Can't Stop the Beat

I was ever so excited when the people living in the 2nd floor apartment just below me moved out a couple weeks ago. They were, at least from my perspective as their neighbor, rather bastards. They left empty beer bottles and stubbed out cigarettes on the shared porch all the time. Even better, they repurposed an empty wine bottle as their cigarette repository, turning it into a stinking miasma of used-up nicotine and stale, festering rainwater.

What bothered me more than this infestation of the porch, though, was their habit of playing music at all hours of the day and night. I don't know what kind of music they were playing, but I do know that it always had a very repetitive, very insistent bass beat. How do I know this? Because I could hear the bass through the floor. At all hours of the day and night. Particularly when I was trying to sleep.

I was excited when they moved out. The people that moved in seem nice, more easy-going and more likely to be friendly, respectful neighbors. They put a hammock on the porch instead of beer bottles. One of them admired my vegetable garden.

But now it's after midnight, I'm trying to get to sleep and all I can hear, all I can think is this pounding bass line reverberating up through the floor and disturbing all the quietest corners of my mind. And I'm roiling with (mostly) irrational hate, hate, hate for these new bastards that have no sense of decency or neighborliness or my need to get a decent night's sleep.