Hearing Ecstasy

These kids – I mean kids – 17 or 18 are renting the condo next door for a week. I have a window that looks onto their veranda. It is one drama after the next, people constantly raising their voices in distress and angst, usually about other people – not politics, religion or current events – broadcasting into the neighborhood.

Yesterday, I happened to pass them and said HI in my normal speaking voice. No response. Not even a glance toward me. Total insularity in the teen world, or perhaps their ears only hear yelling and loud music. After I passed, I said BYE.

A typical exchange, verbatim of one I heard:

“I invited ‘so-and-so.’”

“Oh, no!”

“You love him.”

“I don’t like him at all.”

The first night they were there the two words I most clearly made out were: “fucking” and “faggot.”

Is it not obvious from these snatches of conversation that they are mixed sex?

The dudes are usually shirtless, but not muscled by any means. Padded with baby fat, they could pass for 15 or 16. One has a guitar.

A girl was walking around in the front yard talking on her cell phone and I heard one word very clearly: “Ecstasy!” It traveled all the way into my ear, which was in my room at the back of the building.

There is a cop in the unit on the other side of me. I go outside. The girl is wandering in the yard with her phone and a highball, saying she is only on her third drink. It’s five in the afternoon. I say HI to the two shirtless dudes, one strumming the guitar. I start trying to talk to them and the guy won’t stop playing. He is looking at me and playing. I say, “I heard ECSTASY…” “Oh, no, nobody said nothing about ecstasy.” “I know what I heard.” “What? Nobody said nothing.” “Well, there is a cop in that unit right there so just keep it down.” They were still denying it, but the girl overhearing us recognized I was trying to be helpful and told me THANK YOU.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday updates are posted to Amy George’s other blog Ask the Dream Queen, for which she interprets reader-submitted dreams.