5 a.m. New Year's Day
I have to admit, I am deeply curious about my upstairs neighbor. And I mean that in a Polanskiesque way.
He or she — B. and I have been trying to decode the gender by listening to his or her comings and goings (yes, I could check the postbox in the lobby, but I'm not a stalker) — takes an inordinately long shower every morning just before 5 a.m. The hissing of the pipes is the first thing I hear most mornings.
___________________________________
Someone is serious
about a clean start in 2012.
___________________________________
Someone is serious
about a clean start in 2012.
___________________________________
Lately I have detected a barely audible high-speed thwacking that immediately precedes the long shower. I can't imagine what this could be. I mean this is some serious high-speed thwacking — thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack and it's over.
(Maybe the ladies can help me — as a man I can only think of one thing that thwacks like that — though not usually at that speed — but there might be some implement of beauty or hygiene that is in common use among the lasses that we lads know nothing about.)
I don't know how long #11 has lived there but there's definitely some karma here. Above my bed are several tiny craters in the ceiling that may very well have been made with the handle-end of a broomstick.
This morning my neighbor was up at 5 again, running up and down the back stairs on the other side of my bedroom wall to the laundry room in the building's basement.
Someone is serious about a clean start in 2012.
Why should any of this interest me? I don't know. Frankly some of the things that interest me baffle me. But maybe it's the fact that my upstairs neighbor seems to live alone, and yet I'm somehow privy, while not to his or her gender, to some intimate details of his or her life. Or that eavesdropping — even forced eavesdropping — is just inherently interesting. And then there's this: while all kinds of people like masturbation, it's a certain kind of person that likes long showers afterward.
I'm not judging.
I know you won't believe this, but I don't judge. I distinguish between and among things, of course. I categorize and even hierarchize — but that taxonomical mania is our species' genetic predisposition. Judging is different. Right and wrong is, after all, a simple matter. Even Christ boiled it all down to one commandment — do unto others, bitches. Right and wrong is never as interesting as its outcome, which is bound to be either comic or tragic. That's the part that interests me.
So, in other words, if #11 spent his or her New Year's Eve dreaming of all the laundry he or she would get done at five in the morning on New Year's Day, what's it to me?
I spent New Year's Eve with the delightful David Mitchell and Robert Webb (B. was away at a college reunion of sorts) and passed out on the sofa by eleven. I woke up briefly just after midnight to a tweet from B. and again around two, wishing I had a slingshot, as drunken revelers made their way down the echo chamber of Queensberry Street.
Friends of the Blog know I'm not a big fan of crowds. These days you never know whether you're walking into an Occupy-something or when an otherwise innocuous mass of people is going to break out into some awful choreographed flashdance routine.
But to be clear: I'm not really an agoraphobe. I don't mind crowds — on a bustling city street, an airport, a mall, where everyone is hustling off in different directions for their own little purposes, this one rushing off to his daughter's birthday party, that one coming back from the best shag of his life. Even if some of them have criminal intentions, what's it to me?
No, it's when the purpose of the crowd is singular that I start to get a little scared. And I don't care if it's a cheesy flash mob or an angry lynch mob, I don't want to get swept up in it. I mean, bitches whipped into a frenzy'll mace you for a two-dollar waffle iron. No thank you. I'll be occupying my toasty little flat tonight. Alone. With the deadbolt securely locked.
And that goes double (and yes I have a double deadbolt) for New Year's Eve. We suspend certain conventions for a few hours in what is really as much a collective nod to death — what else is the passing of time ultimately good for? — as Christmas is an orgy of futile acquisition in the face of imminent annihilation — er, I mean a celebration of birth and life.
That's why we're encouraged to drink ourselves into a stupor on New Year's Eve. Because WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.
Just consider Auld Lang Syne, that old New Year's standard:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
- CHORUS:
- For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
- CHORUS
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.
- CHORUS
We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.
- CHORUS
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie's a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.
- CHORUS
So anyway, around five I awoke again, to my neighbor's manic New Year's Morning laundering spree, and decided, fuck it, to get my 2012 up and running. Time waits for no man.
And yet those first hushed hours of the first day of the year give us pause. There's something about that hangover hush, something about a whole world sleeping off an epic bender, that gives those of us up at the crack of dawn a moment alone with Time, that old friend and nemesis. And for that brief moment we can — or so it seems — meet as equals.
And then it's off to do the laundry.
Ya know,
That sounds liked pretty cramped living quarters. The transvestite across the street got mad at me because my kid could tell his gender. Apparently he has convinced his entire family that he is a girl. Yet late at night he can be seen taking a leak in his mom's front lawn through what appears to be a hose.
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IF, and I stress the if, your upstairs neighbor is male and has antiquarian sensibilities, the thwack-thwack could be coming from a Rolls Razor. These were in some vogue during the 1940s/50s. British made, and not associated with the auto manufacturer, they were a non-disposable version of the safety razor that came in a handsome steel or, for the top of the line model, chrome-plated case a little shorter and rather narrower than a Kindle Fire. The steel blade was rolled back and forth, stropping it on the surfaces of the inside of the opened case (thus the thwacking sound--Google it for pictures). Then the blade was taken off the stropping device and attached to the handle for shaving.
My father had one of these and woke me every morning for years with the thwacking in the bathroom of our boxy little post-War apartment. Your description of the sound and the time of day awakened those memories.
Of course, it's also possible that your neighbor could be a self-flagellant.
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I like the way you think, Will.
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