I sort of sympathize with Pat here - getting the three rooms and all.
I used to live in an apartment where the building used to be fewer, enormous apartments that were later broken up into several smaller ones. The added divider walls were the opposite of sound proof. The sunroom off my kitchen used to be a shared sunroom with the apartment on the other side of it. Instead of keeping it like that, it had been divided with a thin piece of plywood so thin that it bent if you pushed on it, and with gaps at the bottom and top that allowed full sound carry over. One day I was sitting out there, heard the sound of a single set of foot steps enter the otherside: walk, walk, sit... furious masterbation! I gave a few polite "cough, cough" noises to alert the fellow that I was there. I made a few more obvious sounds, then I realized he knew I was there before he had started, that he was intentionally involving me. I left the sunroom and closed the door.
In the same apartment, my bedroom and a different neighbour's bedroom had once been one room - the wall between wasn't as thin as the sunroom divider, but it was definitely not sound proof at all. It was vacant for the first 6 months or so of my living there. Then someone moved in- her alarm clock might as well have been next to my bed, I knew exactly when she had a cold, etc. It never occurred to me to complain about this, because... what could be done? A little while later, the landlord came knocking. A burly jovial sort of guy. He was clearly uncomfortable... "Um... I don't know how to tell you this... the girl next door is complaining about some... noises... while you're in the bedroom... when your boyfriend is over...I'm sorry... she says it's very loud." I told him not to be uncomfortable, I taught sex ed... that it was a sound proofing issue, not a "me being loud issue" - that I could hear every cough, that I woke up to her alarm three hours before I had to get up, that I could hear every phone conversation. "Well, maybe try... a ball gag?" I explained we were not being excessively loud, but that we would try to be quieter, but that with the way sound carried, that not much could be done. He kept talking, and talking and kept saying "ball gag" over and over again... Once he got warmed up, there was no stopping him! Later I got a letter of apology from the girl next door about her complaining about the sex sounds, which was just the funniest thing ever. After she moved out a new girl with a boyfriend moved in, and I got to hear exactly what the other girl had been hearing.
Other people's sex sounds... so very awkward!
Also, in the same building a floor above, I got to hear the guy sing loudly in his tub (cute) and beat his girlfriend (awful).
I never met any of these people. I just heard their noises, and they heard mine.
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Topic: March 27, 2007 - "I Need To See This As A Challenge" (Read 13213 times)