Recently, something terrible happened – something that made me so sad that I started reevaluating the very purpose of my life. Something that changed the value of my home, my stuff, and my will to live. Never has anything tested my patience to this extent. Never has anything made me seriously consider quitting writing to become a deep-sea tube worm instead.
I am of course talking about my girlfriend’s decision to learn how to play the guitar. She sends waves of terror through the apartment that make Event Horizon seem like an introduction to space for toddlers. As if trying to ignore the neighbors was not hard enough already. I hate when they drill at six in the morning (the non-construction kind of drilling), when they listen to terrible music without inviting me, and when their children bang their heads against the wall (again, without inviting me).
No, the neighbors are not the worst part of living in the city. Now I have an enemy within. An enemy with a weapon fabricated by an evil Japanese syndicate. A weapon with poisonous metal strings and a cavernous core that captures vibrations and transmutes them into wails from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” She just sits there, pointing at me with the guitar like Donald Sutherland pointing at Veronica Cartwright. And this is before she even opens her mouth. To sing, or what scientists call “an uncomfortable noise activation of the amygdala, making the listener experience an emotion of disorder”.
I love her, which is why I haven’t thrown her guitar off the balcony yet. Instead, I decided to look for modern remedies to save our relationship. Initially, I considered morphine — an obvious choice for any decent writer. Following a visit to some tattooed men who seemed to enjoy roughing me up, I realized that acquiring morphine was quite challenging and a bit costly. Bargaining is not advisable.
Afterward, I tried holding a cushion to my head and squeezing the air out of my body and then it dawned on me: I needed a synthesis of my ideas.
- A cushion
- Earplugs
- Earmuffs
- Drugs
- A surgical removal of my eardrums
- And naturally, the Nyan Cat blasting from the speakers
If you find yourself in a similar predicament, I’m happy to tell you that this solution indeed works. With the volume up, I can’t even hear what my girlfriend says when she’s standing next to me shouting. Similar to what she’s doing now, while I’m writing this.
I love you too, honey. There’s no need to express it with such an angry look.
