Moaniness

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The woman in the flat above me moans all the time, about my smoking (the smoke seeps under my front door, then under hers, she claims), about music being played during the day (she works from home and it bugs her). The walls between the flats are quite thin, it's true. I have to hear her stomp about all day, and put up with her cack-handed piano playing, but I don't complain.

Anyway, last night I had an argument with my girlfriend, and today I received this email from my neighbour:

"Dear XXX,
I'm writing because last night at three a.m. I was woken up again by
noise from your flat: the sounds of a fight between you and XXX.

Your disagreements are not my business and of course there are conflicts in most families at times. However, it's the timing of your arguements that is deeply disturbing - at night, at the time of sleeping and rest.

We have talked about this before; this is a recurring problem. I've told you that the fact that your arguements wake me up at night has a very disturbing effect during the night but also the next working day when I am so sleepy that I can't work and think properly.

Could you kindly make sure the nights are quiet and peaceful, not
interrupted by the noise of argument from your flat?

Many thanks, much appreciated."

Is this outrageous or what? I mean, it's a pain in the ass to be woken at 3am I don't doubt, but it's not like we're fighting every night. This "recurring problem" is a once every couple of months thing. And when you're fighting, you're fighting, you're insane & the least of your concerns is what your dippy neighbour thinks.

I'm writing her a very rude response (the main part of which is a description of the nausea induced by having to hear her fucking, late one night recently), but before I send it I wanted to check with the sensible people of ILE that she is in the wrong to write such a crazy email. She is, isn't she?

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:23 (twenty-two years ago)

at night, at the time of sleeping and rest

the nights are quiet and peaceful

She's a poet! Don't be too rough on her.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

The thing is, yeah, it's annoying for her but guess what, she's annoying to all her neighbors too (as you point out with the fucking thing). That's the downside of living in flats. You know what other people are up to. Some are worse than others but to expect people who are paying AS MUCH AS YOU to sit around living like monks because it annoys you at all times of the day is unreasonable--the fact that she complains about your daytime activities as well as evening activities is ludicrious.

You're not right to be loud in the middle of the night but she's not right to act like a cunt about the whole thing, esp. in light of all her other laundry list complaints (the one about you keeping quiet ALL THE TIME because it annoys her is really getting my goat). I'd at least email her back to mind her own goddamned business.

How did she get yr email anyway?

― Ally (mlescaut), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I would just email her back:

"Dear XXX,

You do realize what a complete fucking moron you are, don't you? Thanks, buh-bye!"

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Why the fuck does your neighbour have your e-mail address?

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Your neighbor is XXX?

HOTTT!

― Sarah McLUsky (coco), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:32 (twenty-two years ago)

She is just writing down stuff to use to complain to your landlord later: 'please find attached copies of my correspondence to Eyeball Kicks'. My instinct would be to call your landlord and complain that you have been sent inappropriate e-mail by a neighbour, which will ruin her plans of 'I did try to discuss it with them but it just keeps happening'. Explain to the landlord that you thought you could sort it out in a low-key way but, in addition to your embarrassment about overheard 'lovemaking', she's got a ValuPak full of ISSUES which make it impossible. Then go out, having set your radio alarm to go off at noon while set to your local metal station at its loudest and tinniest. When you come back you will sheepishly apologise for the 'accident' if confronted, but every time she moans, you have another 'accident'.

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:41 (twenty-two years ago)

suzy's plan is U&K and exactly how I stopped my bitchy obnoxious nothing-better-to-do retiree neighbor from making up stories about my alarm going off all day (I do not have one) and orgies at night (on weekends when I was out of town).

― Ally (mlescaut), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I dunno how she's got my email address. Maybe from some other neighbour. Anyway, I try not to be an asshole, I don't put on music loud after 10pm or anything. But if I play a record at any decent volume (and I really don't play music VERY loudly ever) at, say 2pm on a Saturday afternoon, she'll be knocking on the door during the FIRST SONG. It's not like the noise goes on for hours, every day.

Suzy, your plan sounds good to me.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:49 (twenty-two years ago)

If you did not give her your email address, she has basically zero business writing to you there and this is obviously both invasive and abusive. Return the mail with an instruction to her never to use it again. Keep it simple, do not address any of her issues, and go so far over her head to deal with this that she has to bust her neck to see who that is.

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 14:58 (twenty-two years ago)

She's harrassing you, plain and simple. Report it to your landlord.

― Ally (mlescaut), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 15:15 (twenty-two years ago)

It may not be that much of a conspiracy. People trying and failing to sleep become irrational, or at the envelope of their emotions. Her letter may have been written in a frame of mind no more reasonable than you were in the midst of your argument.

― Judge Mentalist (Judge Mentalist), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I think you should invite her up to your flat and ask her at what times you should do certain things, and get into a detailed discussion about volume control. For example: "I like to masturbate at such-and-such a time, and the noises I make usually sound like this: (make noises). Is that too loud? Also, I'm planning to kick the living shit out of my girlfriend sometime in the next couple of days; her screams of agony and the inevitable ambulance sirens will probably be pretty loud, so perhaps we could do it while you're at the grocery store ..." Etc., etc. Then make sure to tell your landlord you tried to work things out with her.

― jewelly (jewelly), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 22:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm the worst neighbor in this sense; a very light sleeper with keen hearing who desperately needs 8 hours a night...and I have to go to bed no later than 8p. Things may not ever get better.

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 23:04 (twenty-two years ago)

The whole landlord thing isn't a problem. I'm fine with mine - he's a relative. Anyway I sent her this smart-ass email (the spitting thing is a reference to some liquid that comes flying past my window, when I presume she's mopping her balcony or something):

"All day the scraping. Were you moving furniture across our ceiling? Something else? Coffins? The sound is very irritating.

I might have complained. But what would be the point? Tomorrow you'll be stomping up and down your stairs. Then hobbling from one corner of the building to another. And back again. Would it be too much to ask for you, each morning, to choose one of the corners of your flat and stand there for the rest of the day? It would help me with my work.

But it would be too much to ask, I know.

I think you spend some afternoons spitting from your balcony & your phlegm sticks to one of our windows. I find it a little irksome.

Recently, X and I were baffled by the sounds which filled our flat. Terrible cawing, whinnies, even mooing. These noises turned out to be the symptoms of an enthusiastic fucking session taking place in your flat. I'm not joking. It was after midnight, so you may understand our sense of violation. Admittedly, we weren't in bed at the time but the whole business did put us off our macaroni.

I like this idea: that when X and I fight - and we do fight, occasionally, no question - and I am so irrational that I will shout at and say mean things to someone I love, and X is too, we ought meanwhile to conjure some sympathy for our dippy, whinging, unlikeable neighbour.

Okay. I will try at least (I can't speak for X). And in return maybe you could arrange your moving about and your sex to our convenience (i.e. not before 10am generally, and not after midnight, but other times permissible at our discretion as long as you give us notice). This may sound tough, but it's either that or we'll all have to learn to put up with the inherent intrusiveness of living in flats & the notion that some sentences beginning "It's not my business but..." should not, sensibly, have been begun."

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 23:25 (twenty-two years ago)

i think you exercised too much restraint there, EK. Attempt to recall the message and then resend once you've fully addressed all of your thoughts and feelings.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 23:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Classic!

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 23:50 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

That was the best email I ever sent.

― Eyeball Kicks, Sunday, 8 February 2009 00:28 (seventeen years ago)

did she ever reply to your response?

― jed_, Sunday, 8 February 2009 00:46 (seventeen years ago)

six years pass...

Awful. I was just a different person then. I think I was the asshole.

― Eyeball Kicks, Monday, 26 October 2015 00:03 (ten years ago)

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