoons to play the guitar and sing. I�ll keep the TV volume down, and I don�t think I�ll ever even be in a situation where I�ll have tons of guests down here anyway. But I ain�t gonna frickin� start trying to curb my trips down the hallway and back again. I�m not gonna come home from work every night at midnight and just frickin go to bed. I�m not gonna set up some amicable no talking after 1:00 AM arrangement. I�m not gonna debate over how many times I get to roll over in my bed when I sleep. I�m not gonna stop drinkin� coffee so my blood doesn�t race like it used to, each hearbeat drivin� like a coffin nail through the apparent Japanese rice paper that is my floor.

In a world where fuckups and screwballs and just regular people and sometimes even people I admire do far worse things than watch the news, every day, every day, and every day, and that�s just the world it is, this, this is my home, this is the land where bullshit is unwelcome, nonsense is frowned upon, and trash is taken out, and I will not concede.