Things I Hear From My Apartment

I’m letting the cat out of the bag today. I’m opening up and letting you in on my lifestyle. I… live in an apartment.

Yes, I’m a commoner. No, I’m not rich. Not rich at all. Actually, I’m much more the opposite of rich than anything. I could probably throw in various “I’m poor” metaphors or descriptions, but I’m not going to. I’ll just let you know that if my paychecks were mailed to me, a postman taking a day off could put me on the streets.

Onto the point of this post. This apartment is part of a building. I know that’s surprising, but it’s true. In the building are other tenants. Our building is pretty old, so the walls aren’t the thickest. That means that I hear a lot of my neighbors. It’s something you have to get used to, that’s for sure, because I’m not much into having people hearing any and everything I do (masturbate) and sometimes you hear things from them that you wish you didn’t.

Tonight’s been pretty normal. It sounds like a woman came over to her friends place to get some gifts. From the tone of her voice, I’m pretty sure it’s a white woman. I’d go so far as to say it’s a white woman visiting a gay friend. I don’t know this neighbor, but he sounds pretty gay. That’s not an offensive thing, you know exactly what I mean about his voice by that. If you don’t, then you may have some kind of brain damage dealing with perception. Anyway, he gives her a gift and out comes “OH GOD!” in that loud yet draining happy tone. Not once does this get yelled, but 4 whole times. That was the moment my brain said “that white girl got a gift. Good for her.” and it inspired me to make this post.

Now for the list of fun things I’ve heard:

Sex in the apartment above me

Sex in the apartment next to me

(in the first couple of weeks after moving in) Sex in the courtyard outside my window.

A fight ending with “I love you!” and the door slamming shut. (I think it was a breakup)

Someone that vomits often (almost every day at one point)

A group of people in the courtyard directly outside of my window saying “this is the perfect spot to smoke a blunt.” Then I shut my window (which they were standing next to) and they left quickly.

My neighbor getting arrested. Actually, I saw this one. Two of them were arrested in front of the building. There were like 10 cop cars there. It was crazy.

Another neighbor having their door smashed in by the LAPD. That one woke me right up at 8 am. I used to wake up at 8:30, but at 8am sharp I heard the loud booming voice of an officer “L.A.P.D. WE HAVE A WARRANT! OPEN UP!” It was so loud that I thought they were raiding me. They yelled it again, and pretty much immediately after that (they might not even have said it twice, actually. I was just waking up, but there was definitely a second knock.) they used the “Enforcer”, or as we all know it, a battering ram. That shit was loud. Super loud. Super duper loud. So after that I quickly showered and got dressed for work, I opened my door to about 10 cops taking pictures of the place and doing whatever they do after the raid is finished. One of them said “did we wake you up?” while kind of laughing, and I said “wide awake.” Then left. It was a weird day.

Another couple fight, but this time the guy was defending going out to the bar with his friends. She was on speaker phone. It was weird to hear it, but they were both very loud so I just turned my TV off and listened in. It sounded like she just didn’t trust the guy, or maybe she wanted a reason to break up or something.

A kid (maybe 11) hit a softball in the courtyard directly into my window. Somehow the window didn’t break, but him and the other kids (ages 6-10, prolly) out there scurried off in fear of what I would do. I looked out the window and the youngest ones were doing the goofiest and slowest scatter ever. It was great.

A guy telling his parents that his sister is a spoiled brat and that she needs to get out and work for herself like he did. He was pretty pissed off. This guy was so loud that I felt like he was next to my window. He made some good points though. Apparently he had to work through school, was ridden pretty hard about his grades, and had an all around struggle with little help from the parents. Meanwhile, his sister was taking a year off, living off the parents, partying, and doing all the things you want to do as a kid, but shouldn’t.

I heard my Porsche Boxster’s roof get slashed opened as someone broke in. The longer version is that I heard a loud car come down my street, stop, my alarm went off (very distinctive alarm) and then the car drove off very quickly. At the time I figured the car was dropping someone off and the rumble set my alarm off. The next day I saw the slice and the passenger door open. They didn’t take anything because A) I’m not the type of idiot that keeps anything in my convertible car, because it’s a fucking convertible and a razor can open the roof, and B) they obviously glanced through the car, saw no storage compartments, and then ran because of the alarm.