Soooo, a number of months ago, I started to notice a pattern developing in the space directly above my living room. A couple of nights a week, around seven P.M., a slow rumbling would begin to take place. It was nothing spectacular initially and for the first thirty minutes or so, I mostly ignored it. However it lasted a long time. Over the span of an hour or more it would intensify and subside until ultimately it progressed into a chaos which transformed my apartment into a scene similar to the one in Independence Day where Bill Pullman’s plane is trying to escape Washington D.C. The walls would shake, my lights  flickered and I wasn’t positive that a giant fireball wouldn’t be closing in on me from outside of my windows.

At first, because I’m an idiot, I legitimately thought it was kids jumping on a trampoline, because who in a cramped New York City apartment doesn’t keep a trampoline in their sitting room? Then I thought maybe it’s just someone exercising? However, a particularly enthusiastic romp over a recent weekend proved to me that the ruckus in the upstairs abode definitely wasn’t step aerobics. Once I deciphered what seemed to be a muffled dialogue, it became clear just exactly what was going on here.

You should have seen my face. I looked like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. I was shocked but somewhat giddy. It’s not like I’d never heard people having sex before but this was such an insane commotion, I had to know more. I immediately muted my television and sat as still as possible, my mouth gaping as I strained to make sense of all the noises. I even went so far as to open my windows to see if I could hear more but quickly shut them when the car alarms outside began to drown out the clamoring overhead.

For rest of that afternoon, I was totally like a pervy teenager catching her friends in the act at a party, giggling to myself and then sinking back into the couch, a cheeky smirk on my face, now that I had “found them out”. It was all kind of cute.

However currently, it’s four weeks later and I am LOSING MY MIND.

It’s gone from a couple of times a week to practically every night and all day on Sundays. It might be all day on Saturdays too but I don’t know because unlike my neighbors, who apparently live off each other’s insatiable love for one another, I have a job.

I have no idea how to handle this. It’s not like they’re playing the guitar too loud and I can ask them to keep it down, they’re having sex on top of me six days a week and it’s totally awkward.

I’ve considered writing an anonymous letter but I’m afraid I’ll get caught. A mysterious note could only be coming from one of four tenants realistically. Plus, I confessed to the guy across the hall from me not so long ago that I was having this issue and now I’m afraid he’ll rat me out.

“Oh you mean that dude and his boyfriend?” he asked me.

YES! That made so much more sense. No straight couple would have sex this often.

Then I contemplated actually being an adult about it and knocking on their door, until I remembered there is no way in hell I would ever do that, so I had to think of something else. Maybe I could get those noise canceling headphones? But it isn’t just the noise that’s the problem. My apartment tremors so violently it feels like I’m living inside a popcorn maker.

Not to mention, I kind of feel like who am I to tell these people what kind of sex they should be having and how often? What would the real solution be? For them to limit their affairs to three nights a week and maybe not go at each other with such ferocity? It’s not exactly a situation where I can just ask them to put rugs down and carry on.

I can’t keep living like this though. I’m generally pretty tolerant when it comes to building disturbances. I’ve always been of the opinion that residing in an urban area is going to be noisy so I don’t get upset about horns honking incessantly or late night parties but as I write this I am literally entering my fourth hour of sparsely interrupted pounding on my ceiling and I can’t concentrate anymore! It’s just obnoxious now. These two have so much sex it’s almost as if they’re mocking me.

At the end of the day, I suppose I could just get out of the house more or try spending some time in my kitchen, like actually cooking something, but I fear that what once started as a funny story I could tell my friends will end up as a front page headline on the NY Post that reads Woman Tired Of Living In Flight Simulator Murders Unusually Happy Couple Living Upstairs. 

For now I’m going try a zen approach and practice all of the breathing techniques I’ve learned in yoga and pray that at the very least these two don’t come crashing through my ceiling (do I have to say the pun thing here?) But honestly, what is one supposed to do in a situation like this?

I need to know before I end up having to file for renter’s insurance.