I realized I don’t write much anymore, nor do I do a very good job of preserving anything in my day-to-day. So you, 18 dear Tumblr followers, are occasionally going to be treated to lengthy, unedited, self-indulgent blog posts when I feel so inclined. Consider yourself warned, and unfollow if necessary.

I’ve never been terribly good at sleeping, particularly when it’s warm. As a consequence, I leave my bedroom window open year around, compensating for the sometimes freezing cold with a thoroughly ridiculous number of pillows and comforters. Sometimes I even need a fan trained on this mass of sheets to make it cool enough to drift off.

It’s a bizarre system, sure, and one that’s exposed me to the lives of two of my neighbors. As a preface, I really don’t talk to anyone in my building. Though I know 6B houses an Asian man, I doubt I’d be able to pick him out in a lineup. The only two other folks I know by appearance is an older woman who occasionally asks why I’m not wearing a jacket (again, I hate being warm) and a younger woman who chainsmokes outside the building while telling people on her cell phone about her latest therapy sessions. (She’s handy for letting me in at odd hours after I forget my keys.) But the two people I feel I know best of all are Crying Man and Moaning Woman, both of whom I’ve never seen but make themselves known quite well through my open window.

Crying Man must live a life of unspeakable tragedy. Every morning around 9 a.m. he begins sobbing, often at a level to wake me up several floors up. At about 11 a.m., the sobbing tapers off, replaced by cursing. Same thing every day - “FUCK!” as he throws something (it sounds like a cardboard box) against the wall or the floor. This carries on for an hour or so until he quiets down, usually resuming his sobbing in the afternoon. Sobbing Man apparently goes to bed early - I seldom hear him late at night.

This is clearly a dude with some serious issues, a consideration that keeps me from yelling out the window at him to shut the hell up. But despite denoting his grief each day, I realize I have no idea what’s actually making him sad. In fact, when I think about it, I realize my mental image of him is a man that’s just so frustrated by moving in that he just becomes paralyzed by his sadness. He’s sitting, surrounded by boxes in his apartment, unsure where to begin and crying at the futility of it all. He’ll stop eventually, throw a few around, scream some obscenities, cry some more and fall asleep by 6 p.m., only to resume this process with a Sisyphean resolve the next day.

This is a patently absurd explanation - I realize this. But even though I’ve listened to him for months, it’s the best one I can tease out.

Moaning Woman I have told to shut the hell up, but it hasn’t deterred her. Though she’s less regular about it, Moaning Woman enjoys to have loud, obnoxious sex apparently directly into an open window at around 12:30 in the morning. It’s so loud that it’s awkward to listen to, particularly when the slapping (there’s a lot of slapping) sets in. I usually put on headphones to drown her out, but again, I have questions. Is it the same partner every night or is she out trawling the bars, picking up different dudes each time? And why do I assume it’s the woman’s apartment? Maybe Moaning Woman is moaning women, lured back to some guy’s apartment with a pickup line about a view out his window. (Though trust me, it’s unspectacular.)

I wonder what Crying Man thinks of Moaning Woman. He’s had to of heard her at some point — as far as I can tell, their windows are at about the same floor. Does it make him sadder to hear a woman so, uh, plainly happy? Does it make his situation seem that much more bleak?

But perhaps most of all, I’m curious why Crying Man and Moaning Woman have their windows open at all. Does he want someone to inquire why he’s sad? Does she get off to the fact that her neighbors have no choice but to listen in? Why are they letting the rest of us in on these intensely personal parts of their life? Maybe it’s as simple as they, like me, are just bad at sleeping in a warm apartment.