Page 2 of Up All Night
“What do you think about your neighbor?”
I lifted my head off the couch while some Japanese news report played on the TV. For the past few days the news had not let up on this huge marijuana bust that went down somewhere. As an Oregonian, I often forgot that there were places in the world where smoking pot was a huge deal. I’m used to smelling it wherever I go. (In Japan, you smell regular ol’ tobacco wherever you go. Fuck it.)
The woman talking to me was a Turkish resident who had been friendly since the first day I moved in. I couldn’t tell you her name like I couldn’t tell you the name of my irritating neighbor. When you’re only staying for a month, it’s difficult to remember the unfamiliar names of people you’re only going to see once or twice in your life.
“I hate him.” I almost knocked my lunch plate off my lap. “I haven’t slept in three fucking days because of him.”
“Oh myGod,me too!” She spun around from the gas stove lighting up in the corner of the kitchen. The November cold had fogged up the window, and yet for some reason the damn thing was open wide and letting in every freezing breeze. “Do you hear it every night?”
“Yes! They have so much sex I can’t sleep!”
“Same!” She rushed over to me. “I thought maybe I was making things up at first. But, you know, it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Before you moved here, it happened sometimes. Recently it’s been the worse ever.”
“Do you hear them set the alarm so they can have sex every two hours?”
“Oh my God! So you hear it too?”
“Do you ever actually see his girlfriend? I don’t hear her get up to use the bathroom afterward.” I’m no kidding, folks. Not once, in the midst of all this fucking, did she use the bathroom. The UTI was going to be unreal, and cranberry juice is impossible to find in Japan.
“I saw her one time. She ran back into his room so fast I barely realized it was her.”
“Oh, good, I was starting to wonder if she actually existed.”
“Yeah, she’s Japanese.”
The only reason that was surprising – we were in Japan, after all – was because he had spoken so much damn French while fucking her that I assumed it was a Frenchwoman on the other end of his relentless dick.
“Have you said anything to him?” I asked.
My new friend scoffed. “Are you kidding? I try to say something like I am trying to sleep… but they keep going. Bang, bang, bang.”
“Right? It’s the bed that kills you.”
“The stupid bed always hitting the… oh my God, you have it worse! I know the layout of his room, and his bed is right up against your wall. You poor thing.”
Poor thing was right. Woe was me. The girl who couldn’t escape that fucking bullshit.
“Know what I wanna do?” I hauled my ass to the sink and rinsed off my plate. “I wanna find some jerk to bring in there and give that guy a taste of his own medicine.”
“Hell yes! I haven’t been in a relationship in a long time, so I can’t really have fantasies about that… but if you can, bring your boyfriend over and fuck him really loud. We’ll all ignore it for a night if it means that asshole knows what it’s like to lose sleep over someone’s sex life.”
“Too bad I don’t have one. A boyfriend, that is.”
She crossed her arms. “You could get one. Men are easy in Tokyo.”
Yeah, I’d heard that before.
