Pounding on the door

Marie was here a week ago to visit. We tootled around town some. kept talking about going out to a new restaurant I want to try but never got that far, and talked, and fucked. Yes, well.

So it was late Friday night, and Marie was squealing loudly to heaven for all she was worth, ... and suddenly I heard pounding on my door.

Ooops. That's right, I live in an apartment. It's midnight. Maybe other people want to get some sleep.

I didn't know which neighbor it was, and I sure as hell wasn't going to go answer the door stark naked and smelling like sex. So I just stopped dead. Marie stopped making noise. Silently I climbed over to my side of the bed, blew out the one candle we had going, and we went to sleep.

The next morning it turned out that Marie hadn't heard the pounding when I did. She just stopped because I stopped doing things to stimulate her. So I explained and made sure she understood she really had to be quieter.

That afternoon I got a text message from Son 1, who has been traveling for work all month. (He hasn't moved out yet, so his absence was part of why Marie hadn't bothered to hold it down.) He said, "So your downstairs neighbor texted me last night saying she heard yelling or screaming. You know anything about that?"

I replied, "Umm ... er ... yeah. It's fine. Sorry we woke them. Nothing was wrong and nobody was hurt."

Son 1 answered that by forwarding me this picture. I don't blame him.

Then I sent a slightly longer text to the couple downstairs:

"Hi! I just now heard from Son 1 that you texted him last night asking if everything was OK. I am really embarrassed and really very sorry for keeping you awake. Everything was OK and nobody was hurt, but I feel terrible for being a bad neighbor. Umm ... Marie has been visiting for a week but her flight home is this afternoon. So it should be quieter. Again, I'm really sorry."

It must have been four hours later that I finally heard back.

"Hi Hosea, just now able to respond. I apologize and also feel embarrassed by not thinking how that could have been a different kind of scream. I'm just glad everyone is OK! My apologies again. I'm glad you guys had a nice week together!"

What I think that means is that there's lots of embarrassment to go around, but it all turned out OK in the end. And I suppose it's good that my neighbors care enough to be worried about screaming ....