Noise Complacency

Oy oy. Here comes a mildly passive aggressive post. 


Our new neighbors below are in their own little noisy world. Loud music will emerge at 2am, 3am, 5am, etc. We've gone down and asked them politely if they could turn it down. And we're greeted with a bunch of stoned, befuddled dudes who say they'll take care of it. The thing is a girl lives there and we've yet to see more than slight glimpses of her in the hallway or poking her head out of her room. She sends her dudes  to do her bidding and answer the door. The queen bee she is. 


The other weekend we went down during the late Sunday afternoon to have a cordial conversation with the girl about the trend in late night noises. We could hear her and friends there in the front living room. We knocked loud enough but they did not answer. 


Last night we were awoken at 2am to loud bass thumping beneath our head. I tried ear plugs. It didn't work. My girlfriend was quick to get up and go down to ask them to lower the volume. She went down through the back sun porch area. A dude stoned out of his mind took a good minute to realize she was addressing him. Some other dudes were in the kitchen arguing loudly about who loved the song that was playing more. She finally got through, the dudes were confused, and the elusive girl tenant could be seen walking down the hall, into the bedroom, and the music was lowered. Not two minutes after my girlfriend came back up the music was back to booming. Down we went again. The mocked us that we were just down there. After we came back up we could obviously raised voices proclaiming that we must be "Iowa. No, no, I wouldn't give them the decency of being from Iowa, they must be from Nebraska! Where do you find these people?!! It's my birthday!!!! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!" The taunting continued from these belligerent dudes. I called the police. Then I heard more belligerence from the back sun porch area "what's wrong with 4 guys drinking Coors Light. Oooo. Scary! Who the fuck calls the police!" Well, we, sir, call the police when you are incapable of being reasoned with. My adrenaline was rushing. I had to hold myself back from running with the "fight" response that was brewing. I finally drifted off to a quick dream where one of the dudes was down there celebrating Christmas with his parents in October. He got a new electric guitar with a swiveling neck to do some serious bending riffs.


As far as we know, and as far the landlord knows, it's one girl that lives there. I'm pretty sure these dudes are her hipster, unemployed friends crashing at her pad, looking for a constant party. Because they oh so represent the freedom of this generation. I wish them the very worst hangover of their lives this morning. The kind that aches the bones and laps nausea through every cell, sucking it dry. The thing is I understand a little noise. That's not necessarily the problem. Well it is in redundant trend. But the outright mockery and disrespect of us like were that lame old couple killing the party on the block pissed me the #$%^ off. We've tried being good guys, reasonable, flexible, and their behavior is now forcing some new tactics of serious confrontation on our part. In all honesty this is one of the reasons we left Wrigleyville, to get away from this douchebaggery. 


But this all reminds me of a time when I had just turned 21 and my roommate and I would often drink to the point of obnoxious revelry and we often roused the wrath of our upstairs neighbor who was a flight attendant. We always viewed her as being this big old bitch. The red headed bitch is what we referred to her as. But really, especially now with the perspective of being in the working world and having to get up in the mornings, we were in the wrong. We were the little bitches. There's this tendency among the loud and drunk to cast aspersions on whomever asks them to quiet down as though they are utter bitches and assholes. 


There is a point of view on everything. 

In my senior in college one of my roommates would often bring back a bunch of buddies from the bar at 4am. I would awake and have to pee. But after a couple of times stepping out and dealing with these fellas, and the bathroom lines, I took too pissing in a Vitamin Water bottle lying on the floor, capping, and disposing of in the morning. I would try to stock pile empties. If lacked any, I would exit the back door of my room which led out to the garage and little driveway below the train tracks to piss away. I did this because I wanted to avoid very unreasonable people and did not want to continually step out into the sudden and be launched into the appearance of a grumpy, party-pooping nerd. Even if I was only getting up to pee. My groggy eyes were all too telling of a presence at the mid week party. 


There's this tendency among the loud and drunk to cast aspersions on whomever asks them to quiet down as though they are utter bitches and assholes. And I feel bad that I had ever once adopted such an opinion.