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A couple of months ago I wrote a piece on a weird plumbing problem in my house—one of those things that almost makes you think this inanimate object, a chunk of steel and plastic, has some personality. It’s always pleasantly, slightly spooky, tracking down something that feels like behavior and locating it in some failed or defective part.

I was thinking about this when I came across an interesting Substack post from a young woman living in New York City, who recounts a strange couple of incidents with her downstairs neighbor.

He apparently hears very loud and frequent noises coming from her unit, while she is absolutely certain that she isn’t making any such noises. A suspicious-sounding—maybe—note is involved. Her essay is about understanding that people’s perceptions are subjective, that unless this fellow is pranking her he is, or is sure he is, actually hearing the noises. Who sees reality for what it is? Is there such a thing? Do things like culture, health, and age predetermine how we perceive the world to such an extent that we cannot actually see the same thing when we look at the same thing?

But my first thought was, have you looked closely at the faucets?

I’m thinking about one of the old single-handle faucets in my parents’ house—the sink version of the shower faucet I worked on, a Moen with a round knob you pull out and then rotate for temperature. On that faucet only, if you slam it shut, you can hear a loud metal clang coming from somewhere in the pipe system. It doesn’t do it all the time, and it doesn’t do it if you shut off the water slowly and gently. (I suppose I know this noise occurs because I don’t tend to shut off the water slowly and gently.)

This isn’t one of those spooky is-my-faucet-alive things, though it feels like it. It’s called “water hammering,” and it’s a pretty frequent and well known plumbing issue, caused by the abrupt closure of a water outlet. This plumbing firm gives the example of a “loud BANG inside your wall” when “the washing machine stops filling.” Just like the problem I recounted in that recent plumbing piece, it’s not a faucet alone that can cause this. Or rather, what we call a “faucet” is indistinguishable, as far as the water and pipe system is concerned, from other sorts of valves.

Is it possible the young woman in New York has a faucet that’s water hammering somewhere near, inside, her neighbor’s wall, and because of some quirk of the building, she doesn’t hear it but he does?

In our old condo, we had a neighbor who would yell, with profanity sometimes sprinkled in, “Shut up!” when we closed a toilet seat, drawer, or medicine cabinet. Somehow, that everyday noise transmitted to their unit and was loud enough to annoy them. I’m certain this wasn’t a series of coincidences, because once I closed a drawer twice in a row and earned two cries of “Shut up!”

This also reminds me of one time I got a note from the downstairs neighbor, back when I lived in an apartment building in grad school. The note was friendly but firm; it said that I was often making some loud noise that came through her ceiling—like a giant bouncing rubber ball—and that if I didn’t stop bouncing giant rubber balls around or whatever I was doing, she was going to file a noise complaint with the office.

I was completely at a loss as to what she could possibly be hearing. I never bounced or threw anything on the floor, rarely had people over, never Tarzaned off the bed like I did as a kid (or roughhoused until the chandelier above the dining table shook). It didn’t occur to me that she could be imagining it, so I concluded it must be noise coming from another unit, and that she was merely mistaken as to the direction of it. All I could think was, I really hope she doesn’t slide in another note or make that complaint against my unit, since it’s not my noise. But there was nothing I could really do. (Actually knocking on her door and trying to explain didn’t even occur to me, which is interesting, I suppose.)

A few days later, I was talking to a friend on the phone fairly late at night. He was at another school, we were college friends, and we’d just call and talk funny nonsense for hours. I was laughing at one of those bits of nonsense and I hit the edge of my bedframe—a cheap steel and spring platform setup. I guess I hit it fairly hard. It shook the frame, made a sort of bouncy sound as the force went through the springs and—I suddenly realized—went through the ceiling and into my downstairs neighbor’s unit. It sounded just like throwing a rubber ball very hard on the ground.

It kind of amazed me, because the sound was spot on, and yet her description of it threw me off. I was stuck on bouncing/dropping/throwing, and that narrowed my ability to imagine what other sorts of sounds might imitate that. Her note, which was utterly mystifying to me, was an exactly correct description of what she was hearing.

That phenomenon of very different words or formulations actually capturing the same meaning—the difficulty of even determining if we disagree substantively or are just using different words—is something I think about a lot. It’s what ecumenism and diplomacy are about. But it’s also what human relationships are about.

Every once in a while a thread on Reddit pops up about some odd issue someone is having: typically seeking legal or security advice for recurring home break-ins and/or thefts. This is the most famous one. It turns out, at least in the thread linked there, that the person seeking the advice is suffering from hallucinations due to an undetected carbon monoxide leak.

Here’s a fascinating thread about the phenomenon of “haunted houses” frequently having carbon monoxide leaks or other chemical contamination that can result in feelings of unease, paranoia, or being watched. What you begin to understand is that some chemicals are capable of hijacking the operating system of our brains. The idea that an odorless gas can make you feel like you’re being watched is the strangest thing ever.

It makes me think of two things: one, the weirdness of hallucination or mental illness being almost indistinguishable from conspiracy theory, and of a media environment that monetizes insanity or what looks like insanity.

And two, new construction isn’t so bad.

I’ve written before about something interesting I’ve noticed since we moved into our house. Despite living in a statistically safer neighborhood, I subjectively feel less secure. I think I feel that way because in a certain sense I am. In my apartment, way up on the 16th floor of a building, with three sets of electronic access equipment—main door, elevator, room door, plus a staffed lobby—it was pretty much physically impossible for somebody to break in.

In a house, all you need is a rock or a brick or even a kick, and you’re in. Regular house windows are not at all shatterproof (I actually learned that once…on one of my own), and every window is an entry point. In a detached house, you’re only protected by the norm that you don’t break and enter. In a modern apartment building, you’re actually protected.

Of course, the likelihood of anyone doing that is quite low, but it’s certainly possible. There’s simply less between you and the outside when you’re in a detached house. That doesn’t match my perception, growing up in the suburbs, always feeling that a house was a sort of safety island in which you were ensconced. Living in an apartment building changed that for me, and now in a detached house I feel exposed.

I think this is all sort of relevant to housing and urbanism. I wonder if there’s a personality difference between people who like house living versus apartment living? Do you perceive the presence of people around you—10, 15, 20 feet away on two sides, and under and over you—as a kind of latent community? A hedge against loneliness? I remember feeling something like that in my apartment building, knowing there were people around, that you were never truly isolated.

Maybe that’s just me, or maybe it’s something very ancient in us. I remember a West Virginia tourism ad that started, “In the mountains…” and I couldn’t help but fill it in, “…no one can hear you scream.” I think of my grandmother, from Long Island, who moved in with us back at my parents’ house, afraid at night because it was too quiet. What was solitude for us was menacing darkness to her.

It might also depend on whether you think of “community” as something you cultivate out in your life—not having anything in particular to do with distance or land use or living arrangements—or as the people in proximity to you. Or whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. Some of this comes down to personality, worldview, politics, and circumstances, or a mix of those things. Which is to say, maybe, who really knows.

I guess it all makes me think about how fragile and contingent things are. I think of that classic small-c conservative phrase, “the thin veneer of civilization.” The idea that perception is reality; that emotions are physical things; that poisoning and faulty equipment look and feel like haunting. That the safer you are, the more aware of menace you become. That some state of total mental peace is not achievable in this life, just as human perfection is not achievable.

It’s all spooky and fascinating to me.

But—like the budding homeowner that I am—I think my faucet is more interesting.

Related Reading:

Apartments, Ownership, and Responsibility

Home From Italy, Thank God

Descent To The Bowels Of The House

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