I lived in an extended living hotel for more than a year after I moved to Charlotte.
I landed a job before I had an apartment or furniture, so my plan was to reside at the hotel until I saved enough money to rent an apartment, buy a bed, and buy a green leather sofa like the one the television character ‘Martin’ had in his apartment.
I was a single, young professional so I would occasionally have female company over.
The women would have different reactions to my living in a hotel. Some liked it, some grew to like it, and one girl asked why was I “homeless.”
Another young lady visited a few times until she was comfortable enough to sit on the bed and watch television. But that’s all we did—watch television.
She was quiet and laid back, and she reserved all matters of intimacy to a hug at the door when she arrived.
One night, she and I were sitting on the bed watching television (as usual) and we heard yelling through the wall from the room next door.
My neighbors at the time was a cantankerous couple that would scream and yell at each other at least two or three times a week.
They would curse, hurl insults, and threaten to put each other out until they resolved their differences by “making up.”
Their makeup sessions were often as loud and as passionate as their shouting matches, and the hotel walls weren’t thick enough to contain their “enthusiasm.”
The couple’s shouting grew louder as the young lady and I watched television. “Are they always so loud?” she said.
“No, not always,” I said.
“It’s kind of rude.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume on the television.
The sound drowned out most of the shouting as we watched our program until the couple’s tirades grew quieter, and then stopped.
“About time,” said the young lady. “Geesh.”
We finished watching our program and as the following show started, I heard moaning through the wall. The young lady heard it too. “What’s that?” she said.
“What does it sound like?” I said.
“It sounds like they’re–”
“Yep.”
“Oh my god,” she said, with her hand covering her mouth. “That’s nasty.”
“Eh, you get used to it,” I said.
The moaning stopped for a moment and then I heard “Thump … thump … thump … thump,” and I felt the vibration through the wall. The beds in the adjacent rooms were back-to-back.
The young lady’s eyes stretched wide. “Oh my god, they’re doing it.”
“Yeah, what did you think they were doing?”
“But you can hear it,” she said.
“Yeah, because they’re—“
“Shhhh … listen.”
“I don’t need to listen,” I said. “I hear it all the time.”
She looked at me and whispered, “Turn off the TV.”
“Turn it off for what?” I said.
“Just do it … please.”
I shook my head and turned off the television. The room went dark except for the glowing red digits on my alarm clock and the green digits on the microwave across the room.
The commotion next door grew louder “THUMP … THUMP …THUMP … THUMP!”
The couple would sometimes continue to argue and chastise each other while they “made up”–and they were in full form.
The woman kept telling the man to “hurt it … hurt it,” and he declared that he was “trying to hurt it,” but he couldn’t because her “stuff didn’t have a bottom.” (Whatever that meant.)
They shouted expletives and degrading epithets, and a few religious incantations (laced with expletives and degrading epithets), until the ‘thumping’ rose to a crescendo and then stopped.
The young lady looked toward me in the dark. “Are they done?”
“I don’t know; I guess,” I said, amused by her amusement.
“That was crazy,” she said, leaning her head against the headboard. “I never heard that before.”
“Never heard what?” I said.
“People do that—I mean, other people.”
“Well, you have now,” I said.
With the “excitement” over, I reached for the remote in the dark to turn on the television. The young lady placed her hand on mine, “Wait,” she said.
After weeks of doing nothing but sitting on the bed and watching television, eavesdropping on a couple’s expletive-laden “romp session” got her going.
Lesson learned: Women are “creeps” too … on the low.
