Bitter Spinster. News at 11
I was just thinking the other day about how ironic it is that my very religious friend who got married when she was a child (21) has had way more sex than non religious me. (INFINITELY more.) And how my cute little religious, blond friend, with her cute dimply blond children and sex partner husband, has probably NEVER had to endure hearing her neighbors and roommates have sex! How shocking! How novel!
I, on the other hand, brush my teeth to an upstairs thump, thump, lay in bed to an upstairs thump, thump. I open my window to get some cool air and hear not only crickets, and the distant roar of traffic, and the nearby vroom of a car, people talking on the street, and an occasional helicopter, but also a feminine “HA.. ah!” from the house next door. Every couple weekends, when my next door neighbor’s boyfriend is in town, I hear a restrained shuffle, shuffle against our shared bedroom wall. As I was typing those words, I could hear the slurp slurp of kissing outside my front window. (That’s a new one.) They could hear the clatter, clatter of my keys. I could hear what sounded like someone with a very small mouth trying to eat soup.
Entirely too much information is conveyed aurally. I shouldn’t know who came when, who’s mad at who, and who apparently isn’t mad at who anymore. At night, as the urban jungle noises surround me, I lay there sort of bewildered about how to feel about it all. I mean… good for him? Shut the hell up? Good for her? Oh, come on,,, you must be faking that. Should I be disgusted or jealous? I don’t even know where I am in this jungle of sex noise anymore.
A couple years ago I had a roommate who blew everyone else away. I had to sit up in amazement. The volume of screams emanating from my usually taciturn roommate’s bedroom was astounding! It was shocking and rude for her to be so loud in our close quarters, but I had to give her some kind of grudging respect for her lung power. If I hadn’t known they were having sex, I would have honestly thought he was killing her. I was new to the urban jungle of noise at the time and never got up the nerve to talk to her about it. She must have known people could hear her and seemed to have no sense of embarrassment. I, on the other hand…
When I met our upstairs neighbors for the first time on the stairs, they asked me where I lived. When I told them, the woman gave me a huge smile and then said something in Spanish to her boyfriend/husband. They both smiled at me knowingly. I continued walking up the stairs with a new puzzled tilt to my head. It only took me a few days to realize, Hey! Wait a minute! They think I am the incredibly loud sex screamer! Don’t smile at me knowingly thinking I’m the incredibly loud sex screamer! There might be a stomp, stomp of frustration coming from my room, but there’s no thump, thump of satisfaction. In contrast to apparently EVERYONE within ear shot, I am the one not having sex.
It sounds like an unpleasant living circumstance - when the opportunity arises to leave this urban jungle, I’d certainly recommend moving on.
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The perfect man may never come along - but there might be someone pretty good who is already there. You don’t have to be a bitter spinster - you have options. Maybe you have been saying “no” for so long, you don’t know how to say “yes”. Try it. Yes, please!
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OMG! This is the most beautifully written entry I’ve read for MONTHS! Thank you so much for sharing this.
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:D Thanks, Laura!! This was fun to write. (Not as much fun to research ;)
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