What I heard through a firedoor

The girl in the next entryway has a new boyfriend, and
his name is God. How do you know this? You live
through the fire door from her. You've heard her phone conversations, her dirty secrets...and her dirty deeds.

Shocking, you think. Yalies don't do anything dirty, unless you count straying from the walkways on Old Campus after a rainy day.

The truth, however, is more sordid, and all of us know it. Because if you live on Old Campus or in any of the ten "pretty colleges," then your room probably has a fire door. You may not know who lives on the other side (a girl, a guy, a bathroom, a dean's office), but you know everything about them.

Fire doors work both ways, though, and your next door neighbors probably know a good deal about you, too. Perhaps you aren't conscious of this, think you're being quiet enough. But some of the following narratives may convince you otherwise. I can vouch for the half-truth of these stories, but I'll never reveal the real names behind the voices:

"I once heard laughter and the sound of rustling sheets on the other side of the fire door. I was doing my best not to listen, but then all of a sudden the girl said, `My name is Tina.'"

"This couple made barnyard animal noises every night. Frogs, chickens, you name it. It was part of their foreplay."

"One evening, there were amorous noises coming through the fire door. The sounds stopped abruptly, and the girl asked, `Wait, what's the matter?' The guy said, `I'm bored.' and then gave some stage directions: `A little to the left. A little to the right. Now up...' Then there were some more amorous noises, and the girl said, `Wait, where are you going?' And the guy just answered, `I have to get home. I have some reading I have to do.' Then we heard the door close."

"My girlfriend and I were pretty loud, I guess. The guy through the fire door used to complain a lot, sometimes while we were in the act. Eventually he got so fed up that he lit a few cigars in his room and tried to smoke the two of us out. I got the point."

"I was trying to sleep one night, and the guy through the fire door was having sex with some girl. When they finished, she cooed, `That was wonderful.' He said angrily, `You're lying!' She said, `No, I lie to other guys...I don't
lie to you...' My roommate and I just felt like shouting, `She's lying!'"

"I broke up with my girlfriend halfway through spring semester. The problem was that she lived through the fire door, and she was the vengeful type. In a very loud sort of way. Suffice it to say, the rest of the year was hell."

"Once there was a group of girls and a few guys in the room through my fire door, and one girl shouted, `I found my birth control!' Everyone in the room started to cheer; I decided it was time to go out for a pizza."

"There's some Christian group that meets in the room through my fire door. Usually they just play guitars and sing, but one day I didn't hear anything except this slow, slapping sound and people giggling."

The other problem with fire doors is that many of them have alarms. This inevitably results in some inebriated stranger crashing through your fire door after gracing your toilet with the contents of his stomach. The response time of the police in deactivating the tripped alarms is ridiculously long, and at four in the morning, when you're trying to sleep, a blaring fire alarm is quite an inconvenience.

Then there are the fire doors that do not have an alarm, which leads to the "Cosmo Kramer syndrome." Of course, the annoying neighbor who barges in and eats all your food isn't nearly as amusing as Jerry Seinfeld's good buddy.

My point? They should brick up or soundproof those damn doorways, potential fire hazard or no. Maybe fire doors are yet another justification for off-campus living. Still, that's not possible for everyone. All I can do is put out a warning.

We know you hock something huge in the mornings. We know you snore. We know you sing along with Barry Manilow. We know you can't hold your liquor. We know who you've "known." We know the noises you make. We know you're impotent thirty percent of the time. We know all this because we live through the fire door. And if you can't learn to be quieter, then don't be surprised if, sooner or later, everyone else in your college knows too.

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