the new neighbour

you know, i wish i lived in the kind of apartment utopia you see in movies or on TV, or read about or hear about – the sort of cool, relaxed, nurturing living environment where neighbours get along, and respect each other and recognize that, say, doing your drug deal in the hallway or blasting your music at full volume isn’t the best way to get folks to like you.

no, instead, i seem to wind up with one dud after another. the folks at hell house were like one freak-show act after the next, and the best neighbours i’ve ever had – the young couple who lived next door to me at my current place, and who were always friendly and quiet – moved out a couple of months ago. given the creep and the weirdo who live on the other side of me, i was really really hoping i might luck out and score another great tenant in the newly vacated unit.

and, when i first met my new neighbour, i had hope.

it was a sweltering hot day in mid-july and i encountered michael as he was carrying small items from outside his door into his apartment. he looked really YOUNG, perhaps 23 at most, tall and lanky, with short, curly light-brown hair. very preppy-ish, in a pastel dress shirt and cargo shorts, and quite amiable.

i commented on the heat, and he joked that he waited for the nicest weather before hauling his things in. i introduced myself and welcomed him to the building, he thanked me and introduced himself back, then shook my hand. i headed out, and i remember thinking, “he seems like a nice young man.”

a few days after he moved in, i realized he may be nice, but he also likes to stay up late some nights. our bedrooms share a wall – on his side, it’s a double closet with two sliding metal doors and wall space on either side; on my side, it’s the only uninterrupted wall and, thus, the one against which i have my bed. more specifically, the head of the bed is right up against that wall. if i had a headboard, that’s where it would be.

so, when he’d come home at, say, 2am and heave open his closet doors then SLAM them shut a second later, or throw what i assume were his shoes into the closet so they’d hit that wall we share, i would hear it all. i cut him some slack, and figured that perhaps he was still in the process of moving in and perhaps hadn’t yet gotten himself fully settled.

then, one night a few weeks ago, i heard hammering on that wall at around 11:30pm. it only lasted a few seconds, and i was actually still awake and watching TV, so i didn’t complain. it startled me, but it ended as soon as it began, and i thought maybe he just quickly nailed in a hook for clothes or something, then realized the hour and, like any considerate neighbour, stopped immediately.

all the walls and floors in the building are poured concrete, so there’s some degree of sound muffling... but not enough to block out bangs, slams, thumps or thuds, or to completely silence people’s voices, blaring music, loud TVs or middle-of-the-night construction work. and certainly not any kind of soundproofing.

last night, just before 3am, i was awakened from a dead sleep by hammering on the shared bedroom wall. right above my head. i sleep with earplugs as it is, but this was so loud and so jarring that it scared the living crap out of me and i FLEW out of bed, heart pounding, trying to wake up enough to figure out what the noise was and where it was coming from. i pulled out my earplugs and quickly realized michael was hammering again... but, this time, it didn’t stop after a few seconds. instead, it kept going.

bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

then a pause.

bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

the concrete actually makes the sound louder on my side than his, and also transmits the sound to the apartments above and below us both.

bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

when it didn’t stop after a minute, i yelled, “KNOCK IT OFF! IT’S 3 A.M.!”

a second of two later, i heard the muffled sound of a male voice mimic what i’d said, so i know someone heard me. and then the hammering continued. i’m also pretty sure michael had a buddy over, because i could hear music faintly from the wall our bathrooms share.

again, this is at THREE IN THE MORNING.

who the hell hammers ANYTHING in an apartment at THREE IN THE MORNING?!

i wasn’t sure what to do. what if this went on for an hour? there’s no way i could sleep – i could hear the hammering loud and clear from my living room, and my heart rate hadn’t yet returned to normal. so, as the hammering peristed, i called the super and left a message on her voicemail.

about two minutes later, the hammering stopped. i wasn’t sure if the super had intervened, or if michael’s emergency pre-dawn home reno had suddenly been completed, but i went back to bed very cautiously. i was so stunned at what was either his utter cluelessness or complete lack of consideration that i couldn’t fall back asleep. i was getting angrier and angrier as i lay there, trying to figure out what i would do in the morning.

turns out, what i did in the morning was call the super again. she said she was going to go and speak to him, and i explained to her that i really hoped he just didn’t realize that he doesn’t, in fact, live in a soundproof box where he can do whatever he likes whenever he likes. she agreed that 3am hammering, or ANY kind of hammering after 11pm, is NOT allowed.

earlier today, as i was walking along the street outside the building, i looked up towards his apartment. i saw that the hammering was a result of michael NAILING a blanket (!) above his bedroom windows to act as a curtain. classy. he’s done a horrible job – the whole thing is lopsided and looks cheap and awful – but i’m really hoping whatever adjustments he might decide to make happen during the day, and that this turns out to be a minor bump on the road to good neighbourly relations.