DORÉ

I know this is New York and I know that the city is loud.

I mean in a sense, that’s what makes it what it is. The noise. You can’t ever feel alone in New York, can you? Lonely, maybe. But never alone. A silent New York would be quite alarming if you ask me but that won’t stop me from complaining about this incessant cacophony. It’s like an orchestra. Except that it’s conducted by a toddler, and the instruments have been replaced by kitchen utensils and frying pans. ALL. THE. TIME. You just can’t tune it out.

I live next to a 4-way intersection, above a 24/7 deli and a bus stop. So I’m kind of asking for it. I can have to deal with the city noises – the screeching subways, the loud parties, the construction, the cars and their perpetual horns. Toot. Tootoot. Tooooot, toooooot you $#@! Also, the bus that arrives every morning at 6:45AM with that deflating “psssssssss”, the garbage disposal trucks with their ungodly reverse beep, the atrociously loud sirens that will eventually perforate my eardrum. Yeah I can totally deal with that.

But it’s the preventable noise that I find insufferable: my neighbor who sounds like she shuffles around her apartment in ski boots, who listens to electronic music when she showers every morning at 6:45 (hey, at least she has a good sense of personal hygiene). The hellish motorcycle on stand-by at 3AM, which sounds like someone is making violent popcorn in my bedroom. That squeaky entrance door from the building next door, opening and slamming shut every time somebody goes in. The barking dogs, the screaming kids – drunk or sober, it’s all like drilling a hole through my brain. So here’s what I want to say to them: to the guy practicing the flute every morning, really not your calling, mate. To my neighbor, I secretly hope you’ll stay single this year – the walls are too thin for me to survive all the sex. To the woman who broke up with her boyfriend under my window, you definitely deserve better. To Mister 305 cruising and blasting some barbaric Pitbull track at 3AM, you’re just rude. And have terrible taste in music.

All I’m asking for is silence. Twenty minutes of complete, deafening silence.

In the direst of situations, I wonder if it’s possible to die of excessive noise. But that’s what sleep deprivation will do to you.