And now, a very carefully constructed poem...

Ode to our Upstairs Neighbors

You play beginner sax all night- notes loud and long and flat.
Your screaming sexcapades wake Mike, Me, Andrew and the cat.
Sure, I'm a fan of sex and art, but this really is abuse.
There must be some way to silence you and your partner/Muse.

Other, more violent lines considered for the ending:
And if you do not cut it out, we'll shoot your partner/Muse.
Keep it up- we may snap and kill you and partner/Muse.

You can be as loud as the hell you want (if you live in a soundproof room)

You know what I'm very tired of?

My upstairs neighbors and their crazy sex life.

I'm not anti-sex or anything (even when other people are having it and I'm not). But these two are LOUD. Especially the girl. She's a screamer.

Even this could conceivably be acceptable. Have happy, loud sex. Whatever. Except they're being loud while I am trying to sleep. Very often they have loud sex in the morning. I sleep later than the average person, being a lazy student and all, so I stick the pillow over my head and try to be forgiving and go back to sleep.

Last night, they had loud sex at 2AM. They woke me up. I'm sick. I wake myself up coughing all the time. I don't need to be woken up by screams of "Oh my god! Oh my god!"

AND they'd just had a really loud quickie at seven that evening, while I was lying on my bed reading Victorian literature. So it wasn't like they were ending a drought or anything.

I don't know what to do about this situation. Is there a solution? I considered banging on the ceiling with a broom, but I don't know how effective that would be. Could they hear me over the screams and moans? Also thought about writing a note and sliding it under the door:

Dear Neighbors,
Please stop having loud sex while I am asleep.
Thank you.

It's funny. It's a funny story. For the rest of my life, I'll be able to laugh about it over drinks: "Remember when I lived in that apartment in Queens with the really loud sexcapades upstairs?"

But it's NOT funny at 2 in the morning.

Things I think about when I should be reading late 18th century epistolary novels...

Joey Lucas is a deaf character on The West Wing (was, I suppose, is the proper terminology). She is (was) therefore, mostly voiced by a man named Kenny (the actor Bill O' Brien- thanks imbd!).

I know a man is speaking. Somtimes I even see him speaking. But mostly, I see Joey Lucas with this man's voice coming out of her. And because of this audio/visual oxymoron, I cannot think of the voice as a man's voice. To me, it sounds like a truly feminine voice.

Kind of like Tracy Chapman (shudder), but not really.