GC reads the Riot Act

I live in a row house. The woman who owns the next house in the row is an investment advisor. She rents the place out to one group of kids after another, each of which generally moves out within a year to make way for yet another group. It’s an endless succession of hot-headed young drunks and thumping bass lines.

One thing they all seem to have in common is they can’t remember garbage day is Thursday. Instead of throwing out a bag of garbage every Thursday, they throw out nothing for weeks, and then they throw out a mountain of garbage on a random day.

But that’s another blog post. This one’s about the all-night parties.

GC and I are often sound asleep before the party even begins, and we’re pretty good at sleeping through them. Sure, we’ll wake up and drift in and out of sleep and our dreams will be full of parties and bad music, and occasionally we’ll wake all the way up and curse the young people and the investment advisor who rents to them. But generally we’re okay unless the party turns ugly and people start tumbling out onto the street and screaming obscenities, which hasn’t happened yet with this current group.

What HAS happened with this group is that instead of partying in their living room like normal people, they party in the master bedroom. Right on the other side of my bedroom wall. Mere inches away from our heads. With their pounding bass lines and raucous laughter, they party late into the night and through the wee hours, and are sometimes still going strong when I get up for work.

I am impressed by their stamina. They party four, five, six nights a week. Even at my peak, I couldn’t have maintained that pace for more than a week or two.

I tell myself that this is penance for my own youthful partying that kept my weary old neighbours from peaceful sleep. It’s just the cycle of life, repeating itself. Karma is not necessarily swift or severe, or even certain, but I expect these young neighbours of mine will get their just desserts in about 30 years or so, once they’re firmly ensconced in a world of mortgages, alarm clocks and chronic fatigue.

One night last week GC and I were both awakened by the neighbours arriving home at closing time, followed by the music blasting through the bedroom wall. (Speaking of which, why is it that those with the worst taste in music have such a penchant for volume?)

“Turn on the radio,” I suggested.

“Good idea,” said GC. “We’ll counter-blast them with CBC.”

Ha ha.

Saturday night GC had finally had enough. At 2:45 he put on his clothes and marched out the door.

Now, if you know GC at all, you know he is a gentleman and a really nice guy. It is not in his nature to confront anybody and complain about their behaviour. So he must have been pretty pissed off to do this.

He hammered on their door and leaned on their doorbell, but of course they couldn’t hear him over their music. Finally, in a little space between songs, they heard him and one of them ran downstairs to see who in the world might be pounding on their door at such an ungodly hour.

GC came back five minutes later, saying “His name’s Tyler, and he’s a nice kid. He apologized and said he didn’t know he was disturbing us and he won’t do it anymore. We shook hands.”

And everything was blissfully quiet. So quiet, in fact, GC had to turn on the radio and do a crossword puzzle in order to fall back asleep.