The joys of apartment living.

As many of you know, I lived in an apartment for three years while at USC. But it was owned by the university, so all my neighbors were fellow USC students. So it was a pretty homogeneous group, you know, in terms of age and education level and shared experience, etc. Obviously there was racial diversity, since USC has a very diverse campus. Anyway, the point is you knew what to expect from fellow college students. Chances are nothing too crazy was gonna happen. I mean, you didn't expect things that were much more extreme than someone dropping a computer monitor off a third floor balcony (as my roommate did freshman year), or setting up a fog machine in the apartment and filling an entire wing of the building with dense fog (as a different roommate did junior year), or simply getting hammered and wandering around asking people to punch him in the face (as I did senior year, shortly after reading Fight Club).

When you live in a regular apartment building, with people who might be 20 or 30 years older than you, or who have completely different backgrounds and life experience, you're more apt to run into surprising things. Which brings me to the story of last night.

For the record, I have no idea who the woman in this story is, which apartment she lives in, or what she looks like. I keep to myself, don't interact with my neighbors much, and it seems like pretty much everybody in the building takes that approach.

Last night I went to bed between midnight and 12:30, same as I usually do, but I set my alarm for earlier in the morning. I wanted some time to read the paper and do some work before going to class, so I decided to get up at 5 (that's not as painfully early to me as it probably sounds to you; I'm accustomed to getting up at 6 or a bit earlier). So I knew I was going to be in for a long day, running on less than 5 hours of sleep. I sprawled out on the futon and probably nodded off around 12:30.

At about 1:20 a.m. I wake up. At first I'm not sure why. Then I hear a woman (about my age, judging by the sound of her voice, but that can be deceiving) start screaming. She sounded very angry, and what she was saying didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. I apologize, but I can't remember what it was that she was yelling. Keep in mind it was late at night and I had just woken from a fairly deep sleep. At first I assumed two or more people were involved in an argument, but as I listened I realized there was only one voice. This crazy lady was yelling to nobody in particular. But she was really pissed. To give you an idea of the content of her diatribe, I kept hearing references to a child (hers or someone else's I'm not sure), and she yelled "Fuck you!" repeatedly-- even though I'm pretty sure there was no one there. I think it was like when my dog used to go outside and bark at the moon. Or the bats. Or the parked cars. Or whatever the hell it is that prompts dogs to bark when they're outside at night.

Later on, the content of her ranting changed. She started screaming about Barack Obama at some point, although I could not discern if she was pro-Barack or anti-Barack. Around the same time, she used the phrase "back alley abortion" repeatedly, but I'm not sure if that was related to Senator Obama or not. For the record, Senator Obama supports a woman's right to choose.

It is interesting to note that the woman was not passive or sedentary during this period of screaming. It's not like she was sitting in her apartment and yelling out the window, or standing in the hallway. Sometimes I heard her running up and down the hall, and I heard doors slam. I'm not sure, but I think she would run outside the building, scream some stuff, run back inside, scream some more stuff, and repeat.

Oh, another phrase she used a lot-- "Go ahead! Call the police! Fuck you!"

I probably should have taken this advice. But I felt like I shouldn't just call the cops without trying to resolve the situation myself. After all, the Syracuse PD has enough to keep it busy. There is a surprising amount of violent crime in this town, considering the fairly low population.

So I considered going out into the hall and talking to the woman. But the more I thought about it, the more this seemed like a bad idea. I mean, she was clearly out of her fucking mind, and what if I walk out there and she's got a gun? I didn't think that was likely, but I wasn't ruling it out. Plus, here's what I actually thought would happen-- this chick was screaming at the top of her lungs to no audience whatsoever. And she kept requesting that whoever might be listening call the police. I really think she just wanted some attention, she probably wanted somebody to listen to her problems. And she was completely psychotic. I know from experience that, for some reason, crazy people like to talk to me about their problems. I think they somehow get the impression that I'm sympathetic, when in reality I'm thinking about the quickest possible way to escape from this situation.

So I was afraid that if I went out there and confronted her and asked her to keep it down, I would wind up listening to her sob story for the rest of the night. So I opted to ignore her and do my best to go to sleep. Unfortunately, this lady was not one to give up quickly, and she had one mighty set of vocal cords on her. There was no way to go to sleep with that shrieking going on. So I didn't get to sleep until she finally tired herself out around 4 a.m. When my alarm went off at 5, I felt like the running of the bulls was going on inside my skull. It's now almost 6 p.m., I haven't taken a nap at all (I almost never nap, it throws off my entire day and makes me very confused), and I feel surprisingly good. But that's probably because of the massive amounts of caffeine in my system. I don't have class until late afternoon tomorrow, so I am looking forward to sleeping in late. Just gonna put the cell phone on silent and have myself a rest. And if that lady starts screaming again, no hesitation tonight-- this is a job for the police department.