Jake hadn’t slept in five months. When they rented the apartment in Bed-Stuy one of Brooklyn’s not yet up-and-coming neighborhoods, it seemed like a gamble, but he and Felipe knew it was a good deal. And it seemed like the right place. They were close to Williamsburg, right off the G-train, and not far from a park where Jake could run laps for hours like a hamster on a wheel. But he craved a night of sleep.
Felipe hadn’t slept in five months, either.
“It’s like PTSD from Carnival in Rio,” he said. Felipe grew up in Brazil, where samba dancing and late-night partying were everywhere. It seemed like a stereotype to Jake, but Felipe insisted otherwise. Still, even this was a bit much for him.
Stomp.
Stomp.
Stomp.
Screeeeeeech.
“What are they even doing up there?” Jake asked.
“Failing horribly at juggling bowling balls?” Felipe offered.
“I bet that would make less noise,” he whispered.
The clock ticked forward to three o’clock. The sun would be up soon, and neither Jake nor Felipe appreciated greeting it after being so well-acquainted with the moon and stars all night.
Stomp.
The noise from the neighbors was not something surprising. Not in New York City where living in close quarters was part of the experience. It was normal to time rituals with the flushing of a neighbor’s toilet or to know someone’s sexual appetite by the shaking of a nearby headboard. You knew who was lonely by counting their packages in the vestibule. You knew who was in debt by counting their packages in the vestibule. You knew who probably smoked too much every Sunday and went on a shopping spree by counting their packages in the vestibule.
That was life here, part of a big apple, mealy as it was beneath the surface, that still had some sweetness to it.
Jake was only 28. Felipe was 26. This was their time to be New Yorkers.
But the neighbors upstairs were next level.
They hadn’t met them yet, or dared going to knock or leave a note. Aggression—active or passive—was not something they wanted to dabble in, not in this neighborhood. It was changing, sure, but they were keenly aware that they brought a bit of gentrification that Bed-Stuy wasn’t quite ready for yet. Felipe was a fairly successful photographer, and Jake’s legal work on criminal cases wasn’t quite earning him corporate law firm money—not as student debt took its share—but they were on their way.
So instead, each night, they lay in bed together, their eyes dry and strained staring at the ceiling, imagining X-ray capabilities that would at least reveal the source of the near-constant sounds of the top-floor apartment.
By six o’clock, Felipe sat up in bed.
“Can’t you like, subpoena them or something?” Felipe said.
“That’s not how the law works,” Jake said.
“Can we sue them?”
“Sweetie, I wish,” Jake said. Realistically he knew, given what New York City was going through in the 1990s, that a noise complaint in Bed-Stuy wasn’t going to generate much action. Times Square alone was siphoning off major resources as the mayor attempted to clean it up. They were small fish in a murky pond of despair.
No one could help them.
“I’ll see what I can think of,” Jake said.
“I guess I’ll make coffee,” Felipe said.
Jake could see his eyes, the bags underneath them just a luxury icon away from being sellable alongside the others on Canal Street in Chinatown. He felt his own eyes strain, his breath still tasting of the toothpaste he used just hours ago before innocently hoping that tonight would be the night they would sleep normally.
Felipe pulled his gray sweatpants on and Jake watched as he searched for a hoodie to pull over his wiry frame. He turned to look at Jake.
“I don’t know, babe,” he said.
“What?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know how long I can do this.”
“We’ll figure it out, promise. I’ll call the landlord again today,” Jake said.
“She hasn’t responded to our last fifteen calls,” Felipe said.
“We’ll stop paying our rent.”
“That’ll crush our credit if she reports us. We’ll never be able to buy something.”
“Then we’ll move,” Jake said.
“We’ve got seven months left on this lease, and I honestly don’t want to move again,” Felipe said. This was their third apartment together in as many years. He bent over to stretch, his bones cracking ever so slightly.
“I’ll figure something out,” Jake said.
“If not, we just pack up and leave to Brazil and never come back,” Felipe said.
“Is that what you want?” Jake asked.
Felipe sat on the edge of the bed and smiled, but Jake didn’t know if it was because he was joking or because he found relief at the idea.
“I’ll go make coffee,” he said, and left the bedroom. Jake felt horrible.
The rest of the week, they went about their routines, Felipe looking more and more drawn, Jake feeling more and more worn out by the night’s carnival of sounds that kept them away.
It was a curious cacophony of slams and bangs, rattles and scrapes, booms and shuffles as if they were tap dancing in a drunken chorus line while rearranging furniture to some ever-changing rules of feng shui. A mechanical whirring came once a week. And recurrent cackling seeped through the ceiling overhead, as if from the depths of an asylum. And though Felipe had floated the idea, the vibrations they felt—a portrait Felipe had taken of their families together had fallen off the wall—made it useless to imagine mutually deafening each other in hopes of achieving sleep.
A month later, halfway through their lease, Jake came home from work to find a note from Felipe on the coffee table with an address. Meet me here, it said.
Jake knew where the street was and strolled through the Hasidic communities between Bed-Stuy and the river, searching for the number on the paper, way up in Williamsburg where the warehouses were slowly converting to condominiums that, one day, they could afford together.
He found the address, some low-budget hotel not far from the water. The sun had set by now and the moon was reflecting its light down on him, reminding him that it would be there all night, keeping them company. He walked in and asked the woman in the lobby if Felipe had checked in, and she called up to his room. She nodded and gestured to the elevators where Jake went up to the top floor. He knocked on room 501.
Felipe opened the door, a white terry cloth robe tied loosely around him contrasting with his smooth brown skin. He held his fingers up to his lips.
“What are you doing here?” Jake asked.
“Listen,” Felipe said.
“What?”
Felipe looked around adorably.
“I don’t hear anything,” Jake said.
“Exactly.”
He pulled Jake into the room and his robe hit the floor before the door closed. A few hours later they fell asleep, never waking throughout the night, only opening their eyes when the sun knocked on their eyelids by the time it rose over the nearby apartment buildings.
“What time is it?” Felipe asked.
“I think it’s eight,” Jake said.
They hadn’t slept that late in six months—but who was counting?
“Can we live here?” Felipe asked. He wrapped his arms around Jake’s chest.
It was no use answering. It was better to keep the dream alive than pee all over the embers of what little hope they had.
That night, a Friday, back in Bed-Stuy—because they couldn’t afford more than one night in the hotel—the dream fizzled out anew.
Slam.
Slam.
Jingle. Jingle. Boom.
Bang.
The jingling was new.
“I’m going up there,” Felipe said.
“No you’re not.”
“Why not?”
“We have to live with these people and you don’t want to be the bougie gays who are complaining about noise,” Jake said.
“But we are the bougie gays who are complaining about noise,” Felipe protested.
Jake looked into his eyes, little sad pools of emotion scintillating in the moonlight, quivering with what Jake hoped were not tears, but very well could be. Felipe had been through a lot in his life, and Jake hated the idea that things weren’t on an upward trajectory.
“I’ll fix this,” Jake said. He got out of bed, pulled on his jeans and a sweatshirt, and smoothed back his hair.
“What are you going to say?” Felipe asked.
“I’m just going to introduce myself and let them know we moved in, and hopefully that will do the trick,” Jake said. It was midnight, but they clearly weren’t asleep.
Crash.
Bang.
Bang.
Whirl. Whirl. Whirl.
Felipe hid under the covers, praying quietly in Portuguese, crossing his figures, listening to Jake’s footsteps out of the apartment, the creaking door, the distant muffled sounds of movement upstairs and a reprieve from the sound as another door opened. More muffled sounds, maybe conversations, and then—
Slam.
Felipe didn’t move.
Cackling.
The door opened, the footsteps inched closer, and he slipped the covers down below his nose to see Jake in the doorway of the bedroom, the moonlight washed over him as he glittered in a wet substance.
“What the hell happened?” Felipe asked.
“Tonight they were filling up the bathtub with milkshakes,” Jake said.
“No, seriously,” Felipe said.
“Seriously. Apparently it’s a Friday tradition. And they didn’t like my suggestion that maybe they wait until tomorrow morning to use the blender.”
“Milkshakes?”
“Chocolate, it seems,” Jake said. He showered and slipped back into bed where neither he nor Felipe said a word for the rest of the night.
Whirl. Whirl. Whirl.
Bang.
Cackle.
Over the next few weeks, they never saw the neighbors, and nothing changed. Jake didn’t tell Felipe what else he saw in the apartment, the drugs, or other substances, the smells, the decrepitness of college-style posters of 1990s films and musical acts covering the walls and splattered in paint and what appeared to be excrement. He thought maybe they were artists, maybe deeply unwell, maybe just college students who never quite graduated from Pratt Institute and were living commune style, squeezed into the one-bedroom upstairs.
Bang.
Then one night, after days of being sick, canceling work commitments, and seeming thinner than ever, Felipe broke down. The tears Jake had thought he saw weeks ago were now there, manifested, pouring down Felipe’s face. He knew this was wearing on him. His own pants didn’t fit much anymore, even as he stopped running, too fatigued to do a lap around the park. They hadn’t cared to eat a proper meal in weeks.
This was the definition of problematic.
Felipe started crying. But it wasn’t just tears. It was a frantic, desperate cry accompanied by an erratic dive into the closet.
“What are you doing, Felipe? Come here, come on,” Jake pleaded.
Felipe rummaged through the closet, found a duffel bag, and started shoving belongings in it.
Stomp.
Stomp.
Stomp.
Cackle.
“I’m leaving. I need to go. I’ll go to a friend’s, or I’ll go to JFK and fly home. I swear, I just can’t anymore, I can’t, Jake, I —”
Jake threw himself over his partner on the floor and squeezed him, feeling Felipe rattle and shake in ways he never felt before. They trembled together.
“Give me one day, please,” Jake said. “I can fix this.”
“How?” Felipe said. He looked up at Jake, the tears streaming.
Bang.
“Just trust me.”
Boom.
“But it’s been nearly seven months and—”
Whirl.
“One day,” Jake said.
Cackle.
Bang.
Bang.
Crash.
Shuffle.
Jingle.
Scraaaaaape.
Felipe buried his face into Jake’s shirt and sobbed.
They put the duffel bag and folded the clothes, returning to bed as the night waned, the moon spotlighting them as the soundtrack overhead played, and thoughts drifted to hotel rooms and loose-fitting terry cloth robes and lazy mornings where only the chirping of birds and the distant rumble of morning traffic broke the silence.
Felipe fell asleep in Jake’s arms sometime around five in the morning.
Crash.
He slipped out of bed without disturbing his partner and got dressed, prepared to take action.
Felipe woke up later, sore and with a headache, his throat dry from crying. He felt embarrassed at his episode, but the constant noise and disruption had broken him. He tried not to let Jake know how deep the cracks were, but the fissures had split him into two, sound waves from above ebbing away at his sanity.
He felt the other side of the bed, cool now, with no signs of Jake.
It was probably nine in the morning, Felipe realized, as he took a shower and prepared to go to an event he needed to photograph for a local newspaper. He committed to taking every well-paid gig he could if it meant buying their way out of this apartment that had once been the dream.
Old dreams became nightmares and new dreams were the only escape.
Still no sign of Jake.
He left a note on the coffee table saying he’d be back after dinner, and Felipe left the apartment, looking angrily up the stairs at the neighbors, wondering who they were, what they looked like, and what instruments they might use that night to destroy his mind further.
Hours later, exhausted, and beginning to tremble even before entering the apartment building, Felipe unlocked the door. He trudged up, slowly, painfully, step by step to the fourth floor. He could already imagine the symphony of bang boom cackle slide rattle that awaited. It was Friday, milkshake night, so he knew they’d be doing the whirl until the morning paper arrived. It turned his stomach.
He dreamed of the hotel.
Of some Caribbean island with Jake.
Of doing whatever it took to end this experience.
Felipe knew his thoughts bordered on dangerous, on needing help, but he would manage and cope somehow.
He walked up to the fourth floor and opened the door.
Scraaaape.
He winced, closing his eyes fully trying to keep it together. The sound was closer than ever before.
“Hey babe,” Jake said. He was pulling out a chair from the dining room table that they never used anymore. Hence the scrape. The table was set, with a candle, Chinese takeout boxes—Felipe’s favorite—and Jake motioned to sit. “I waited for you.”
“What’s all this?” Felipe asked.
“I figured we’d have a nice dinner and just, you know, enjoy ourselves for once,” Jake said. He hugged Felipe and took his camera bag from his shoulder.
“But—”
“Mapo tofu?” Jake said. Felipe sat and allowed himself to be served, the brown gravy that cheap takeout places used was nothing like the spicy sauce they found in Chinatown, but it was still his favorite dish. Felipe thanked Jake and kissed him. Jake kissed back. In the silence of their home, together, Felipe made a very calculated but earnest decision to let the tofu get cold while he made love to his partner right there in the kitchen.
Afterwards, they microwaved the takeout, which seemed to revive it to its initial level of mediocrity.
Beep.
Felipe could still taste Jake on his lips.
They talked about their day together, laughed, and then watched a movie that Jake had rented from the local shop.
There may have been some whirling and stomping overhead, but the movie was loud, and soon, all Felipe could do was enjoy the weight of Jake’s arm on his shoulder and the pulsating lights of lasers and explosions of some intergalactic war that played out on the screen.
By eleven o’clock, they brushed their teeth and prepared for bed.
Felipe felt himself trembling already.
But it felt wrong.
Something was askew.
“I was thinking this weekend we could go to the Museum of Natural History. There’s a new exhibit I think would be fun,” Jake said.
“Yeah, sure,” Felipe said.
He looked over his shoulder, then looked at Jake in the mirror who was applying moisturizer.
“And maybe we can see Victor and Carol. I think they’re trying to get pregnant, so maybe we can go do karaoke before, well, before they can’t anymore.”
Felipe spat toothpaste into the sink.
“Sure.”
“Everything OK?” Jake asked.
Felipe looked around. Nothing was wrong, but everything wasn’t OK. He looked around the bathroom. The tub, tiles, and shower curtain were all there. He walked out into the bedroom, the linens were where they always were. The curtains filtered the moonlight as usual. The closet was slightly a mess as usual.
“Something’s off,” he said.
Jake put a hand on his backside.
“We haven’t done it in the kitchen in ages, I know,” he joked.
“No, not that,” Felipe said.
“Just come to bed already and let’s get some sleep,” Jake said. He pulled down the duvet and slipped in. Felipe followed suit.
It was the strangest sensation, allowing his head to hit the pillow, his partner, loving and caring, draping an arm across his waist from behind.
The moon and stars seemed to ignore them now, disinterested with performing for them as their breathing slowed, in sync, and Felipe felt Jake fall asleep behind him, something he hadn’t experienced in months.
He looked up at the ceiling.
Waiting.
Expecting.
Dreading.
Instead, he felt only the mythical Sandman sprinkling his magical powder over him as Felipe felt his eyes grow heavy, slipping into the deepest, most complete sleep he had experienced in this corner of Brooklyn since moving in seven months ago.
The next morning, Jake let Felipe sleep in, probably for the first time ever in this apartment. His partner lay there, curled up with the pillow, and in the morning sun, he just looked divine. To say he felt lucky was not a strong enough statement to describe his emotions. Felipe was his world. Jake knew he’d do anything to make him happy.
He decided to go get coffee and donuts to surprise him.
On his way out, he took the trash with him. The black bag was filled with last night’s Chinese takeout containers, a pair of socks with holes, and the banana peels that would soon attract gnats if not removed.
“Whoops, almost forgot,” he said to himself. From the coat closet, he took the empty black bottle, holding it with a tissue, and placed it in the trash bag. No reason to leave fingerprints if he could help it. They didn’t have a car, so of course it might seem weird if anyone found a bottle of antifreeze in their house.
He knew how to be careful.
Jake’s years working in criminal law taught him a thing or two.
No one would question why the bathtub milkshake party upstairs had gone awry the night before. Not with all the other substances that found their way into the apartment, anyway.
He just hoped the neighbors didn’t start to smell in the coming days.
Felipe rustled in the bedroom and Jake slipped out of the door, taking the garbage bag to a municipal dumpster down the street by a high school, and thought about what kind of donuts to buy at the bakery.
Go, Jake! And woohoo! for the bougie gay couple.
Well that was a nice way of *ending* the story.