Everyone moves out, eventually
Fake Pornhub ads, real election results
One of the prevailing characters starring in my lockdown 1.0 chronicles was my downstairs neighbour. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to read the earlier tales, and get a flavour of his personality through my recounting of how he banged on the walls every time we made any form of noise after 7pm, this is all you need to know: my downstairs neighbour was a pain in the ass.
It feels like God has dealt me various hands of neighbour cards throughout the numerous apartments I’ve rented across cities in my lifetime. The old man who could hear our 5th-floor house party from his 2nd-floor apartment, though he lived in a completely different section of the building, which needed about seven minutes to get to (which I did once, dressed as a Spice Girl, but that’s another story). The frigid London girls who could hear our washing machine, music, and television 24/7, even if none of us were in the house and doing any of the above activities, surely the result of bionic ears and anal probing. And, like an oasis, the angelic downstairs neighbour of our last apartment in London, who knocked on our door 6 hours into our leaving party, and almost apologetically said, “The music is fine, but please try not to jump up and down so much.” He probably celebrated when we left, and in all fairness, he was probably right.
The Milan downstairs neighbour lingered in our lives like a ghost. We could feel his presence around us every time a glass accidentally clanked against a plate after the sun had set, or whenever we decided to play some music in our living room, fearfully turning down the volume track after track, eventually the audio being louder in our headphones than on our speakers. At least we feel privileged to have been the only living room DJs in the world that had a physical audience during the lockdown.
I am now delighted to share with you that the downstairs neighbour has moved out. I’m not sure where he went, or what he’s doing right now, but who cares. Though his departure did mean some early morning housework by the new neighbours, because karma is a bitch and we are its snack; he left! Lockdown 2.0 is already looking a whole lot better than its spring counterpart. And, given the recent US election results, it looks like he’s not the only one who’s moving out this year.
Maybe 2020 is redeeming itself after all.
All the cross-continent/State election reportages painfully remind me of all the daily Zoom calls I’m having. Awkward pauses (maybe this is the new etiquette: leave an excruciating fifteen-second pause before responding, to ensure you’re not talking over one another), loads of looking at slides and trying to make everything as interactive and meaningful as possible (interactive engagement!), very bad explanations of numbers (“DATA SCIENTISTS!!”, “CALCULATIONS!!!!”), and the odd Pornhub ad (which was, unfortunately, a fake).
Earlier tonight, somewhere in the distance, fireworks were crackling in the sky of Milan. Maybe they heard, perhaps a tad late (roughly three hours after it was announced), that Biden had won the election. Or, more likely, given this is still Italy, it was someone’s low-profile birthday party.
And, for those of you who were wondering, Kanye West did run for president. It could have been funny back in 2018 but, thankfully, it looks like the world has a better sense of humour this time around.