The Ghosts of Lonely People

Last night I couldn’t sleep, laying awake listening to the rock music of the new roommate of my neighbor. He is occupying the room on the other side of my bedroom wall, and he likes to stay up late, till 3 or 4 in the morning. He moved in on Monday after midnight. I was already in bed, had gone to sleep early, at around 10pm. At midnight, noises of furniture being moved around woke me up. Furniture being dragged on the wooden floor. I went back to sleep, but at 3am, I woke up again. The noises continued: somebody walking, speaking, loud music. It sounded like he was putting stuff away now. So I knocked on the wall three times, with all my fury. Then voices, he talking to Omaira, maybe. He turned the music down, but still, I could hear it. I laid awake in bed until 5 in the morning, when finally he went to sleep, I guess.

And last night, I laid awake again, with the rock music and the sounds of his steps resonating through my wall. And while awake, I remembered my first year in Paris, when I was living in the chambre de bonne, or the room that used to be for the servants on the last floor of the aristocratic French buildings. There too I had a noisy neighbor, but he wasn’t that bad. It was a guy alone. While I was in my tiny room, I could here a TV, very loud, rumbling next door. I had only one neighbor, I was in the last room of the row. So one night I went out and knocked at his door. He opened, a small guy, with dark hair and light skin. He looked around 50 years old, and the expression on his face was one of extreme sadness, or maybe he was just tired. I asked him politely if he could put the volume down. He said yes. But I could still hear it, all night. I guess he slept with the TV on. And while I was listening to the crap he was watching, I was thinking: he must be very lonely this guy. He watches TV to survive his loneliness. He is probably a foreigner, I think I remember an accent, maybe Portuguese, and has no friends, no woman. Some times I heard his voice, or maybe I should describe it as sounds coming from his mouth, and so I imagined that the guy was masturbating and coming with a repressed sigh of pleasure. I imagined him alone in his room, watching some porn and masturbating, masturbating with desperation, masturbating and crying, masturbating and flagellating himself. I imagined all kind of horrible things, as I laid there in my bed, awake. His loneliness was my loneliness. I felt sorry for him, he was not young, alone in a foreign city, and the few times I met him he seemed to be kind of depressed.

I heard his TV for a while, and then one day, it was gone. Then the silence enveloped me and I missed him. I wondered, where he might have gone? Did he go back to Portugal? Did he find another place? Did he find a girlfriend and moved in with her?

Lonely people scared me. I could see my sad self becoming one of them. Sad and lonely people were a mirror for me, a mirror that I tried to avoid at all cost. But you can’t run away from your ghosts. They run away with you, and they always catch up.

That’s why this morning, at 8:30am, I decided to move my furniture, to find a better place away from my new neighbor’s wall. So I put some very loud music on and enjoyed the happy noises my bed, night table and bookshelf created, screeching while I hauled them.  Maybe my lonely ghosts will leave me in peace tonight.

My chambre de bonne, Paris, 7eme