Paper Thin Walls
The fight started with a fart, a really loud fart. See you’re never alone in New York and it’s a rare moment that a New Yorker can rip an earth-shatteringly loud or silent-but-deadly fart without disturbing someone nearby. Even when at home snuggled into your own little, valuable nest, even in the middle of the night you’re not alone. For walls are often quite thin and insulated primarily by the thin bodies of mice and roaches. Windows are regularly open and facing courtyards (actually vertical tunnels) where smells and sounds get stuck like debris in a tornado—not a great situation for the flatulent. This story begins at about 2:30 in the morning in two $1,900 studio apartments in a former East Village tenement. A fart at 2:30 in the morning.
Jessica, 23, was asleep on her 6-year-old futon bed that was pushed tightly into a corner of her one-room kitchen, living room and bedroom. Now there’s not much you can learn about someone from watching them sleep. But since you’ve never met Jessica, I’ll try to use this idle—albeit important—moment to introduce her. She had turned off the lights and gotten into bed around 11:30, and she had fallen asleep by midnight. Her first episode of REM had already concluded, and she had shifted positions once to avoid sleeping on a cold spot of drool. Her alarm would ring at 7:16. Her choice of the seemingly random time helped her sleep. The unrounded number stopped her from nourishing insomnia by calculating exactly how much sleep she’d get before work the next day. Mental math was discouragingly harder to do without round numbers. Work was advertising sales for Cosmopolitan magazine—not usually a hard sell, but getting more difficult given the new media revolution and the recession.
The wall behind Jessica’s crown of tousled auburn hair was shared with a woman she’d never met face-to-face: Stephanie, a 24-year-old bartender who worked at the known-rowdy Coyote Ugly bar. But Stephanie wasn’t a real rowdy one. Yes, she could hold her own in a New York-style yelling match, and she could produce flirtatious smiles that appeared realistic even to the most homely, disgruntled men. But she was actually quite tame and bright, and stereotypically beautiful enough (stick straight blonde hair, acne-free skin and a 32D frame) that she never needed to partake in any more questionable activities to make rent. The most questionable activity in recent memory took place tonight with the delivery from Indian restaurant Taj Mahal Delight.
Bustling home from work, her high heels pounded the pavement like quick, single blows of a jackhammer. “I can hold it. I can hold it,” she chanted to herself as her stomach cramped and gurgled. The barback, who she had a major crush on, had suggested getting Indian as a late-night snack. Stephanie had never tried Indian and lived on a bland diet of ramen noodles, sushi, salads and the occasional pizza slice. But the self-consciousness resurrected by a cute boy, resembling that which plagues most junior high school girls trying to mold themselves into the most popular girl, inspired her to say, “I’ve been dying to try Indian!”
Before she got to her front door, she had her key in hand ready to go. Then with a twist of the wrist and a fast tromp up three flights of stairs, she made it home. Her purple leather purse dropped from her hand onto her bed as she rushed to undo the button of her jeans and get to the toilet. And then she let herself release and push. Just like a woman in labor, she thought, as she let one rip.
The sleeping Jessica sprung up to a sitting position as though the fire alarm had gone off. But before jumping out of bed and worriedly, frustratingly evaluating the public wear-ability of her pajamas (flannel pants and a worn out T-shirt), she paused to make sense of the situation. Then she heard the toilet flush.
October 13th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
It’s fun to read your stories which are often quite the unusual topic!