Up Above, Down Below

Once upon a time, boy met girl in the halls of their apartment building, and girl batted her lashes, and boy held her hand and she allowed herself to be led to his bedroom where they made loud, passionate love for days on end. Girl was, what one may call, a screamer, and she screamed and shrieked at all hours of the day, echoing down the alley, causing bewildered neighbors all around to turn off their taps as they washed the dishes, turn off their vacuums as they cleaned their carpets, turn up the volumes on their televisions, or just lay on their floors listening intently, imagining…longing…wishing.

Not too long after, girl packed her stuff and moved across the hall into boy’s suite, where they would play loud music to disguise the sounds of their love, where he would cushion her face with pillows from his couch, where boy’s roommate would leave the house, cross the street, and sit and drink coffee while all the customers around him spoke with enthusiasm of the couple in the Wyllands Estates that they could—above all traffic, above all conversation and raucous in the café—still hear. Ah. But the boy didn’t mind. The girl was a fantasy and the louder she squealed, the prouder he beamed.

As always, over time, the couple of the hour grew silent. The honeymoon only lasted a few short months and their version of world war one began.

One night the song on my Itunes stopped and was followed by an immediate: “FUCK YOU!”

The passion wheel rolled down the wrong path, hit a bump, and fell right off the wagon, and all of a sudden the swaying stopped altogether, the screams turned to curses, and the pillows flew across the room. No more shrieking of pleasure, this was a head-on assault, heavy and loud enough for a crowd to converge outside, down below; some laughing, some heckling, some throwing advice, ridicule or needles off the alley floor.

“I don’t want to eat that!” She resonated down the block. “What kind of man are you?!”
And SLAM, the dish flew out the balcony door.

Ah yes, once upon a time, boy met girl and girl went mad and shrieked out an army of commands and boy’s knees trembled and he lost his senses, future and will to live.

Night after night, day after day, their war waged on until all the roaches packed up and moved away, the roommate cowered under his bed, and even the landladies were afraid to intervene with arbitrary threats.

“What do you want from me?” The neck in his veins would pop out.

“Peace and quiet, I told you!” She would scream from the top of her lungs.

“Well, you got it!” He would punch at the air with two eager fists.

And she pounded her feet on the floor, “Get away from me!!!”

That particular night I was in deep sleep, dreaming of daisies and tulips and butterflies over grassy fields of a solemn country-side, accompanied by dirt paths all leading to a skinny-dipper’s lake lined with stony walls of heavenly vodka-falls.

Up above, she slammed the door with such force that down below the paintings on my walls all slid to the floor. I traced his steps on my ceiling as he went after her and she screamed and slapped and hit and bounced ‘whatever’ off their walls.

Two minutes later, there was a knock on their door, and as he opened and faced me, she screamed out, “I am not a whore!”

Holding clumps of his own hair in his own hand, boy asked me, “What can I do for you?”

“I was just wondering if you liked this painting?”

“It’s pretty.” She came out from behind, mascara and lipstick like a clown who lost his frown.

“I thought you should have it.” I smiled, and I lifted it up high.

The sound of the impact of glass-on-head, then two bodies thudding onto the floor were all anyone heard that night again.

The next day, girl left boy and moved back across the hall.


Ldm